Social Networking’s Invasion of Privacy Just Got a Whole Lot Messier

Today, computer software giant Microsoft announced that their latest version of MS-Office will integrate seamlessly with Facebook.

Previous versions of the world’s most popular set of applications – which include Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint – have allowed users to connect to LinkedIn using a plug-in called MS-Outlook Social Connector. The latest version of MS-Office not only has this plug-in built directly into the interface, it pulls far more information from Facebook than it did from LinkedIn.

From pulling Facebook photos into MS-Outlook, so now you’ll know what the other person you are emailing looks like, to revealing all their status updates, news feeds, even their wall posts – so you not only know what they like and are up too, but who their friends are, and what their friends like and are up too – all of this – and more is now publicly available to anyone you email using MS-Outlook, or any of the other MS-Office applications.

Cool sounding at first, but then think about all the personal information being shared. Do you really want your boss to see the drunken photos of you that you posted after celebrating your last birthday?

What if you are looking for work – do you want potential employers to see you vent off your frustrations about your current or past employer thanks to having access to your newsfeed and status updates?

Think you are very social network savvy, and you are extremely cautious about what you post on Facebook?

Doesn’t matter – if a friend posts something which you just might not want the whole world to know, too damn bad – because wall posts and news feeds are now shown directly in MS-Outlook.

So that video of you doing an air guitar rendition of Stairway to Heaven in your underwear that your girlfriend posted on her Facebook, could now be playing on a colleagues computer. Worse – that colleague can simply forward the email to everyone in your office so even your coworkers without Facebook accounts will see you dancing in your undies.

Social networking has come a long way in a very short time. It wasn’t all that long ago that unless you actually knew someone personally, you’d never know that person at all.

But thanks to the information powerhouse of the Internet, just type a name into a search engine, and you can see what they look like, who they work for, their kids names, the kind of car they drive, and even some of their silly photos from real-world social activities.

And thanks to Microsoft’s new and more direct integration of Facebook – the most popular social networking site – you don’t even have to search for the information. It’ll just appear right in your MS-Outlook inbox.

Not that social networking is all bad. Knowing more about a client may earn you brownie points and make your job easier.

If you discover that a hard to read client has just come back from a business trip in San Francisco, for example, you could use that as an opening to try and break the ice. Seeing photos of that client, with a beautiful woman wrapped around him while on that trip may prompt you to ask about his wife and their shared experiences on that trip, only to find out, that he didn’t take his wife on that “business” trip.

Uh-oh.

Awkward.

Thanks social networking!

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Texting I’m All Thumbs

You know you’re old when the kid sitting next to you on the park bench is happily typing on her mobile phone with her thumbs as fast as she can talk, meanwhile, you are struggling typing “Hi” using every finger possible.

“How many messages have you sent?” I ask the kid as I continue to struggle with my “thumbing.”

“Fifteen,” she says, not even breaking her concentration as she continues texting.

Even in the office, I am starting to feel like an out dated paper weight, as I watch the new generation on the corporate ladder text their way to the top. In meetings, I see these new young people sitting off on the corner of the table, thumbs moving so fast you can see the motion blur.

“One meeting,” I interrupt.

“Uh?” they scoff.

“May we have one meeting, PLEASE?” I scold, as I sternly tell the new kid in the office to stop texting and pay attention.

That’s another thing – attention spans just don’t exist anymore, everyone under thirty these days seems to pre-occupied with their digital devices.

Evrythn is shortened thse dys. SO even if I were to take away the kid’s BlackBerry, I’d never understand what was on it.

The short forms used for texting help the kid thumb her messages lightening quick, but a side effect is she talks the way she texts, so half the time when you talk to her, you haven’t a clue what she just said.

I wonder if scientists have come up with a long horrible sounding phrase for that condition?

If they aren’t texting a friend, tweeting their latest thought on Twitter, chatting on Facebook, then they are fiddling with their MP3 music player, or they are watching a video on their mobile device, or they are shooting a “pic” to send to their buddies.

With their heads constantly buried in their electronic gadgets, it’s a wonder they can see where they are going.

I swear the new kid never looks up from her BlackBerry.

Whatever happened to the old days, when people used to actually talk to each other face-to-face? Those were the days, when you could actually see how the team was doing, instead of being texted emoticons – punctuation marks combined together to graphically represent emotions.

Since when did :) replace a smile?

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You know you’re old when the kid sitting next to you on the park bench is happily typing on her mobile phone with her thumbs as fast as she can talk, meanwhile, you are struggling typing “Hi” using every finger possible.

“How many messages have you sent?” I ask the kid as I continue to struggle with my “thumbing.”

“Fifteen,” she says, not even breaking her concentration as she continues texting.

