Case Study-Twitter

Twitter was first established In 2006, and five years later, is now one of the largest micro-blobbing social network services of our generation. It’s concept is quiet simple, it allows it’s users to share 140 characters messages to update their friends or “followers” on where they are and what there doing.

While Twitter allows people to share these messages among friends and followers, the privacy settings on Twitter are defaulted as public, and anyone who signs up for an account can see them. In addition to that, all “public tweets” are posted to the users “profile” which showcases the most recent twenty tweets. User profiles on Twitter are much simpler and shorter compared to that of Faceable, so most personal information about a person is communicated through their Twitter messages or tweets.

Another way Twitter differs from other social networking services, Is that it’s cross- platform, and users can submit tweets or messages from the Internet, Instant messenger or by text message. People who are using Twitter are tot only snaring International tout themselves, teeny are also snaring International publicly that can be found elsewhere on the internet, such as news, music, videos or personal blobs.

With the rise of the social media trend, one of the biggest concerns individuals have is with the issue of privacy and surveillance of their information.

Privacy is the ability to control what information about oneself is available to others, so when people can’t control the information about themselves that others know; they may be vulnerable to the surveillance of others. The challenge f privacy and surveillance can become complicated and grey because a person doesn’t always know who has the access to there personal information or if there information is being used in any unintended ways. Privacy concerns mainly arise to the storage of personal information. There are many concerns associated with the storage of data.

Someone gaining access to information about you and using it harass or harm you, information you issued for one reason may be accessed or used for another and concerns that information being shared may come back to incriminate or embarrass person in the future.

Given that many tweets are public, one may not even have to be a Twitter follower to gain access to a person’s tweets. In 2009, Twitter Joined forces with Google and Microsoft, which would allow tweets from users to appear in their search engine results.

Users, businesses and governments began to fear that with major social media giants Joining forces it might put an end to privacy all together. The personal information revealed in a Twitter messages, however, is at the complete discretion of the users, so long as it’s within the 140-character limit.

While there are privacy concerns about who has access to ones personal information, this doesn’t seem to dissuade users from sharing information through social media or technology.

There are several ways to combat some concerns and create solutions for what information is publicly shared or stored about a person. The obvious being users on Twitter could merely avoid sharing any personal information about themselves that they would later not want others to have access too. This could however, be viewed as counterproductive. Much of what makes Twitter such a valued service is the constant communication between people and the ability of sharing personal information. A solution that could be instantly implemented by users would be to limit whom your sharing information with.

This means, taking the appropriate steps to change privacy settings on social media sites or being more aware of whom you are letting “follow you” or befriend you. As it is now, anyone can sign up to gain access to individual’s tweets, without the person’s approval unless the user has actively gone and changed their privacy setting. Changing these privacy settings can protect a person from the surveillance issues of everyday people taking advantage of you and making yourself vulnerable to the repercussions of putting person information out there.

But even when you’re sharing information with personal friends, it should be implied by now to users that this information is being shared with Twitter who then shares it with your friends. Thus participating in social media opens oneself up to the gaze of the marketers and third parties so that any personal information shared, even IT I RSI too private group AT close relations, can s II I De com altered tongue ten system itself.

As social media like Twitter are now integrated into search engine results on Google and Microsoft, not only will such information be easier to find by those not on Twitter, but the information itself would be presented alongside other kinds of publicly available information to anyone using these companies services. We live in a society where we are still constrained by the fact that there are 24 hours in the day; as such time and location will continue to be relevant issues in our lives that we will continue to talk about.

Our location and mage is still easy to attain, and can easily be taken advantage of, based on someone easily seeing us walk down the street on any given day. People may know to be careful about sharing personal information such as phone numbers, addresses and emails publicly, however personally identifiable information may raise concerns about who has access to information about exact locations of individuals. As long as we are taking the precautionary steps to protect ourselves and be aware that the information may be forever, we can continue to use social media to advance the way we share information around the world.