Twitter wanted to know "What are you doing?", though today they just want to know "What's happening?" Then there's Foursquare and Gowalla. They just want to know where you are. Now there's a new breed of social services catching on that want you to tell people what you're going to do.
The front runner in this new social planning category is Plancast, with their tagline "You've got plans. Spread the word." Early adopters and Twitterati flocked to Plancast during SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) last month, sharing the minute details of every session and party they planned to attend. HotPotato, a similar social event sharing service also got tossed around at SXSWi, promoted through the mobile Foursquare app at the festival.
Unlike traditional calendar sharing, services like Plancast and HotPotato enable you to create and share an event with your social media friends, which at first glance seems like a brilliant way to get all your friends to rally around an event.
The big question here is how much sharing is too much? If you use Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and a service like Plancast, you're providing an incredible amount of personal data to all kinds of people you don't know all too well.
It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of all these new social services, and none of us want to be left behind on the next big thing in social media. I'd just urge you to consider what you share across these social channels until you have a firm understanding of your privacy risks (or at least your privacy settings).
I use all these services, and I tend to be a bit of an over-sharer when it comes to the details of my personal and professional lives (they're one and the same to me). If anybody wanted to use my information for ill-will, I'm sure they could. The Please Rob Me service that popped up recently is a good signal for the potential risks here. While the service has since been deactivated, it was effective at rasing awareness around the social media privacy issue (which was also a central theme at SXSWi).
I think the benefits of these social tools far outweigh the potential privacy risks - but that might not be the case for all of you. Before you start sharing details about that month-long trip you plan on taking this summer, you might want to think twice about who is following your feed.
For now, if you plan to attend a big event, or you'd like to rally support for an event you're close to, consider using a platform like Plancast or HotPotato to get the word out.
The front runner in this new social planning category is Plancast, with their tagline "You've got plans. Spread the word." Early adopters and Twitterati flocked to Plancast during SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) last month, sharing the minute details of every session and party they planned to attend. HotPotato, a similar social event sharing service also got tossed around at SXSWi, promoted through the mobile Foursquare app at the festival.
Unlike traditional calendar sharing, services like Plancast and HotPotato enable you to create and share an event with your social media friends, which at first glance seems like a brilliant way to get all your friends to rally around an event.The big question here is how much sharing is too much? If you use Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and a service like Plancast, you're providing an incredible amount of personal data to all kinds of people you don't know all too well.
It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of all these new social services, and none of us want to be left behind on the next big thing in social media. I'd just urge you to consider what you share across these social channels until you have a firm understanding of your privacy risks (or at least your privacy settings).
I use all these services, and I tend to be a bit of an over-sharer when it comes to the details of my personal and professional lives (they're one and the same to me). If anybody wanted to use my information for ill-will, I'm sure they could. The Please Rob Me service that popped up recently is a good signal for the potential risks here. While the service has since been deactivated, it was effective at rasing awareness around the social media privacy issue (which was also a central theme at SXSWi).
I think the benefits of these social tools far outweigh the potential privacy risks - but that might not be the case for all of you. Before you start sharing details about that month-long trip you plan on taking this summer, you might want to think twice about who is following your feed.
For now, if you plan to attend a big event, or you'd like to rally support for an event you're close to, consider using a platform like Plancast or HotPotato to get the word out.
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