Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

De-friending

In a guest post for Mashable David Spark (@dspark) offers twelve great tales of de-friending:

De-friending has always been awkward. Social networks offer one click “remove a friend” options, but it still doesn’t make the decision any easier.

What follows is a collection of stories about de-friending. In summary, what I discovered is that everyone approaches their social network differently and it’s impossible to communicate all those nuances when you choose to de-friend.

As you read, keep in mind that these are all one-sided stories. The interviewees made their best guess as to why the de-friending happened or how the offending party felt after being de-friended. I purposely didn’t include stories of de-friending romantic exes because those de-friendings are obvious. If you see a real name and in some cases a link to their profile page, I received permission to publish. In all other cases where people wished to remain anonymous, I replaced their name with the first name of one of my ex-girlfriends or one of my wife’s ex-boyfriends.

Read them here.

Smile ... you're on Facebook/MySpace

ReadWriteWeb reports on a study that basically finds that if you smile in your social network photos you probably have more friends:

Researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Folwer recently published a paper in the British Medical Journal where they examined how a person's happiness is related to the happiness of their friends in their offline social networks. To follow up that study, they examined those same happiness clusters in online networks like MySpace and Facebook. Their conclusion? Happier people tend to have more friends and are more central to the network when compared with their more sullen friends.

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The data from results of the online study ended up correlating to their offline study - the results were essentially the same, they were just translated to the digital world. What the researchers found was that smiling students were surrounded by others who were also smiling in small "happiness clusters." Those who were not smiling seem to be located more peripherally in the network. After performing statistical analysis, they determined that those who smile also tend to have more friends - on average one extra friend, which is good considering that people only tend to have six close friends. Those who smiled were also more likely to be at the center of the network when compared to those who don't.

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In the end, the main conclusion of the study was that, whether online or offline, "when you smile, the world smiles with you."

Read more here.  So are you smiling in your social network photos?

The future of social media

ReadWriteWeb has a good piece on the future of social media:

Social networking is at a major fork in the road. Down one road is adding more features to a walled garden and opening up just enough, so that users seldom need to leave. Most sites are going down this yellow brick road and the prize is clearly a big one. But they may end up back in Kansas. Down the other road, lies a future of being the primary repository for your connections (aka the social graph), but with this data available via open APIs to anybody who needs it. That is a utility type model, and as with any utility, it can be hugely valuable at scale.

Deciding which path to take is a real decision. A botched choice will likely end in failure, albeit via a long, slow decline.

The problem with the first road is that it relies upon a revenue model that is native to social media. What revenue model works for social media? The assumption is advertising, but CPM comes from traditional mass media and CPC is ideally suited to search. Where is the ad model that is native to social media? At the moment we are force-fitting CPM and CPC into social media for want of anything better.

Some might argue that there is no ad model for social media. We don't have an ad model for telephones, afterall, and that's a two-way communication medium like social media. Ominously, we didn't have an effective ad model for email, which is the earliest form of social media, until Google treated email as just more search fodder for CPC.

If social media is not funded by advertising, it must be funded by subscriptions or transactions. Neither is easy.

Read more here.  Against this backdrop there have been a couple of developments in the social media world over the past few days.  First, the Google-Facebook arrangement has collapsed:

Google Inc.'s announcement of a service to "make the Web more social" was decidedly casual, or staged to seem that way.

Standing beside a campfire, the company's engineering director, David Glazer, explained how, through an agreement with Facebook and similar sites, the effort would serve a primal human need.

"We all like huddling around fires, and huddling around food and talking to each other -- people are social," Glazer, dressed in a red-checked shirt and sneakers, told about 100 people gathered outside the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., last month. "With Friend Connect we are trying to make that happen everywhere on the Web."

Within three days of the campfire, a dispute erupted between Google and Facebook, its largest partner in the new service, that reflected the fact that for Web companies there is nothing casual about the business of Internet socializing.

There's too much money, maybe billions, at stake.

Facebook, the burgeoning social network, abruptly withdrew its support for Google's Friend Connect, meaning that none of Facebook's tens of millions of members could sign on to websites using Google's new service.

Coming so soon after the highly publicized launch, it was an embarrassing rift.

Read more here (from the Los Angeles Times).  Second, a report suggests that the web will be dominated by two players - Google and Amazon:

An Internet analyst for a major Wall Street firm argues in a new report that Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc will be long-term winners, while Yahoo and IAC InterActiveCorp fall by the wayside and eBay Inc becomes a merger target.    

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay argues in a 310-page report entitled "U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning" to be published on Tuesday that Google and Amazon are best placed to withstand the current economic downturn.

"We expect two players to continue to perform strongly, Google and Amazon," Lindsay writes. "Both Google and Amazon.com are still racking up annual growth rates in the 30-40 percent range, with only a relatively modest slowdown in sight."

Lindsay reiterates his previous positions that Yahoo eventually will be sold to Microsoft Corp and that Barry Diller's IAC e-commerce conglomerate will go ahead in August with its five-way split-up, as planned.

"Arguably the weakest players have strayed furthest from their original competences and have been operating largely as conglomerates," the Bernstein analyst says of Yahoo and IAC.

Read more here (from Reuters).  And finally Microsoft is wanting the a piece of the web action:

Lloyd Braun–the former Hollywood super-programmer turned Yahoo entertainment czar turned Hollywood and online programmer–has signed a multimillion-dollar deal to make an original destination site for Microsoft’s MSN portal, aimed at aggregating celebrity, entertainment and pop culture news, according to several sources.

With the still-unnamed site, MSN plants its own Paris Hilton flag in a very crowded field, which has numerous competitors such as People.com, PerezHilton.com, AOL’s TMZ.com, PopSugar.com and Yahoo’s OMG.

It is also interesting that Microsoft (MSFT), which has focused its efforts of late on its technology, especially related to online advertising and search, is making another foray into the content arena via MSN, where it has had mixed results in the past.

