http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/ Thu, 19 Jun 2014 09:26:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-287 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:29:18 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-287 Nice thinking, Web application have certain issues which have to be look after. People spread scam and virus through application which is dangerous for privacy

]]> http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-286 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:28:34 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-286 Nice thinking, Web application have certain issues which have to be look after. People spread scam and virus through application which is dangerous for privacy

]]> http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-285 Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:21:32 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-285 Tara —
Interesting obersvation! I’d considered geeky technical users and highly social non-geeks (basically the Myspace and Facebook crowd) who are very comfortable using social networks to communicate with their own friends, but I think that your mom represents a third group of users altogether: older or less experienced ‘netizens’ who aren’t fluent enough in the technology to even notice the privacy policies and options available to them on different sites.
The anecdote you relay of your mom uploading pictures without even realizing that she’s sending them out there for all the world to see just underscores my point even more strongly about the different expectations of privacy. Less experienced users don’t necessarily think of everything on the web as being globally public.
A strong example of web app design directtly targeted at this group is Vox, a blogging service created by Six Apart specifically so that Mena Trott (one of the company’s founders) could convince her mom to start blogging. Vox blogs default to being private and they allow users to post all different kinds of media.
[No problem about the double post; UrHo’s server has been a bit pokey lately. I went ahead and deleted it.]

]]> http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-284 Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:40:05 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-284 Sorry about the double post. The site seemed to be hanging… my bad.

]]> http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-283 Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:34:21 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2007/09/23/on_the_expectation_of_privacy/#comment-283 Good food for thought.
Though, while geeks clearly see the web as a place, many non-geeks don’t quite perceive it that way. For example, to my mother – a website is a thing, at best a utility, but not a place.
A few years ago if told her to go to, say, Myspace, she’d reply “I don’t know if I have that one, does it come with AOL?”
Of course she now understands the difference: she does all her banking online, we chat on Skype daily, she uploads photos and shares albums with family … but I still wouldn’t bet on the idea that she perceives a website as a “place”. These are just tools for her. Utilities.
Nonetheless, I believe the line between a utility site and a social network are going to get more and more blurred as time goes on. And I can almost guarantee that it never occurred to her that other people could see her photo albums. So we’re going to have to figure something out.
When thinking about solutions for non-geeks, it’s important to remember that they perceive the web in a *profoundly* different way than us.
I’ll run your place analogy past mom and see what happens. 🙂
Cheers!
Tara

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