After reading Julie's comment I decided to write my paper on the topic of privacy and social networks, in particular privacy and Facebook and how they are screwing up.

First I will address the history of Facebook and their initial views on privacy settings. Second I will address the climb in the popularity of the site and how it has the highest membership of all social networks. Thirdly I will discuss Facebook privacy and how often privacy setting are utilized by users, as well, as statistics on users knowledge about privacy settings. Fourthly, I will discuss how the founder of Facebook is now completely changing his views about privacy, now that Facebook is the number one social network. Fifthly, I will discuss the new changes on Facebook, in regards to privacy settings and how users information is becoming public on search engines, as well as, how third parties are collecting information from friends lists and also Apps. Lastly, I will discuss how Facebook's idea of a privacy free society, is far from realistic and give examples of why users need to protect their privacy for such reasons as future employment and reputation.

The sources I will be using so far are...www.fredstutzman.com/papers/ICWSM2010R_Stutzman.pdf, www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_says_the_age_of_privacy_is_ov.php, www.firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewarticle/2775/2432#p2, www.jiad.org/article130, and www.facebook.com.

Ideas For Final Project

I'm interested in doing my final project on "cultural patterns and the digital world". I recently blogged about an article I came across on analyzing cultural patterns. The response posts were interesting as people were concerned about being tracked, as well as, invasion of personal privacy. I want to look further into this subject to see if we have something to be concerned about. If new software allows analysis of cultural patterns on the web, do we need to worry about being "personally watched" or the possibility of our actions on the web coming back to haunt us? Or will tracking user activity for the purpose of analyzing cultural patterns be safe and anonymous? Any feedback or suggestions?