Read more here (from All Things Digital).  But returning to ReadWriteWeb, Bernard Lunn offers a way for the future:

Here is my take on which road the big social networking sites could take:

1. MySpace could potentially get away with the walled garden approach for a pretty large mainstream market, using music as the fundamental draw and later leading into other arts and entertainment. This makes MySpace less age-dependent than Facebook. Everybody loves music, art and entertainment, from pre-schoolers on up to grandparents. News Corp. is a media company through and through, so this route is in their DNA.
2. Facebook will have to become a utility for the world or a niche walled garden for college kids. Their DNA is too young to predict which way they will go. Both are viable, but neither will justify a $15 billion valuation, so they won't make this decision until new management steps in following a crisis. They cannot become a walled garden for the world, because their core community - college kids - will move into the world of work where they have to communicate in the wider world of the Internet. Once they have left college, their only connection to each other is as alumni and that ends up being a relatively weak connection as we grow older (despite what every generation believes when they are at college).
3. LinkedIn has a shot at becoming a mainstream, but work-centric, walled garden since the working world is constrained enough and follows well-defined conventions. LinkedIn is the network I use regularly and I have written about it before many times. They have now reached the stage where if they offered webmail that was as good as Gmail (and obviously as open as any standard webmail), it could become the default hangout for biz types. "Suits" could gradually stop talking about "living in Outlook" and talk about "living in LinkedIn." Add in some simple RSS-based startpage-like functionality and LinkedIn would be the place to start and end the workday. Biz people will pay a reasonable subscription fee - say less than $100 a year - for a package like that without any advertising. That is a bit of a stretch from where LinkedIn is today, but fundamentally viable in my opinion.

Clearly, any venture that succeeds in building a mainstream walled garden will become hugely valuable. They will effectively become the Internet for millions, which might even justify a $15 billion type valuation. The problem is that it is a very, very hard road to navigate successfully.

The mass-market utility model could also be hugely valuable at scale. My simplest description of this would be "social graph + communication tools." The communication tools could be email, SMS, VOIP, poking, walls, vampires, whatever turns people on. The social graph is the spam controller and way to make connections. The obvious players here are the vendors with big email networks - Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft (GYM). This is the background story to all the M&A "sturm und drang."

The one company that most needs to make this strategic decision - Facebook - is the one that is most constrained by that paper valuation of $15 billion. Neither route - niche walled garden for college kids or mass-market utility going up against GYM - will justify $15 billion. So they have to pretend that mass-market walled garden is viable, even though nobody believes that anymore. That is one nasty dilemma. Do you think Microsoft knew that they were giving Facebook that nasty dilemma when they agreed to a $15 billion valuation? Gates and Ballmer are smart enough, in my humble opinion.

The mass-market utility model will win out in the end for 3 reasons:

1. The social graph is so closely linked to communications, which has always been a utility model.
2. The ownership issues around the social graph are murky. A utility skates past that problem, saying "you own, we manage." AT&T does not own your Rolodex, or insert ads when you are calling Mom because they own your connection to Mom.
3. The social graph has to be monetized in creative ways and the best way to make that happen is make it available to all the entrepreneurs and established businesses, on clear and simple terms.

The mass-market utility model will work through an API. That sounds similar to what is already out there, but with one big difference. The current APIs are all about getting your apps INTO a walled garden, or two or three walled gardens. The utility API will be about accessing the social graph, getting the social graph OUT of the utility and into your application, for some pre-defined cost. What you do after that is entirely up to you.

Read more here.

Apparently I'm an attention-seeking extrovert

Australian social networking expert Laurel Papworth analyses social networking profiles for News.com.au:

IF you're changing your Facebook status every five minutes there is a good chance the only thing people will notice is that you're an attention-seeking extrovert.

Social networking analyst Laurel Papworth says there are hidden messages behind the overt displays of self-promotion on websites like Facebook or MySpace.

Status updates can show if someone is an extrovert or fishing for sympathy, she claims.

"The extrovert, they are always going to be updating because the world revolves around them and one can assume that means the world needs to know how they are feeling from minute to minute," Ms Papworth told NEWS.com.au.

"There's a lot of passive-aggressive behaviour in social networks and some interesting statuses — I'm mad at my boss, I'm mad at my mum, my teacher.

"We're expecting our good friends to come and commiserate and give presents on our page or leave comments on our page presumably in support of our emotional state."

Read more here.

Facebook overtakes MySpace in Australia

Ben Shepherd is reporting that Facebook now has more Australian users than MySpace:

Facebook passes Myspace in AU for first time

April Neilsen numbers are out and Facebook has passed Myspace in terms of usage.

Facebook: 2.646m users
Myspace: 2.623m users

Source: Neilsen Netview, April 2008

Myspace has shed over 380,000 users in the past 5 months.

Read it here.

(Hat tip: hello.com.au.)

Think twice before you sign up for an online service using a fake name or email address

Much has been over the past few days of the decision to indict a Missouri mother on charges connected to the suicide of a 13-year-old MySpace user (see my post here).  However, MSNBC approaches it from a different angle:

Think twice before you sign up for an online service using a fake name or e-mail address. You could be committing a federal crime.

Federal prosecutors turned to a novel interpretation of computer hacking law to indict a Missouri mother on charges connected to the suicide of a 13-year-old MySpace user.

Prosecutors alleged that by helping create a MySpace account in the name of someone who didn't exist, Lori Drew, 49, violated the News Corp.-owned site's terms of service and thus illegally accessed protected computers.

Legal experts warned Friday that such an interpretation could criminalize routine behavior on the Internet. After all, people regularly create accounts or post information under aliases for many legitimate reasons, including parody, spam avoidance and a desire to maintain their anonymity or privacy online or that of a child.

This new interpretation also gives a business contract the force of a law: Violations of a Web site's user agreement could now lead to criminal sanction, not just civil lawsuits or ejection from a site.

"I think the danger of applying a statute in this way is that it could have unintended consequences," said John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor who leads a MySpace-convened task force on Internet safety.

"An application of a general statute like this might result in chilling a great deal of online speech and other freedom."

Read it here.

The social networking chase

Do you ever feel as though you are being chased in the social networking wars?

(Hat tip: Ross Hill.)

ID fraud on social networking sites

The Age has a detailed look at identity fraud in social networking sites:

IT'S what makes you unique among the Earth's 6.65 billion humans - your identity. Your name, your date of birth, where you live, who you barrack for, even your pet's name - private details now so easily made public on social networking sites that attract 500 million users around the world.

To an identity thief, these personal details are all they need to flesh out a fake ID that can let them clean out your bank account or set up a false credit card, loan, welfare payments or even a passport.

With 200,000 Australians now on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo every day, security experts and consumer groups are predicting this year will be a bumper one for ID fraud.

