If you have a Facebook page, you’re familiar with the News
Feed function that helps friends stay abreast of each other’s Facebook activities.
When I saw that one of my friends had joined Journalists and Facebook, I took a
look at the group and signed up too. When I saw the Friend Wheel application another
friend added, I decided to do the same. And so it goes.
Each time I sign on to Facebook, I still look at what
everyone is up to but I wonder whether it’s worth my time given that some of my
virtual “friends” and their interests are pretty peripheral to my life...
A new service called Friendfeed, created by four ex-Google
developers, can bring the same type of transparency to the rest of your web
jaunts. If you and your friends sign up for the service, now in the
beta-testing stage, you can keep track of each other’s travels on web pages,
videos, music, and photo-sharing sites.
If I do that, will I still have time to call my real female
friends to ask them what they’re up to, to meet one or two for lunch on the rare
day I don’t have to work, or to catch an occasional movie together? And do I
really want everyone to see every click I make on my “personal” computer?
The new technology seems somewhat akin to sitting in my
house at night with the lights on, with the window shades fully open for the
neighbors to look in. Similarly, it evokes memories of my grandmother who lived
in a tenement in the Bronx and sat beside the
window to see who was coming in and out of the building.
Friends are comfortable with different amounts of privacy
and “social distance” or space between them. To tell you the truth, I’m not
sure I’m ready to open the shades to all but a trusted few.
by Irene S. Levine, PhD