Besides, Facebook is pretty neat on keeping all but your most basic details hidden until your request to be and are approved as somebody’s friend.

Hey, Buddy. If you don’t want your name on search engines – DON’T HAVE A PROFILE. Certainly don’t keep a blog. Us bloggers are all disgusting self publicists.

I think you’re just kicking up a fuss where none is to be found for the sake of it. Having ‘google-stalked’ plenty of ex girlfriends / friends / bosses etc. in past, I can say with certainty that you can keep your web-profile down to a minimum if you so choose.

The choice to be a “public self” on the Net ought not be a binary one defaulted for exposure. The default should be anonymity, with selective disclosure of identity-related data. I believe this is also where David and I agree.

If I get a break from other obligations, I’ll post more on this later.

When will people learn that security through obscurity is not really security? If people don’t want their birthday and favorite books publicly available on the web, they can do what I did – don’t post them on facebook. Pick and choose which Facebook applications you install and groups you join, knowing that others will be able to see your choices. Learn to differentiate junk mail from real mail. I guess I would say that media literacy is the responsibility of the user. And anonymity in online communities can lead to as much abuse as exposed identity, if not more.

As for exposing what large-scale social networking memberships people have – I’d honestly prefer this to be public. If you want to be part of a private Facebook group, you can, by the way — I’ll invite you to join mine and nobody except the members will know you’re in it. What the web has done by letting everyone join the conversation is make everybody into a mini-celebrity. That comes with the good – we have larger audiences for our antics – and the bad – there’s more publicly available information about us and our opinions.

I believe one’s web self is a public self. Those who don’t like it don’t have to participate at all; they can participate anonymously where permitted; or they can identify themselves in smaller, more exclusive subsets of social networks that are specifically designed to meet their privacy needs. Sounds like a great market opportunity.

#18: “Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.”

#63: “De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk to you.”

#93: “We’re both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down.”

Hey, I’m a cynic/critic about a lot of things. I’ve spent as much time as anyone over the last few months trying to design a way for ordinary folks– especially those who don’t have online profiles– report anonymous harassers online. That initiative got barely a percent of the attention that Facebook is getting now.

Facebook is fun. By virtue of its named identities, it’s a lot of fun and there’s none of the trolling and manipulation of the blogosphere.