Security software company Symantec's global internet security report for the last six months of 2007 shows malicious attacks are now focused on trusted websites putting the attackers in our midst.

"We used to tell people not to go down the dark alleys of the internet, but that doesn't apply today," Symantec Australia chief Craig Scroggie says. "It's not the back alleys, it's the main roads like the social networking sites where the attackers are actively seeking us out."

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Where it's happening is the most significant twist, with the latest data showing that trusted sites such as Facebook and Second Life are being infiltrated to strip individuals of their personal information.

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The BBC's Watchdog program recently uncovered that murky truth with a Facebook experiment using a fictional character called Amba Friend. Watchdog set up a Facebook account for her and sent out messages to 100 random Facebook users asking them to be her friend. Of those, 35 strangers said yes, including 23-year-old Scott Gould. Watchdog used the personal details on Mr Gould's profile, including his date of birth, to apply for an online bank account and credit card in his name. Both were instantly approved.

Software security provider Sophos followed suit, fabricating a character called Freddi Staur, who lured 82 users into handing over their personal details, including their phone numbers.

A spokesman for the Australian Consumer Association Choice, Christopher Zinn, says there is a false sense of security online that leads people to behave more recklessly than they would in the real world.

"Would people stick personal details like pictures of themselves growing up on a lamppost outside their house or on a public bulletin board in the supermarket?" he asks.

"The exuberance and the excitement that these sites generate tend to work against the cautions. But once you give those details out, you've lost control of them forever."

Digital strategist and researcher Julian Cole did his thesis on the way young people use social networking. He says security just doesn't concern them.

"This generation is much more forward in the information they're giving over to sites like Facebook," he says. "There's no reservation in revealing date of birth, schools, football teams, even mobile phone numbers. They don't have that worry about security."

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The Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis says "it is likely that individuals posting information on social networking sites would be exempt from the coverage of the Privacy Act" as the act doesn't extend to individuals or organisations based overseas such as Facebook and MySpace.

In his recent report on identity crime, Federal Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus pushed for new laws against identity theft, including victim certificates issued by the courts to help undo damage done by identity thieves.

Only in South Australia and Queensland is it an offence to assume or steal another person's identity. By comparison, identity theft is a federal crime in the US with penalties of up to 15 years' jail and fines of $250,000.

AUSTRALIAN Privacy Foundation chairman Roger Clarke says that beyond companies and criminals, there's also reckless behaviour coming from individuals using social networking sites.

"We've always assumed fraud was a threat in big organisations," he says. "Now we've reached the stage where individuals are a threat to one another in handling data like disclosing photos of someone off their brain, which a boss might see before a job offer."

But Mr Clarke argues stricter laws aren't the answer.

"When somebody uses a social networking site, it's a consent-based arrangement," he says. "What we don't want to do is wreck the balance between freedom and protection."

Ultimately, he believes web users might find their own solutions. "As we get a bigger pile up of embarrassment and significant loss, we'll see a lot more use of pseudonyms, like spelling your first name in an interesting way, so that only your 'group' knows who you are."

Read more here.

MySpace crimes

Two interesting pieces of news to note relating to people using MySpace for criminal purposes.  The first, is a ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Doe v. MySpace Inc that predictably held that MySpace is immune under s 230 of the Communications Decency Act from a lawsuit over the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl by a man she met on the site.  As Howard Bashman amusingly notes at How Appealing footnote one in the ruling helpfully explains that:

The term 'blog' is a portmanteau of 'Web log' and is a term referring to an online journal or diary.

The second is a post from Brett Trout at Blawg IT on the case of Missouri Mother Lori Drew who allegedly used MySpace to cause the suicide of her 16-year old neighbor Megan Meier.  This week a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Drew on one count of conspiracy and three counts of unauthorized access of protected computers to intentionally inflict emotional distress upon Meier:

Los Angeles federal prosecutors allege that back in 2006, Drew created a MySpace page for a fictitious 16-year old boy named "Josh." Drew allegedly used the MySpace account  to send numerous messages to Meier. After initially befriending Meier, "Josh" ended the relationship with a message indicating the world be a better place without Meier. Meier killed herself that same day.

After state and federal prosecutors in Missouri refused to take any action against Drew, attorneys representing the Cyber and Intellectual Property Crimes Section of the U.S. Attorneys Office in MySpace’s hometown of Los Angeles brought the indictment against Drew. As reported by Wired, federal authorities have granted alleged co-conspirator, 19-year old Ashley Grills, immunity in return for her cooperation with the investigation. If convicted on all counts, Drew could be sentenced to up to 20 years in federal prison.

The laws being enforced against Drew were originally enacted to deter and punish computer hackers. It is important to note however, that despite any underlying legislative intent, there is nothing to prevent authorities from asserting these new laws against social networkers. Even though it is unlikely that even your most offensive social networking activities amount to what federal prosecutors allege took place in the Drew case, this case should sound as a warning call to all social networkers to double check how their actions might be perceived by others. Every social networker should double-check that none of their social networking activities might be construed as deceptive, fraudulent or harassing.

Most importantly, if you suspect your child may be the victim of a cyberbully, take action immediately. For more information on how to address cyberbullying, click here for my previous post on the subject. As the Drew case demonstrates, unchecked social networking can lead to much worse things than federal prison.

Read more here.  The Wall Street Journal Law Blog also comments on the legal merits of the case:

Was Lori Drew surprised to learn that she committed a federal crime when she signed on to a social networking site using a fictitious identity? We wondered that today while reading an indictment that charges Drew — a 49 year-old resident of Missouri who registered on MySpace as “Josh Evans,” a 16 year-old boy — with violating 18 U.S.C. Section §1030, a broad statute that criminalizes computer fraud.

The backstory: As detailed in this January New Yorker article and today’s indictment, Drew — under the guise of “Josh” — struck up a flirtatious online relationship with Megan Meier, a 13-year old MySpace member, that lasted for several weeks. According to the indictment, “Josh” told Megan she was “sexi” and made other sexually suggestive overtures. Then, “Josh” told Megan he was moving away and that the world would be a better place without her. After “Josh” broke off the relationship, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom.

Here, the theory of the case seems to be that when Drew registered on MySpace she agreed to certain terms of service that required her to, among other things, provide “truthful and accurate registration information” and “refrain from promoting information that” she knew was “false or misleading.” For violating the terms of service, the feds have charged her with conspiracy to access MySpace without authorization.

