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Ask Slashdot: Facebook, Twitter For Business, Is It Worth the Privacy Trade-Off?
cayenne8 writes "I've been a staunch advocate of NOT joining Facebook or Twitter or the other social networks to protect my privacy and to not voluntarily give all my personal information away to corporate America, or even the Government. However, I'm beginning to look into making money through various means on the side, one of them being photography/videography. With these mediums, being seen is critically important. Having a business facing site on Facebook/Google+ and even using Twitter can be great for self promotion, and can open up your business to a huge audience. If you were to open your FB and other social network accounts with business ONLY information, and keep your personal information (name, image, etc) off the Facebook account...will this keep your personal privacy still from them, or are their algorithms good enough to piece together who you are from the business only sites? Is the payoff worth the potential trade-off for generating potential customers for your business and guiding them to your primary website?"
See all those sites you visit with a facebook like button. Those images are usually served from facebook, not the site you're visiting.
So, unless you're careful with your privacy settings, you are likely reporting a huge amount of your browsing to facebook.
At the very least, I'd recommend logging out of facebook when you're done and trying to browse with 3rd party cookies disabled.
Having a social media presence is pretty crucial to doing the sort of freelance work you're describing, since so much of how you get business happens via word of mouth (and so much of "word of mouth" happens on social media).
One of the simplest things you can do to protect your privacy is to create an email addres that you *only* use for social media accounts (like, a special gmail address that just forwards mail to your regular adress, or maybe facebook@yourdomain.com if you own your own domain). This rather horrifying article from the WSJ about the way that social media tracking work makes clear that your email address is a big part of how your identity is tracked online. If they can't match the email address you use for your Facebook login with any other aspects of your online identity, you have some protections.
If you're using them strictly as a business tool, I wouldn't worry too much about photos -- I do think it's helpful to have a photo of yourself, especially in a one-to-one business like freelance photography. You can set your Facebook account so other people can't tag you in their photos.
Their little data bots are good enough that they already have information on you whether you have an account or not. You and your browser are traceable if you visit any websites with their widgets, whether you are signed in or not. Just bite the bullet and set up a business account already and stop worrying. You aren't that special.
Having a Facebook has certainly helped my business' promotion, it gets a lot more eyes visit our websites.
And what kind of unprofessional questions is that anyways?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What are your other options for self promotion? Ad in the newspaper? How many people will see it let alone act on it these days? Ad on TV? Is the Return of Investment worth it for what you're trying to do?
Really, for better or worse "social" media is the best way to reach a target audience.
Web hosting that doesn't suck!Dreamhost
anything connected somehow is trackable somehow and eventually will be.
...unless you're clever, like Ronald McDonald or Colonel Sanders, the real identities of which are still mysteries.
>>>Having a business facing site on Facebook/Google+ and even using Twitter can be great for self promotion, and can open up your business to a huge audience
actually increases sales?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
They already have or can gain easy access to all that information. The govt already has a ton of info on you, tax records, dmv, etc. Business do also (you prolly get junk mail every day addressed to you.) It's a fact of life, it sucks, but thinking you can erase or hide your digital or paper trail is foolish. If you want to protect privacy spend your time fighting to protect it, don't waste it trying to hide.
You want to start working freelance and you don't want to publicize how people can reach you? I'd expect a decent head shot, a phone number, a short bio and an email address. Also representative galleries of past work, as well.
You don't have to put your life story out there, but it's really not uncommon in business to have some small amount of "About Me" information posted with experience, education, sometimes martial status/number of children (especially if you are looking to photograph families/children).
If you are going to set up a social media presence, you can't just set up a page and have it sit there. It does require tending and maintenance or it looks abandoned. If you do photography, post examples of good work at a steady pace, even if it's not paying gigs. Hopefully people forward it around and you get some notice.
It sounds like you need to loosen up, or find another way of making money on the side that doesn't require social media. You can be a successful freelander without it, but you will still need to get your name out there somehow (personal networking, business networking groups, etc)
Ghostery blocks them
I think Twitter is worth it because there are very few privacy concerns. Twitter is 98% public, and everyone who participates knows it. (I hope.)
Facebook is a privacy nightmare, and is crap for driving business to your web site. It does everything it can to keep all information on Facebook, including jerking everyone around. And that will only increase.
Once you post something on either service it's out of y our control. With Twitter it's pretty minor, 140 characters, and it will be gone eventually. (I believe they only archive the last 2000 Tweets or so.) Facebook is trying to make a timeline of people's entire lives and won't stop trying to make money off your content until well after you're dead.
linkedin
elance
http://michaelsmith.id.au
dutifully - any FB business showing - Walmart is there!
Our business has Twitter, and Facebook, and I'm on LinkedIn, and Quora, and Slashdot, and... damn I probably even have a MySpace account hanging around somewhere. The problem with anything online is that you can never, ever stop updating, fixing it, redesigning it, monitoring it....
