“Oversharing”

Sadly I couldn’t afford to fly out to the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week. One of the social networking themes discussed was the question of whether there are advantages to sharing less rather than more.

Facebook has pioneered the concept of ‘frictionless sharing’ (a term I just learnt): when your personal information, your consumer choices, your likes and dislikes, your moods, your geographical position, etc, are all shared automatically and seamlessly with your online friends. But this ignores the psychological and sociological evidence that a significant part of friendship and social bonding is choosing what not to share, what not to reveal.

There’s a nice quote from Vic Gundotra who is head of the Google+ project, which tries to be a classier and more selective Facebook:

There is a reason why every thought in your head does not come out of your mouth. The core attribute of the human is to curate how others perceive you and what you say. Even something as simple as music – I don’t want all my music shared with everybody. I’m embarrassed I like that one Britney Spears track. I want people to know I like U2. That’s cooler than saying I like Britney Spears. If that’s how I feel about music, how will I feel about things I read? [Quoted in an article by Murad Ahmed, The Times today, p26]

Less is more, not from a sort of reactionary puritanism, but because the way we create ourselves and communicate who we are is always, at some level, through making decisions about what to reveal and what to withhold. This is how we give shape to the person we are, and allow others to come to know us. I like especially that idea that we ‘curate’ ourselves.