One of the hot topics online in the last few years has been oversharing. With most of us using social media in some form now, we are able to share with people our lives online. While for many this is no more than a Facebook page and a few friends with which to share photos and the occasional status update, some have taken this much further - leading to some rather unintended/unpleasant consequences. 

To give two examples, the documentary We Live in Public showed the consequences when an early web startup offered 24 hour coverage of itself, leading to a meltdown in those observed. Then, in more recent years, the Gawker journalist Emily Gould revealed how sharing her life in blog posts lead to a nervous breakdown as she found herself unable to cope with the negative comments that her blog generated from anonymous site users.

It is for this reason that among web users, the concept of oversharing has grown up. It is increasingly frowned upon socially to offer up every aspect of your life online – just as you moderate your conversation offline depending on who you’re talking to.

These issues lead into a new issue that is starting to enter the mainstream – sharing your location. You may automatically balk at the idea, but it’s not without its benefits, just as social networks have a similar trade off for the same perceived loss of privacy - and these benefits may cause us to overcome our initial suspicion. At the purely personal level, there is the example given by Android app Locale which allows you to set ringtones based on your location. So your phone need never accidently ring in your local cinema again.

Posted  19/5/09 at 18:20