Blogging and Internet Privacy

Image courtesy of SafetyWeb.com

In the age when facial recognition is incorporated into your driver's license picture and Facebook auto-tags you and your friends when you upload photos (though not always correctly), people worry about privacy on the net. The Man is spying on us all, looking for keywords in posts like terrorism and bomb and other threatening vocabulary

(Hello, Mr/Ms Fed Agent. Glad you came to read my blog!).

And yet we writers blog on a (semi-)regular basis. Not only that, but we put ourselves out there in a rather public sphere, some people even linking their blog of Facebook, Twitter, other co-authored blogs, some even going so far as to list their home address and phone number in case an agent would like to contact them. We create ourselves as public figures and hope we're not famous enough to attract real-life stalkers while also toning down the rants to avoid any government's spy radar from picking up our signals.

(Are you still with me, Mr/Ms Fed Agent? Or is this just chatter? Did you catch my use of the word "stalker"?)

What I find intriguing in all this are the people who have blogs, blogging profiles, and "aliases", but somehow those profiles are disconnected from the comments they leave on blogs. I personally like to respond to people's comments via email, because it may lead to a more personal discussion, or the person to whom I'm responding might not return to my blog to see my answer. And half the time, I hit reply, type a paragraph and click send before I realize that the response is going to "no-reply@blogger.com".

Image courtesy of Uproxx.com

I'm not sure what about it bothers me, but it seems paradoxical. Perhaps with "bloggers" who don't use blogger, i.e., people who use LiveJournal or WordPress, it makes sense, but still some of these people have Blogger profiles as they may use Google Reader or the Blogger Dashboard to read the latest and greatest. It's two clicks or so to connect an email address to an account. Why not do it?

I can only think of two reasons:

1. The person doesn't know how (in which case, I say, go find a ten year old to show you); or
2. S/he is worried about internet security and his/her email address being too accessible.

Yeah, you know, I kinda get it. I don't necessarily want my personal email available to anyone and everyone on the internet. So what did I do? In this booming technological age, I created another email address. Yes, folks, that makes three for me.

1. A Google email address used exclusively for all things literary. I use it for contests, comments, site registration at places like LinkedIn, Narrative.com, etc. If you know me from my blog, it's probably the only email address of mine you'll ever see (except for Carol).
2. My university email. You don't even need to be a tried and true hacker to figure out the address for this email account, but I'm not flaunting it around the net. I use it for work and some personal email. The end.
3. My Yahoo account. While I'm unsure how one blogger has found this and uses it to email me the periodic announcement from her blog (and she may not even know who she is), it's really my catch-all email address. I use it to register at places that are likely to generate spam.

So given the potential for the separation of the net and the personal, I can't figure out why people don't connect an email address to their comments. We're all already online, and therefore have significantly forfeit a portion of our right to internet privacy. We want people to connect to us, read our blogs, and participate in the conversation, but to do that with such a limited means of connecting, to me, seems like cherry picking.


Am I wrong? Are you one of the people who doesn't have your email connected to your account? Tell me why. I honestly don't get it and would like to know.


Are you concerned about yourself being so public and your right to internet privacy? What do you do to protect yourself?

The Social Networks

Yup, that's plural. This post is not about the movie (which I haven't seen).

I first heard about social networking (though it wasn't called that) maybe years ago with Friendster. I created an account, invited some other friends to join, and then had no idea what to do with it. I let it sit there, and finally closed that account about a year ago.

When we got to the university, I opened a Facebook account. This was back in the day when only people with a .edu email address could get an account. Back in the day when each status update automatically started with "is". It was fun keeping up with my friends and making up gerunds and bad progressive-tense constructions ("is liking" *blech*) to create sensible status updates beyond "is in the library". Posting pictures inspired me to take more pictures in the age of the digital camera. All in all, I could easily keep up with it, and was liking it quite a lot :)

Today, however, Facebook isn't enough. For me, I also have this lovely blog, a Twitter account, an account on Ravelry (for lovers of fiber arts), SparkPeople (for those needing a cyber fitness community... this is usually the first to be forgotten by me) and Goodreads. Each one is different (although, I swear I will never full understand Twitter) and serves a different purpose.

But recently, I've been getting more invitations to other networks. Select2gether (I'm pretty sure this one is just spam, though). LinedIn. Academia.com. But where do you draw the line? The people who invited me for the latter 2 are good friends and reputable people, but I can't figure out how these networks are any different from what I've already got.


How do you social network? Where do you draw the line? Or is there no line to draw? Should we all participate in everything with the hopes of inspiring those heavy book sales someday? And if you use a number of different networks, how do you manage everything?

