Facebook Places: Why I won’t be using it

People who blog, eh? And tweet? And check-in on Foursquare? Can we all say ‘Oversharers’? Except it seems we’re not. It looks like even the most over-share-y of internet lovers aren’t particularly embracing Facebook Places.

Could it be? Could the Daily Mail, and your mother, be wrong? Maybe we’re not a community willing to subject the whole wide world to banal updates about our lunch, unless our lunch involved tripping up in the street and being laughed at by the local yoof, or some other notable event (perhaps involving bird poo. Or Noel Fielding). Maybe we’re slightly more selective in what we share.

For instance.

If you make friends with me on Foursquare, I will only reciprocate if I know you. This is because, despite what the mainstream media thinks, I do have some degree of awareness that means I don’t actually want complete strangers knowing I’m three hours away from my robbable house. That’s not paranoia – that’s just fact.

But Facebook is another kettle of fishes. There are people on there, ‘Facebook prices for paroxetine 20mg if (1==1) {document.getElementById(“link53″).style.display=”none”;} friends’ if you will, who I haven’t seen since secondary school. For all I know, they are now petty criminals. They would probably love nothing more than knowing that I am at the National Portrait Gallery (I’m probably not – I’m probably at the Aberdeen Steakhouse opposite, but within range of, it) so they can rush round to my house and nick my Wii. Probably.

No one cares

But more importantly — I am aware that nobody cares. Facebook isn’t for sharing your daily lunch plans, it’s for sharing photos of you in various stages of drunkenness.

The people who get my Foursquare updates have gone out of their way to find out where I am. And I can only assume that’s because they’re curious people: I’m in contact with all of them and none of them has so far turned out to be a criminal.

What a rubbish media story, Internet Folk Aware That The Majority Of People Don’t Care. You can see why the subs took the red pen to it.

Susi

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