After two to three years now of nothing short of explosive growth, seems like Social Network users are feeling a little remorse …

• Prospective employers reviewing their Facebook and MySpace postings and photos

• Some Colleges when assessing applications also review Facebook and MySpace accounts

• Search engines discovering content that users “thought was private”

• Beacon (Facebook) disclosing online purchases – although Facebook has now made this feature opt-in

• Lack of awareness of the privacy settings

Great article in The Washington Post today by Staff Writer, Kim Hart … “The Rise of Alter Egos in Everybody’s Space – After Oversharing, Users Recast Their Online Personas”. As noted in the article, many users are resorting to deleting and/or ‘rebooting’ their profiles to clean the slate …

The article really brings home the point that this disruptive technology remains in its early stages. Social norms need to be developed – as well as understanding of the lasting digital impact. The article does point to the fact that social networks are not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Social Networking has significant benefits for engagement, entertainment, participation and networking. It also has the ability to leave a discoverable digital trail for anyone to see and share …

‘Safe’ social networking requires models that recognize that we have multiple personae … social persona, business networking persona, close family & friends persona … and the ability for us, not the publishers, to manage our personas. Privacy controls are interesting, however, they differ massively between venues and easily misunderstood.

My $0.02:

• User managed and controlled personas will grow in importance

• Greater awareness on privacy and social impact will be required

• Social networks will continue to experiment and refine their models

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