Cyber-Suck, Or How I Learn to Stand on One Foot

Dear Fellow Blogophiles,

Let me describe for you my past week (which, oddly enough, I also happen to be learning to do in my Macedonian class this week, but that's completely unrelated).  I wake up early, some mornings do yoga, have my tea and cereal (or muffins one morning :) and spend about an hour on Blogger since so many people post or schedule their posts GMT 4:00-13:00 (–5).  In this time, I never get through everything I want to read, and leave at least a dozen posts open in tabs in my Firefox window.

After the morning routine (се туширам, мијам забите...) I head to class.  Including travel time, this takes about 5:30 hours—all in all not bad, considering some people have real 9-5 jobs, so I'm not complaining.  Frequently on our breaks I will even hop on the computer, check my email, and even log into Blogger to respond to someone who's commented on a post—that's how excited I am when you guys comment.  Yes, I'm a dork, but a friendly dork :)

After I come home, I get on Blogger and try catching up again or writing my own post.  I frequently discover that hours have passed and I still have 2 dozen tabs open that I want to read.  But, obviously, I have to stop, do my homework (домашна работа), make dinner (правам вечера), clean up (мијам садови), and then spend time with my husband who I haven't seen all day.  After a while, I'm exhausted, so I move upstairs and read until I pass out.

Do you notice what's missing here?  Do you see the obvious problem?

As if this weren't bad enough, I've now thrown Twitter into the mix.  Btw, folks, I don't get it.  I understand the potential.  Tweet about your new books, others ReTweet, and thousands more than otherwise will buy the book.  And that's awesome.  I haven't seen any of that yet, and instead have seen a lot of people talking about their flights being delayed on their way to SCBWI.  It actually feels similar to an incredibly disorganized chat room that I used to frequent on a dial-up modem, designed entirely in ASCII.  I know people love Twitter, and I know I just need time to sort it out, find more people to follow, figure out what an interesting Tweet might actually be, but all the time I'm dedicating to Twit-covery is yet more time I'm not writing.

I'm still new on the blogoscene, all things considered.  I'm still learning my way.  But do you have any advice for a poor girl with a time-management problem who just wants to write AND blog-network AND support her friends' blogs AND encourage new followers AND Twick-or-Tweet AND have a real life?  Is the answer: stop sleeping?  It all comes down to balance, and I've never been good at standing on one foot much less organizing my time.  *sigh*



How do you do it?  How do you manage your life, your writing, and cyberspace?

Tweetophobia

This week is turning into a list of semi-embarrassing tidbits about yours truly.  How did that happen? (If you missed it, Sunday ended in my admitting to missing a character, and yesterday I discussed my cast and—former!—Gossip Girl obsession.)

So today, here I go admitting another of my problem areas for all the world to see:  I'm afraid of Twitter.  Yes, I admit it.  The first step in seeking help is admitting you have a problem, right?

At least the little birdie is heading east :)

You may be wondering how on earth I could possibly be afraid of a social-networking tool.  I obviously blog, I have a Facebook account**, I have previously had MySpace and Friendster accounts (although I think I have finally gotten those closed), and I have three email addresses.  I am not anti-technology.  I am not anti-social.  Therefore, I should not be anti-social technology.

Here's the rub.  I joined FB back in the days when you needed a .edu email address to get an account—very long ago indeed.  We also all know that academics tend to have strong opinions.  Having been on FB for *cough* years when Twitter rolled around, the FB backlash strongly influenced my understanding on Twitter:  it's a useless long list of unrelated tweets about whatever random things Ashton Kutcher's brain can create, and a bunch of tweetheads who tweet sweet nothings in his ear.  Does that sound positive to you?

But I have recently thrown myself into the blogosphere, full of writers and agents and editors who all suggest you follow them, be it for networking, researching, or simply gaining more points on that contest to receive so-and-so's latest ARC release.  I've been pondering Twitter and it's meaning in my life now for two months and have yet to muster the courage/hutzpa/cajones/jajca to open an account.

Surely I have nothing to fear but the fear itself.  Now I just need to move past it.

I would ask if you have a Twitter account, but that's probably an obvious yes.  How do you use it?  Do you tweet and retweet or just follow?  And, forgive my ignorance here, but how do you follow a tweeted conversation when other tweets show up in between?  Is there a Twitter equivalent to the Blogger dashboard or Google reader?  Anybody got a Twitter for Dummies manual lying around?

**I am not trying to hide on FB from anyone, even though I haven't linked myself up here.  At the moment most of my academic compatriots know nothing about my alternative life as a writer, and I'm not quite ready to have the world merge.  If you're truly motivated, I would never deny a friend request.  But when I get more of my clashing-world scenario smoothed out, I'll add an FB link on the sidebar.