“A very sympathetic set of facts,” concedes Orin Kerr, a cyberlaw prof at George Washington. “But highly dubious; a weak legal argument.” Kerr, who says he’s considering making an offer to represent Drew, told the Law Blog that there are two problems with the legal theory. First, the statute requires a conspiracy to intentionally access the site without authorization, and there’s no evidence that Drew read or knew the terms of service. Second, it needs to be a conspiracy to obtain information, and this was not. “It was a conspiracy to harass,” said Kerr, “but that’s not what the statute is about.”

He added: “It’s a dangerous theory because terms of service are violated so often, and that means there’s a choice courts must face: maybe any violation of any terms of service is a federal crime; maybe no violations are a crime; or maybe some violations are a crime. If a court allows it, then it means that if the government is looking for a criminal charge against someone, they just need to show someone violated a term of service. Do I expect the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to allow it? No.”

Read more here.

Social networking annoyances

PC World has put together a list of the top ten social networking annoyances.  These are some of them:

The same question people used to ask about PCs can be asked of social networks: Were our lives easier or harder, better or worse, simpler or more complex, before they came around? The answer is yes. For some folks, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace seem nearly as indispensable as e-mail, but creating and maintaining these virtual circles of friends turns out to be quite a bit of work, often necessarily so. Here are the ten things that bug me most about today's social networking services.

10. MySpace Kitsch

Unlike Facebook, which adheres to a relatively rigid blue-on-white, three-column design, MySpace lets you decorate your page with background images, themes, and unconventional layouts. That flexibility provides just enough rope for many MySpacers, and the results range from ugly to completely unreadable. Some MySpace pages are so poorly designed that they can crash the hardiest browser--and this alone has caused many social networkers to flee the aesthetic chaos of MySpace for the relative calm of Facebook. Thankfully, some enterprising script authors have come up with scripts that tone down the MySpace bling and clutter: One of my favorite MySpace scripts puts a button on the screen that turns custom page styles on and off with a single click.

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8. LinkedIn Is UpTight

Almost anything goes on MySpace, but not so on LinkedIn, where the strictly-business motif discourages personal expression outside of a photo (a fairly recent innovation), a status line, and standard résumé entries. Sure, the whole point of LinkedIn is to put your most professional foot forward, but really, LinkedIn, couldn't we loosen the necktie just a little? LinkedIn may never support psychedelic backdrops or party photos, but it could do a lot more to help you project something more than an utterly antiseptic persona.

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2. Zombies, Pirates, and Other Pointless Facebook Applications

Facebook applications allow my friends to share their movie tastes, opinions, news picks, and other items with me, but accepting these tidbits requires me to install each corresponding app in my own profile (at which point it has access to my personal information). One app informs me that a friend has just urinated on me, poked me, or vampire-bit me. An alarming number of my female friends want me to know them by their stripper names. Why my friends devote so much time to these curious little apps I haven't figured out, but I know that cumulatively they've begun to demand way too much of my time.

To make matters worse, Facebook applications promote themselves, too, trying to get in touch, and even peppering me with spam. If you're encountering the same thing, you can fight back. To make silly apps go away, open the application invitation and click on the Block [application name] link in the bottom-right part of the window. Or, you can banish all applications from your Facebook experience by installing the Facebook custom app hider Greasemonkey script.

1. Multiple Social Network Syndrome (MSNS)

With the advent of social networking, my e-mail traffic has gotten worse, not better. Here's an e-mail telling me that my brother has sent an e-mail within Facebook. Another message informs me that Susie has updated her profile at Friendster. Another announces that Bob over at FriendNet has just brushed his teeth. Another proclaims that Dave has written the latest installment of his ingenious blog at MySpace. Somebody at Facebook has just poked me. Someone else has bought some new bling. And on and on and on. To reply or act on any of these events, I'll have to bring up one of the 12 social networks I've been sucked into joining, log in, and then view the ads there. All of that, of course, necessitates a lot of extra clicks and keystrokes, and after a while, I find that I don't really like my friends anymore.

The major social networking sites are very aware of such frustrations, and are taking steps to increase their ability to interact with one another. MySpace recently announced that it will let its users push their bio information out to other sites such as eBay, Photobucket, Twitter, and Yahoo. Not to be outdone, Facebook has announced its own plans to do the same thing with partner sites.

That's all good, but I'm not holding my breath for the day when I can share data and content directly between my MySpace account and my Facebook account. Still, it's a positive sign that the big players are acknowledging that social networking is about bringing folks together online, not confining them inside large walled gardens.

Read the full list here.

Online alter egos

The Washington Post explains the rise of online alter egos on sites like Facebook and MySpace:

Since joining Facebook and MySpace two years ago, Luke Mitchell has amassed 476 friends, mostly buddies from high school and college. It was a great way to keep in touch, until his boss showed up on the sites and saw the embarrassing party pictures a friend posted.

He deleted his profiles on both social networks and started a new one on Facebook under a different name, only letting his closest friends know how to find him. An alter ego was born.

"All of the sudden I felt completely exposed," said Mitchell, a 22-year-old financial analyst in the District. "It was fine when I was in school, but I just started my first job. I can't be out there like that."

Other people in their 20s and even teenagers are doing the same, assuming online aliases on such sites as Facebook and MySpace to avoid the prying eyes of parents, college recruiters, potential employers and other overly interested strangers. They are also being more selective in who they allow in as "friends" by paring back the size of their social circles.

Social networks, which let members share photos, videos and intimate details about themselves and their friends, have pushed the boundaries of how people view their personal space. Now, the younger generations that used to embrace the voyeuristic qualities of the Web are considering the advantages of borders between their public and private lives.

In person, people tend to adapt their behavior to the situation -- talking to a co-worker requires different language and attitude than what's comfortable with a college friend. On social networks, everyone's in on the same conversation.

Not only that, an indiscreet comment in a face-to-face exchange can be regretted and forgotten. Online, it can live for years, providing personal details to potential bosses and marketers.

"For the first time in history, we can't tailor our image for our specific goals," said Mark R. Leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. "When we have to create an all-purpose social history, how do people juggle competing audiences?"

Modifying online personalities in search of more privacy "is a natural evolution in our relationship with these technologies," said Mary Madden, senior research specialist with the Pew Internet & American Life Project, who has studied privacy issues among teens on social networks. "There's a bigger pool of people to think about now. Networks we initially considered to be curated and private can start to feel very public."