Beyond that, all that you can do with Facebook is try to get people to "like" you (aka subscribe). E-mail does that better - Constant Contact seems good. All that you're really doing is building a list of people who already know you and probably buy your product. A public list. Is that really of much value?
At the end of the day, I seriously doubt how much any of those drive business for the small operator. Facebook in particular will bury your content in a barrage of cat pictures and weird and sometimes offensive ads - who in hell programs their ad servers? Algorithms by chimps?.
I'm thinking that if time and resources are limited you would do better with a really tight and well designed website, and some money spent on Google Adsense placements. Unlike Facebook, Google seems to be able to hit me with ads that actually might interest me.
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Three Squirrels
You want to increase your exposure, you just don't want to increase your exposure. Hmm. If you want to leverage the benefits of social networking, you may need to make a bit of a trade off here.
FWIW, the "Facebook for Business Pages" stuff is kind of gimped - you can't "Like" other pages and you are limited in other ways. I ended up making up an EMail address and a fake name in order to "Like" other pages (for the free music giveaways), but now Facebook seems to recognize that account on every page I visit.
I've done the Twitter thing for a couple months now, and if they are following me around the web I haven't seemed to notice.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I've used my real name thousands of times on the Internet. I got paid $1000 for reviewing a book once, based on a letter to the editor I wrote once, using my real name and email. I've had people track me down 10 years later to send an email to me, after having seen me post something (I'm not sure what), or get a hit on my name from something else. But no bad has ever happened to me, nor has anything ever happened that I would consider a "close call".
I'm ok posting real info, and I don't get the paranoia. What could possibly go wrong?
Learn to love Alaska
You might have pre-conceived notions of why FB / XYZ / ZZY is bad for you or your company. But the reality of the situation is that if you do "good" then you will be rewarded in the social world. However, if you are a shady MF as a company expect to be called out!
2. The gubmint has access to the same databases.
3. Deep privacy is no longer possible if you have ever gone into debt, rented an apartment, or done any number of things that involve Large Systems.
4. Shallow privacy can be kept by avoiding Social Networks. But it is fungible and variable.
5. Photography and Videography as a profession are pretty well toast. When a fucking phone takes better video than a $100,000 camera did 30 years ago, the Gig Is Up. Content creation is trivial and a short ride to the poor house, unless you move to LA and suck enough dick to get into the film industry.
6. If you will notice most of the most famous and popular photographs of the past year were taken by amateurs on crap gear.
In short: Only get into a creative profession if it is something you absolutely MUST do, as in, inner necessity I will go insane if I can't do this MUST do. Otherwise, just shoot videos of kittens, post it on youtube and collect the rent.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Personally I had (past tense) a fb account but I haven't used it for many years.
But my business does have a fb presence - it has its own fb account and in the office a cpu is dedicated for that fb account.
Nothing important is on that dedicated cpu - so all the info fb can obtain from that dedicated machine is the ip (static) and the hw/sw info.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
that you actually have any privacy without joining Facebook or Twitter.
You see all these Facebook buttons everywhere? They are already tracking you without you needing to log in into Facebook or even having an account there.
Same thing for all the ad networks. Single pixel bugs and ads are used to track you. And from scraps of the info you left on some sites, and the emails and addresses you provided to shopping sites they know who you are, where you live, what is your phone number and what size of shoes you wear.
It works so well that for instance after visiting some furniture store site just to browse it, a little while later I got their nice printed catalog in snail-mail.
Oh yeah, and I am browsing with Adblock and Ghostery.
So unless you nuke your cookies and Flash cookies and change IP address every day as well you probably have zero privacy.
Welcome to 21st century.
A) Facebook and gogke already know all about you, unless you're meticulous with your cookies and only browse through Tor.
B) you're only a subpoena away from the government getting anytime they want about you, at best.
C) privacy is toast, in other words.
D) does a tine even us google+? Moreso, do any real companies have a presence there?
E) I'd be interested in a truelly neutral study about the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook. I know they're raking in the dollars, but that doesn't mean it's money well spent for companies. I know for myself, I use it, and I have yet to visit any business page intentionally. The ones I have seen, I've backed away from immediately. Unless you're running daily specials, there's just no purpose to building a Facebook presence I don't think. Would you pay any amount of money to garner "likes", for instance?
F)I'd suggest go the "ld fashioned route" of a good web presence, some SEO, and some decent spending on AdWords if you're serious about it. Once you have a couple customers, maybe you think aboutvfacebook or twitterif you think they'll provide you any linkage, recommendations or traffic. But no point in investing any time or energy until you've got the basics covered.
G) don't waste any time worrying about privacy. Again, unless you've been nutty with your countermeasures, your privacy Is already long gone. And if you do manage to set up a business presence and keep it totally detached from your online persona,which lol be hard since you'll use the same browser at worst, or just be using the same ip addresss, personal and business at best, corporate info is only a few clicks away on most states' websites.
But go ahead do your business, it can't hurt!
