Hi ya,

A colleague, Dave Schappell, suggested I add your mykro to a list of gen y blogs about philanthropy. Anyway, I saw your post here – and I just wrote about this issue too – although slightly different take –
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/07/what-are-your-t.html

Did you see the article in the HBR about this?

Beth

Funny … my head’s been moving in the opposite direction on this one lately. I’ve seen such value from the publicity of twitter (and blogging (for other people ) that I’m now questioning the value of anything published online that isn’t public (and properly attributed.) I mean really, anything that can’t be publicized could just as well happen f2f or over the phone – both of which are still far better ways to build close relationships than what asynchronous posting to a closed website is. Celebrities have lived like this for decades. The fb audience is just too valuable not to leverage it to increase your social capital.

This takes us back to Granoveter’s strength of weak ties and the fact that fb’s become such a powerful social publishing platform. Logically, the biggest potential to benefit from your fb activity is to open it up (or, as they (fb) would say; use their filters to only hide that small portion of your errr …. photo album that you want to keep a secret.)

Obviously I realize that there are going to be douchebags (yes, I said “douchebags”) who abuse your publicity. But I’d argue that the same thing can happen IRL (and that your IRL “friends” can frankly also screw you tx to fb if they want to.) It’s just that, as with the rest of social media, the benefits to publicity outweigh the costs 99.9999% of the time.

I’m still mulling this over but think there’s a strong argument for opening up your facebook (and starting a scrapbook at home for the photo’s you don’t want on the web.)