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The different cultures of Facebook and MySpace, the two largest U.S. social networks, have influenced the actions some members take to ensure privacy, said Catherine Dwyer, a lecturer at Pace University who has studied trust and privacy concerns on the sites. Facebook started exclusively for college students and therefore created a greater sense of trust among members than MySpace, which took a more open-door approach, she said. Now that Facebook is also open to anyone with an e-mail address, people are starting to pull back a bit. Her research conducted last year showed that nearly all of Facebook's 70 million members use their real names, while less than half of MySpace's 110 million members use theirs.

Read more here.

Teachers go wild

The Washington Post presents a dilemma for young school teachers:

It's almost like Googling someone: Log on to Facebook. Join the Washington, D.C., network. Search the Web site for your favorite school system. And then watch the public profiles of 20-something teachers unfurl like gift wrap on the screen, revealing a sense of humor that can be overtly sarcastic or unintentionally unprofessional -- or both.

One Montgomery County special education teacher displayed a poster that depicts talking sperm and invokes a slang term for oral sex. One woman who identified herself as a Prince William County kindergarten teacher posted a satiric shampoo commercial with a half-naked man having an orgasm in the shower. A D.C. public schools educator offered this tip on her page: "Teaching in DCPS -- Lesson #1: Don't smoke crack while pregnant."

Just to be clear, these are not teenagers, the typical Internet scofflaws and sources of ceaseless discussion about cyber-bullying, sexual predators and so on. These are adults, many in their 20s, who are behaving, for the most part, like young adults.

But the crudeness of some Facebook or MySpace teacher profiles, which are far, far away from sanitized Web sites ending in ".edu," prompts questions emblematic of our times: Do the risque pages matter if teacher performance is not hindered and if students, parents and school officials don't see them? At what point are these young teachers judged by the standards for public officials?

In states including Florida, Colorado, Tennessee and Massachusetts, teachers have been removed or suspended for MySpace postings, and some teachers unions have begun warning members about racy personal Web sites. But as Facebook, with 70 million members, and other social networking sites continue to grow, scrutiny will no doubt spread locally.

The annals of teachers-gone-wild-on-the-Web include once-anonymous people who've done something outlandish with a blog or online video. Many people, especially in the Richmond area, remember high school art teacher Stephen Murmer, fired last year for painting canvasses with his buttocks in images on YouTube.

Of course, many of the tens of thousands of Washington area teachers put social networking sites or personal Web pages to constructive uses. Others push the limits.

Read more here.  This also arguably applies to university/college lecturers/professors as well.  I know I'm always very cautious about anything that is posted by me or others to any of my (far too numerous) social networking profiles.  At times I do feel a little restrained by this, but on the other hand it seems a small price to pay for the privilege of having such a wonderful job. 

Are you my friend?

The Washington Post has a fascinating piece on friendship in the age of social networking:

Shadee Malaklou has lots of friends. A whole lot -- 1,295, according to her latest Facebook count. But whom exactly can she count on?

Malaklou, 22, acknowledges that if she ran into some of her "friends" on the street, she might not remember their names. When she went to Duke, where "I was quote unquote popular," social life was so competitive that sometimes invitations were based only on online determinations of how hot a person was, and whether her "friends" were cool.

Now that she is working at a Washington nonprofit, Malaklou is planning on pruning her "friends" as a rite of spring cleaning, defriending people who have come to mean little to her.

She does stay Facebook friends, however, with professors who might be good for letters of recommendation to graduate school. "The biggest value-added is that it helps maintain relationships -- somewhat superficial but not worth getting rid of," she says.

The word "friend" has long covered a broad range of relationships -- roommates, army buddies, pals from the last law firm, old neighbors, teammates, people you used to smoke dope with in back of your high school, people you see once a year at the Gold Cup, scuba instructors and carpool members, along with fellow gun collectors, Britney fans and cancer victims. The Oxford English Dictionary traces "freondum" back to "Beowulf" in 1018, and "to be frended" to 1387.

But MySpace and all the hundreds of other social networking Web sites, from Flickr to Twitter to Bebo, have caused us to think afresh about the boundaries and intensities of these relationships.

Never before in history has it been so easy to keep up with so many people with whom you otherwise would have lost contact. These new electronic meshes are more than mere improvements over alumni magazines, holiday cards with pictures of families and those horrible letters about their lives, Rolodexes, yearbooks, organizational newsletters, and birth and death notices in the newspaper.

Summer friendships, for example, have been transformed. The ritual of meeting again at the beach after a long winter was once marked by hours of catching up. Not today. Networked people who haven't seen each other in forever already know about the new boyfriend, and what happened to the old one -- in very great detail. They also know about the old school and the new job. They have known, every day, no matter where in the world they roamed, the instant that emotional change occurred. Now, after the initial squeals and swaying hugs, conversations pick up in mid-sentence. It's a mind-meld uncanny to watch.

This is a world of "participatory surveillance," says Anders Albrechtslund of Denmark's Aalborg University in the online journal First Monday.

Real online friends watch over each other -- mutually, voluntarily and enthusiastically, in ways that can be endearing.

Others have referred to it as "empowering exhibitionism," Albrechtslund says.

Call it Friends Next.

Read more here.

MySpace love

Declan McCullagh, in a blog post at The Iconoclast, a CNET News.com blog, highlights a very sensible judicial decision from New York:

The annals of history are replete with examples of teenage angst and unrequited love. It took the state of New York to make those a crime.

State prosecutors decided to charge Isaiah Rodriguez, 18, of aggravated harassment and endangering the welfare of a child over a series of MySpace.com messages professing his ardent devotion to a 14-year-old girl.

The messages said, in part: "I love you;" "we need to be together;" I will see you every day;" and "I will never stop trying to talk to you."

That, according to the solons in the New York state attorney general's office, amounts to a violation of Section 240.30 of the state penal code. It says: "A person is guilty of aggravated harassment in the second degree when, with intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm another person...causes a communication to be initiated by...electronic means...in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm."

