As a software developer, a sys admin, and as a person who supported users under many hats, I've always been surprised by the ingenuity of my users (by their stupidity too, but that is for another post, at another time). A lot is being said in recent years of the changes in privacy concepts and of the behaviour of teenagers in the social networks. A fascinating post in allfacebook.com, taught me about the ingenious ways teenagers developed to control their privacy and their image in the social networks. In addition to the ingenuity of deactivating your account when you are not there, so that your profile will remain as you've left it, and people won't be able to check you out too deeply there is also the rigorous option of removing past contents, and controlling what remains at present. These practices are probably used by others, no longer teens, as a mean to control their social-network-image, and they have another lesson to teach us - seems like privacy concepts aren't changing as much as people like Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt would like us to accept. It might also be an indicator for software developers - the need for tools that would enable one a control over his or hers net-image are greater than ever. Social networks, like most of the new technologies, have created a new need...
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