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April 21, 2008

Social Networking and the Opt-in vs. Opt-out approach

Filed under: Rants/Musings — cangione @ 11:21 pm

Social Network sites like LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook need to figure this out quick! It's late and I'm pissed. Without explicitly throwing up a dialog in my face and asking me what I want, the default setting for blasting whatever the hell I'm doing  to the world should be Opt-out! Microsoft figured this out years ago. It is really annoying, but no one can claim they didn't ask if I'm really really sure I want to nuke a particular file! If I select all the defaults you provide me, whatever I'm doing should Opt-out of whatever magic updates you want to provide to the world.  It's a cop-out to have the Opt-in checkbox  checked by default and assume that I actually saw it! You will find most times I'm OK with the known universe knowing what I'm doing! I'm willing to Opt-in every freakin time I want said universe to know my actions.

What brought on this rant.....I'm sending an e-card to someone. WHY THE HELL DOES A SOCIAL NETWORK SITE THINK I WANT THE CONTENTS OF A CARD THAT I EXPLICITLY ADDRESSED TO A SINGLE FREAKIN PERSON BE BROADCAST TO THE ENTIRE FRAPPIN WORLD? It gets better...... This is a new behavior since the site in question decided it was a social networking site instead of being a contact aggregation site.

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