Fortunately, the New York City criminal court thought otherwise. In a ruling on April 4, Judge Michael Gerstein in Brooklyn wrote this, which I've excerpted (thanks to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman for the tip):

The words "we need to be together;" "I will never stop talking to you;" and "I love you" are not threats, but appear to be merely the symptoms of unrequited love--the same hopeless affection that, among countless others, Dante felt for Beatrice; Don Quixote for Dulcinea; Cyrano for Roxane; Quasimodo for Esmeralda; Young Werner for Lotte; Jay Gatsby for Daisy Buchanan; and that Charlie Brown felt for the Little Red Haired Girl. While these romances do not usually end well for the pursuing party, the People have cited neither statute nor case law that might punish the communication of unrequited love, even if such is undesired.

Teenagers are especially vulnerable to the "madness most discreet" that makes sad hours seem long. Mere pages before he met Juliet, Romeo pined for Rosaline; Adrian Mole longed for Pandora Braithwaite in volume after volume of his "secret diaries;" and Dion implored of the skies up above, "why must I be a teenager in love?" vowing, just a few verses later, that "if you should say goodbye, I'd still go on loving you." When teenagers fall in love, as song lyrics and studies show, they are more likely to exhibit almost manic behaviors, take risks, act compulsively, and sometimes pursue, with reckless abandon, the objects of their affection. While the actions of a love-struck teenager may well be foolish, reckless, or otherwise acts which might not be expected from a mature adult, they are not, without more, elevated to crimes.

The allegations in the Complaint merely establish that Defendant declared his feelings for the Complainant. Conversely, the Complaint is devoid of allegations that the Defendant knew his declarations would be coldly received. The alleged messages that form the basis of the charge of Aggravated Harassment were transmitted through Myspace, a social networking website that allows each user to choose which friends will be part of his or her network. When another Myspace user receives an invitation to be friends, he or she must choose whether or not to communicate with the requesting user.  At any time, a Myspace user may remove friends from his or her network, or may block unwanted communications. Thus, while it is reasonable to assume that at some point, Complainant added the Defendant, under his nom de plume"looking 4 the right one in my life," to her list of friends, the Complaint contains no allegations that Complainant attempted to quell Defendant's love by blocking Defendant's messages or by asking him to cease writing her. We therefore find that the Complaint fails to show that the Defendant intended to alarm, threaten or annoy the Defendant.

Although the court didn't go there, another problem is that the state law violates the First Amendment and New York state's constitution. That's because the First Amendment protects even annoying speech--otherwise some overtly political Web sites, let alone sites like Annoy.com, might not even be able to exist.

Read it here.

Censoring your social networks

The Times Online has a disturbing report on a new form internet censorship being proposed in the UK:

Social networking sites will be required to remove material unsuitable for children, such as nude or violent images and comments, within 24 hours of receiving a complaint, under a tough new code for internet safety.

The Byron Review on e-safety, published yesterday, also recommends that search engines such as Google and Yahoo display a “safe search” button prominently on their home page, to filter out potentially harmful material when children search the web.

The report, by the clinical psychologist and writer Tanya Byron, also recommends that websites promoting suicide be closed, using existing laws on assisted suicide. Those that promote self-harm and eating disorders should also come under greater legal scrutiny.

Dr Byron, a mother of two, said yesterday: “Many parents seem to believe that when their child is online it is similar to them watching television. In fact it is more like opening the front door and letting your child go outside to play unsupervised.”

Read more here.

A reminder: Freedom to Differ and social networks

In addition to (or instead of) following this blog by visiting http://www.freedomtodiffer.com/ or reading it in your RSS reader, you can stay up-to-date with this blog from within your preferred social network (well, as long as your preferred social network is Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or Ning).

If you use Facebook, you can follow this blog by becoming a fan of Freedom to Differ and/or by adding the Freedom to Differ application.

If you use Bebo, you can also add a Freedom to Differ application.

Or if you prefer MySpace, you can add a Freedom to Differ widget to your profile.  You can also add that Freedom to Differ widget to your blog or homepage (such as Netvibes or iGoogle).

Finally, I've also created a Freedom to Differ social network on Ning.  This has been designed as a space to connect with other readers of Freedom to Differ.  So if you haven't joined Ning yet, I'd really encourage you to check it out and sign up to the Freedom to Differ network.

Freedom to Differ and social networks

In addition to (or instead of) following this blog by visiting http://www.freedomtodiffer.com/ or reading it in your RSS reader, you can stay up-to-date with this blog from within your preferred social network (well, as long as your preferred social network is Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or Ning).

If you use Facebook, you can follow this blog by becoming a fan of Freedom to Differ and/or by adding the Freedom to Differ application.

If you use Bebo, you can also add a Freedom to Differ application.

Or if you prefer MySpace, you can add a Freedom to Differ widget to your profile.  You can also add that Freedom to Differ widget to your blog or homepage (such as Netvibes or iGoogle).

Finally, I've also created a Freedom to Differ social network on Ning.  This has been designed as a space to connect with other readers of Freedom to Differ.  So if you haven't joined Ning yet, I'd really encourage you to check it out and sign up to the Freedom to Differ network.

"The Professor as Open Book"

The New York Times looks at how university lecturers/professors are using social networks to connect and engage with their students:

IT is not necessary for a student studying multivariable calculus, medieval literature or Roman archaeology to know that the professor on the podium shoots pool, has donned a bunny costume or can’t get enough of Chaka Khan.

Yet professors of all ranks and disciplines are revealing such information on public, national platforms: blogs, Web pages, social networking sites, even campus television.

When scholars were recently given the chance to refute student criticism posted on the Web site RateMyProfessors.com, a cult-hit television series, “Professors Strike Back,” was born. The show, which has professors responding on camera to undergraduate gripes such as “boring beyond belief,” made its debut in October on mtvU, a 24-hour network broadcast to more than 7.5 million students on American college campuses.

“It’s our dominant show driving half of the traffic to mtvU now,” said Stephen Friedman, general manager of the network. “It gets more than our music premieres.”

There was a time when professors did not outrank music premieres on television. They were buttoned-up authority figures, like the legendary fictional Professor Kingsfield, portrayed by John Houseman in “The Paper Chase.” The personal lives of professors could only be imagined from the sparse clues of clothing, handwriting and the contents of offices.

These days, the clues are usually digital and are broad invitations to get to know the person behind the Ph.D. It is not uncommon for professors’ Web pages to include lists of the books they would take to a deserted island, links to their favorite songs from bygone eras, blog posts about their children, entries “written” by their dogs and vacation photographs.