I make my living extracting content from Facebook's API. If they are recording what sites you visit, it's not exposed anywhere in their API. I can say anything you've directly acted upon with your Facebook account, but looking at something is not a direct action. Further, a sample account was posted to Slashdot at one point, courtesy of the court system and none of that information was in there.
What you actually care about is protecting your information from people like me. To do that is simple. Click the arrow next to Home while logged into your freshly minted account. Then click Privacy Settings.
Now edit Ads, Apps and Websites. Then click "Turn off your ability to use apps, plugins, and websites on and off Facebook. After you turn this off, we will not store information about you when you use apps or websites off Facebook." Set "Old versions of Facebook for mobile" to Only Me. Click Edit Settings next to "How people bring your info to apps they use" and uncheck everything. Disable Instant Personalization. With all of this in place, you become nearly invisible to my code. The most I can ever see is your name and Facebook ID and you may occasionally show up as a friend of someone who uses my Facebook app.
Since you're presumably still paranoid, let's also prevent people from directly interacting with your timeline. Back in Privacy, click Timeline and Tagging. Remember that "Only Me" is under Custom, so lock that bad boy down.
Presto, you're about as private as they come. And if you follow Slashdot, you'll quickly know when it's time to revisit these settings because Facebook has made further changes.
"However, I'm beginning to look into making money through various means on the side, one of them being pornography/videography. With these mediums, being seen is critically important"
Corrected the sentence for you :)
aaaaaaa
The privacy needs of a business and the privacy needs of a private individual are polar opposites.
Individuals usually want to remain hidden to the general public but not to their circle of friends.
A business usually wants maximum exposure to attract customers. That is the whole idea of advertising.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
basically yes. If you segregate everything business related. Run management thru a separate browser. Maybe make Opera your business browser if you're not already using it. Set to wipe on shut down or whatever. Then any privacy concerns should be minimized. Building a respectable small business used to be so much harder and nowadays the only reason it's still a viable option for so many people IS because of social networking. You're going to have to use it even if only minimally as a point of contact. people will want to facebook you rather than email you. it's weird like that.
Just another second banana
I see lots of businesses investing in Facebook and Twitter. This is driven by the marketing departments, and especially the younger staff that wants to prove something. Maybe I'm an old geezer, but I am not convinced - in the businesses I am familiar with, I haven't seen any sort of believable results, and the marketing departments can't produce any numbers, only "trust us, we know what we're doing".
Has anyone seen actual, solid numbers from any business that prove that these marketing channels were worth the investment? If so, for what type of business?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Ever post something controversial on Usenet? Google Groups search will make sure that if you were flamed or ridiculed for it, that it is on the first page of search results.
You still "get reported", in the form of your IP address and browser identity, even if you're logged out.
I found my real name posted on usenet. Though my email addresses from then are no longer accessible, having started at college with an edu address, and a freemail service that's long dead now.
Learn to love Alaska
The article reads as "I was a staunch advocate for privacy until I realized I could make money by selling my soul."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If you want keep yourself hidden from the world on social media it's not going to work out. I own a computer business and online store I have enjoyed a great deal of success but I am the public face of the company. Just the way being a business owner is people people want to see the boss whether it's in face or on internet. I am not saying share your life but you are your brand when it comes to business.
http://thetechnologygeek.org/
Ha. you are clearly a white male.
I'd likely not survive a presidential candidate background check, but employers wouldn't be able to find any "good stuff" worthy of denying me employment unless they spent more money on the background check than I'd make in a year (I have no idea how many usenet posts I've made, but I'd guess well into the thousands, and multiple email addresses across multiple providers, most long dead).
Learn to love Alaska
I'm a white male because I'm not an idiot jackass online? Please explain the logic behind that. I'm curious as to whether white males should be offended, or everyone else.
Learn to love Alaska
There is no way to predict if something bad will happen to you, specifically, based on online posts.
Sure there is. If you are stupid, then bad things are more likely to happen. This guy advertised he was a rich gringo headed to a specific place. People looking for that profile took advantage of it. He also advertised that he doesn't lock his front door. Nobody took advantage of that. When you are stupid enough long enough, someone will take advantage of it. Use the tiniest amount of sense when posting and there shouldn't be a problem.
I'm a reformed poster. I used to post all my detailed travels daily while I was out of town, including photos. I was stupid. I picked up a stalker from this. She ended up being fired from her job over her lack of self control. I hated going to work for about 6 months while I was being sexually harrassed and followed.
You can't protect yourself from other's mental illnesses. Sure, advertising yourself online will increase the chances of an encounter, but is irrelevant to the illness of another.
Learn to love Alaska
No one should be offended. I was just noting that many people, including many women like me, are very nervous about being so open on the internet because we've seen what can happen. Sorry if it came off too flip.
Women are more likely to get a stalker. But I've not seen anything to indicate that such Internet stalkers result in a reduced physical safety. Perhaps it's another case of incorrect risk assessment. Humans are bad at risk assessment.
Learn to love Alaska