The Frassle Publisher and Privacy Options
Frassle developer Shimon Rura is going to be horribly disappointed when he learns this, but I meant to show off the Frassle Publisher during my talk as a “what’s next in blogging” kind of example, but I decided not to because of time constraints. I think I might have had it on the screen momentarily, but that’s it.
I had a number of librarians ask me about blogs with privacy options. Their needs for privacy fall into at least three categories: they don’t want the general public to find and read the blog, they want the blog locked down from others in their organization, and they want to control which posts different clients see.
I knew LiveJournal offers some of these privacy options, so I asked an LJ blogger if LJ could meet the needs of one of the librarians who wants a private blog for a few of her staff members, mostly for scheduling purposes (”Can someone swap with me next Monday?” kind of scheduling). LJ would probably work for what she wants, this blogger told me, because it allows managing editors to establish communities around a blog and give other people privileges to post on that blog. She can make the blog invitation only, too, so it’s closed off from people not associated with the blog. (When I saw her yesterday, I forgot to tell her that. My apologies.)
It might be possible to do a bit with Frassle’s Publisher and privacy. The big problem with this is that any privacy is just an illusion because Frassle doesn’t really offer privacy options at this point in time and Frassle is currently only a Web-based host that’s available to anyone with a Web browser or aggregator. The more information professionals I talk to, the greater I realize the need for privacy on blogs is. If they want these features, many other people in other sectors might have needs for them, too. Blogs in the medical community, for example, could really benefit from privacy options.
One way a librarian could work with Frassle’s Publisher to forge privacy is by establishing pages for clients or groups of clients and not sharing or connecting information about pages to other clients or groups. Using the features to funnel content to different sections of the publisher pages, she can direct what content goes to which page and perhaps, even indirectly, which clients see what. It’s not the optimal solution by any means, but it’s a start. It’s one small way a librarian can control which posts different clients see.
If an intranet edition of Frassle were available, theoretically that would take care of the general public being able to find the blog. At the moment, I have no ideas about locking down the blog from others in Frassle as it currently exists.