While many professors have rushed to meet the age of social networking, there are some who think it is symptomatic of an unfortunate trend, that a professor’s job today is not just to impart knowledge, but to be an entertainer.

Certainly, professors have embraced the Internet since its earliest days, using it as a scholarly avenue of communication, publication and debate. Now it is common for many to reveal more personal information that has little connection to their work.

...

Nate Ackerman, a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, whose Web page includes information about his wrestling achievements and photos of him with his cats, agreed. “It’s better when your professor’s human,” he said.

Some scholars suggest that the need to present oneself so chummily is indicative of student demands. Sam Gosling, a psychologist and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who has about 300 students on his MySpace page, said there are students today who think professors are not doing their jobs unless they convey information in zany, interactive ways.

It is something he sees reflected in student evaluations and something that anyone can observe on RateMyProfessors, where students critique classes with comments like “bring a pillow.”

...

There are many reasons professors have embraced the Web and other media to reveal more of themselves. Mr. Gosling, whose studies include personality and virtual environments, noted that people are far less formal in all areas of life. “Twenty years ago, many fewer professors would have been wearing jeans and sneakers to work,” he said.

It is also possible, he added, that some professors are doing online what they have long done in their offices: displaying family photos and personal artifacts, decorating with posters, literally keeping their doors open.

Mr. Friedman of mtvU said it is the nature of the age. “I think it’s part of this increased transparency,” he said.

He acknowledged that watching the uninhibited scholars responding to student criticism on “Professors Strike Back” is “almost as if your therapist, who you know nothing about, is going to come and respond.”

“It feels as if they are breaking some kind of wall,” he said.

And yet, in some ways, the online and on-screen chumminess may not cross over beyond those realms. A number of professors said the most disarming thing of all to students is when they encounter a professor not on a Web page, but in the real world.

When a student spotted Mr. Gosling on a street near campus, he said, “She looked at me in, like, horror. Like, ‘Wait a minute, you have a life?’ The idea that I would continue to exist — it was sort of a violation of her expectations.”

Read more here.  I agree that using social networking and other sites is an effective way to humanise the lecturer/professor, but there does need to be limits.  I use my blog, Twitter and a range of social networking sites and am more than happy for my students to connect with me through those sites, but I don't feel that my life is - or should be - a totally open book.  It is for that reason that I am always careful about what I make available on public sites.  For a while I also used to refuse Facebook friend requests from students, but I eventually gave in and accepted friend requests from students.  That said, those students have never been able to see my whole Facebook profile - while I used to give them access to my "Limited Profile", the new Facebook privacy settings have allowed me to have a special "Student" grouping with its own privacy settings.  The reason for granting limited access is not that I have any big secrets I'm trying to hide, it is simply that I don't see any compelling reason for giving students total access to every part of my life.  I find it hard to annunciate any justification for this position, but I nonetheless feel it is appropriate that there are limits as to what I share with my students on these social networking sites.

Hooked on social networks

Troy Wolverton for the San Jose Mercury News explains why he is hooked on social networks:

In January, I received an e-mail through Facebook from a college friend with whom I'd long regretted losing touch.

Last month, as the Mercury News was about to announce layoffs, a contact on LinkedIn alerted me to some job openings at his research firm.

And last week on MySpace, for at least the 16th time in the past three months, I was asked to be friends with a flirtatious young woman - in this case "Stephanie" - who was a front for a porn site.

Ah, the world of social networking. Like the real world, social networking is clearly a mixed bag. After long resisting it, I finally took the plunge about 18 months ago. I worried before joining that social networking was a fad without any real purpose.

   Now I'm convinced it's here to stay. Some sites are not very useful. But I admit it: I'm hooked.

   That said, my experience with various sites has been uneven.

Read more here.

Dupre uncovered

The media has been uncovering details about Ashley Dupre's life (Dupre being the woman who reportedly worked as an escort and whose clients included former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer) through her socialnetworking profiles:

For most people, updating your MySpace or Facebook profile is not news. Sure, it might appear in your news feed on the site, but that's just about as far as the story is likely to travel. For Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the woman who reportedly worked as an escort and whose clients included former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, not only has her social networking become a significant news item, but it's even possible that her life-long dream of becoming a professional singer may turn into a reality as a result of getting caught in the prostitution ring that brought down a New York Governor.

In a CNN article that's been updated on at least one occasion, Mallory Simon details the activity on Dupre's profiles at both MySpace

and Facebook since the time her identity was publicized by the New York Times earlier in the week. According to Simon, "It seemed she was trying to stay one step ahead of journalists, attempting to limit what information they could access."

The damage control was not limited to deleting scantily clad photographs and embarrassing comments from the past but also involved deleting contacts in her network as well. Simon points out that both Facebook and My Space are used by journalists to gleam background information on their subjects and suggests that, "She was seemingly aware that the press would have access to her friends and every word, photo and comment on her profiles, so she began by deleting connections between her friends on Facebook."

In addition to citing the views of two experts on internet privacy, Mallory Simon provides what almost amounts to a play-by-play of Dupre's internet activity stating that "she was staying up all night cleaning up her profile," and outlining the posts she made at both 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. Simon concludes her account by noting that the profiles from both Facebook and MySpace had been deleted by 2:30 p.m. on Thursday but that they "reappeared Friday." It looks like only the MySpace profile is currently active so perhaps Simon is overdue for an update on her investigative profile.

Read more here (from Webware).  However, PDNonline reminds the media that they need to be careful when using photos of Dupre from her profiles:

When a prostitute hired by former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was identified Wednesday, news outlets eagerly published photos grabbed from her MySpace profile.

Can they get away with that?

Three attorneys who specialize in copyright law say media organizations are sailing in dangerous waters if they publish a personal snapshot without permission.

"Whoever took that picture owns that picture," says New York attorney Nancy Wolff. "It's either an infringement or they [the news outlets] have to make a fair use argument."

Wolff says the news organizations probably decided the risk of a lawsuit was low. They also probably considered competitive pressure as other sources published the same photos. "It's a fast business decision," Wolff says.

The fair use argument would be a thin one, attorneys say. Fair use cases consider factors such as whether the image has been transformed and whether publishing the image displaces the market for the image, according to New York attorney Joel Hecker.

In this case, Hecker says, the image was not transformed and it diminishes the market for the image rights.

"If these are the only images available, they might go for thousands and thousands of dollars on licensing," Hecker says. "I think the probability would be that this would not fall under fair use."

