Bart posted on the Social Networking Task Force blog about Facebook's intentions to allow search engines like Google and Yahoo to search user content. The article says that Facebook is a potential goldmine to advertisers who would love to get their fingers on the users' data (birth date, interests, events they plan to attend, phone numbers, etc.).


So what does this mean? It means that Big Brother is always watching. Just like the librarians who were unaware their MEDLIB-L posts (and possibly their email addresses) were available online to anyone, people must realize we are more "visible" in this world. It all boils down to convenience and social responsibility. With modern networking and computer conveniences there is the potential for a certain loss of anonymity, and with that comes greater responsibilities to secure and present you and your information. Everybody has a bad day, but if your bad day is immortalized online, everybody else knows about your bad day and how poorly or well you dealt with it.


Like Bart said in his post, "As a general rule we need to all keep in mind that if you don't want it out there, don't write it down. This includes, email, blogs, wikis, etc."