Hecker says he would advise a photographer in this situation to contact news agencies and negotiate a fee, and if that fails, to sue.

Read more here.

"Turns Out Social Networks Aren't Breeding Grounds For Sexual Predators"

From Techdirt:

Over the past few years there has been a huge number of grandstanding politicians claiming that social networks like Facebook and MySpace were breeding grounds for online predators, who were trying to entice children. They've been pushing for new laws, basically so they can get into the papers along with some quip about how they are out there protecting "the children." Of course, it turns out that the entire premise is faulty. A few years back we pointed to a study that showed the problem was entirely exaggerated. Very few kids were approached by predators and most who were could easily brush it off, so long as they had been educated about the risks. Now there's a new study out going even deeper in noting that sexual predators are unlikely to pretend to be teenagers using social networks, but rather are very upfront about who they are and what they want. In most cases, the victims knew that they were chatting with an older person, and believed that they were in a legitimate relationship, rather than being tricked. Once again, this suggests that all the hype and new laws being proposed to deal with the "problem" of predators on social networks are misplaced. The focus should be on basic education. Teach kids to have some "internet smarts" and they're probably going to be just fine.

Read it here.

Censoring social networks

The Internet & Democracy group based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School asks who is afraid of the big, bad Facebook?

Although Facebook is probably known more as a threat to productivity stateside, Sacred Facts’s post surveying its censorship in a number of Middle Eastern countries hints that social networking sites may pose a unique and potent threat of democratization to repressive regimes. And given the presence of similar censorship extending to other social networks, it seems at least that the authorities of the censoring nations seem to agree. 

Of course a number of the decisions to censor social networks, as well as to censor Web 2.0 technology more broadly, have been justified solely by the desire to keep out sexually explicit content. But that explanation, perhaps partially true in some instances, does not provide a complete account across the spectrum of censoring states, some of which have been open about targeting political speech.  Nor does “protecting social norms” seem to be a default explanation for users targeted by this censorship.

...

In their new book, Access Denied, the Principal Investigators of the Internet and Democracy project (as well as the Open Net Initiative) Jonathan Zittrain and John G. Palfrey propose a number of possible goals for Internet censorship including, 

o To create barriers to information for its own citizenry;

o To create barriers to communication between citizens within the regime;

o To create barriers to communication between its citizens and the outside world, perhaps to prevent negative information about the regime to spread;

o To send a message that surveillance is occurring;

o To maintain a monopoly of control on “cultural goods”;

o To maintain a monopoly of control over the development of civic society;

Admittedly the prospect that state censors will provide transparent accounts of their conduct or motivation is whimsical. Their goals may span that entire spectrum or may track more closely with a subset of them, and there is minimal incentive to be open. Highlighting acts and possible motivations of censorship help highlight possible paths to support democratization.

Read more here.

Is MySpace good for society?

A special Freakonomics Quorum asks is MySpace good for society?

Two little words — “social networking” — have become a giant buzzphrase over the past couple of years, what with the worldwide march of Facebook and headline-ready stories about Web-assisted suicides. So what’s the net effect of social networking?

We gathered a group of wise people who spend their days thinking about this issue — Martin Baily, Danah Boyd, Steve Chazin, Judith Donath, Nicole Ellison, and William Reader, — and asked them this question:

Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?

Here are their replies.

Read the responses here.

Use of MySpace may violate court order

A judge says use of MySpace may violate a restraining order:

In one of the first rulings of its kind, a Staten Island judge has said that a teenage girl could be charged with violating a restraining order by using MySpace.com to reach out to people she was told not to contact.

The girl, Melisa Fernino, 16, of West Brighton, Staten Island, was charged with three counts of criminal contempt in September after she was accused of sending a MySpace "friend request" to Sandra Delgrosso and her two daughters on August 23. The order was put in place after Fernino made several violent threats against Delgrosso, who had dated her father, and against her two daughters, said a Staten Island official who insisted on anonymity because the case originated in Family Court, where proceedings are private.

On Wednesday, Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. of Staten Island Criminal Court turned down Fernino's request to dismiss the contempt charges, ruling that MySpace was a form of contact just like speaking in person or by telephone and that the order of restraint had barred any sort of contact with the Delgrossos. The judge's decision was reported on Thursday in The Staten Island Advance.

"The defendant should not be exculpated because she, instead of contacting her victims directly, used MySpace," Judge Sciarrino wrote.

 

Read more here (from CNET News.com).

Are you sure Corey Worthington Delaney is Wikipedia worthy?

Last month I blogged about the discussions as to whether the infamous MySpace party teenager Corey Worthington Delaney deserved a Wikipedia entry (see here), and it seems as though the debate is still going:

MELBOURNE teenager Corey Worthington, also known by the surname Delaney, is set to finally get his own page on Wikipedia after an earlier entry was vetoed by users.

A heated debate among the website's contributors over whether or not the 16-year-old party boy deserved his own entry in the user-generated encyclopedia took place last month.

The majority of users who voted argued that the Melbourne teenager was notable only in connection to an event of short-term interest, and thus unsuitable for an entry.

The debate was reignited on Sunday when another page for Corey was made and subsequently nominated for deletion – but this time around, the Corey supporters look set to keep it online.

Contributors in favour of keeping the new entry so far outnumber those who want it removed by 13 votes to 9.

"He's notable according to media all over the world (and has) 245 hits on Google News as Corey Delaney and 171 for Corey Worthington," said user Allstar.

A non-voting contributor said Corey's name had started being used as a reference to irresponsibility and teenage rebellion in Australia and information about the teenager should be available online.

"The name 'Corey Worthington' has entered the media vocabulary as a metaphor, at least in Australia," said user Orlady, quoting two stories from the Sydney Morning Herald.

"People who encounter his name in news stories like these and don't know who he is should expect to be able to look him up in Wikipedia."

User Mattinbgn, who voted to delete the original entry, said that the Corey saga was too trivial for inclusion on the website.

"Once again it is time that Wikipedia decided if it is an encyclopaedia or merely a recorder of mildly amusing but ultimately trivial events," they said.

"If this is kept, I look forward to articles on every dodgy used car salesman, nude wedding, school bully and fad diet that makes tabloid TV shows such as A Current Affair."

A final decision to keep or delete the new entry has not been made.

Read more here (from News.com.au) and see the debate on Wikipedia here.