Even in the office, I am starting to feel like an out dated paper weight, as I watch the new generation on the corporate ladder text their way to the top. In meetings, I see these new young people sitting off on the corner of the table, thumbs moving so fast you can see the motion blur.

“One meeting,” I interrupt.

“Uh?” they scoff.

“May we have one meeting, PLEASE?” I scold, as I sternly tell the new kid in the office to stop texting and pay attention.

That’s another thing – attention spans just don’t exist anymore, everyone under thirty these days seems to pre-occupied with their digital devices.

Evrythn is shortened thse dys. SO even if I were to take away the kid’s BlackBerry, I’d never understand what was on it.

The short forms used for texting help the kid thumb her messages lightening quick, but a side effect is she talks the way she texts, so half the time when you talk to her, you haven’t a clue what she just said.

I wonder if scientists have come up with a long horrible sounding phrase for that condition?

If they aren’t texting a friend, tweeting their latest thought on Twitter, chatting on Facebook, then they are fiddling with their MP3 music player, or they are watching a video on their mobile device, or they are shooting a “pic” to send to their buddies.

With their heads constantly buried in their electronic gadgets, it’s a wonder they can see where they are going.

I swear the new kid never looks up from her BlackBerry.

Whatever happened to the old days, when people used to actually talk to each other face-to-face? Those were the days, when you could actually see how the team was doing, instead of being texted emoticons – punctuation marks combined together to graphically represent emotions.

Since when did :) replace a smile?

We're Back!

Welcome to 2010!

Jordan's Daily -- Almost! took a bit of a breather over the holidays. We all need a break, even us nutty newsie muckrackers.

But we are back in full swing, covering hot topics in current affairs from a straight, no bull point of view. We'll keep you in the know about what is really going on around you, in plain English, and with lots of analysis breaking the news into bite-sized pieces for easy digestion.

From the latest in American, European and Canadian politics, to cool high-tech gadgets, gizmos and the wonders of the cosmos, to right here down on planet Earth, we'll give you glimpses into your world just not available in the traditional news media.

Last year, Jordan's Daily -- Almost! grew -- thanks to you, our loyal readers. We added new widgets to apply keywords and related articles automatically to all our posts, giving you even more sources for related information. We redesigned the layout to make this thing easier on your web-soaked eyes. And we were even ranked number one international political blog, and we're constantly in the top 500 of the most active Twitter posters in our hometown of Toronto, Canada.

We'll make more changes, and possibly bring home some more awards in 2010 -- but the main focus of this place isn't to be best in some ranking sites' eyes -- we want to be the best in YOUR eyes. The eyes of our readers.

We'll continue to tackle the issues from an easy-to-understand, no bull perspective. And we'll continue to listen to you, our dedicated readers, for story ideas, opinions, and more, to make this place the best it can be for you.

We always welcome your thoughts, ideas, rants and raves. Email us directly at jordansdaily@columnist.com, join us and debate the issues on our Facebook fan site, and keep current on the latest by following @jordansdaily on Twitter.

To the hundreds of regular readers, to the 25 or so that stop in on a semi-regular basis just to poke around and see what's new, to those newbies that just managed to land here while surfing the net -- t h a n k y o u for reading Jordan's Daily -- Almost!

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Married Flirts Cheat While Social Networking

Regular readers of this blog no doubt follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

These social networking sites provide an invaluable way for people to stay current with their family, friends, business contacts, and personal interests.

I started using Twitter and Facebook earlier this year to prom

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

ote this blog. It is interesting to reflect on these social networking sites every so often, to see how they actually work.

Interesting study came out recently claiming there is a direct link between economic status and social network. The wealthiest and most prosperous of us are on LinkedIn, while those raking in the least amount of income use Myspace.
Facebook and Twitter were used by everyone else. Maybe it is about time I joined LinkedIn . . .

Regardless of what you make and what social networking sites you use, I’ve noticed an interesting, sad, but not surprising phenomenon on these social networking sites.

People use them to escape their personal problems – specifically, people in relationships engage in extremely flirtatious, if not downright sexually suggestive and borderline cheating, types of behavior.

To steal a phrase from American President Barack Obama – let us be clear – many use social networking sites to cheat on their partner.

While on Twitter and to a lesser extent Facebook, many married women, some with kids, and some married to the same person for decades – will flirt directly with me – and other men. Naturally, many of these men – most of whom are also married, with kids, and in long-term relationships – will flirt back. I see the messages go back and forth – it’s hard NOT to read some of the highly sexually suggestive posts which appear almost immediately after the person typed them.

Image via CrunchBase

There are many people using these social networking sites like me, who aren’t married – but for those who are – which is the majority of those engaging in this form of online cheating – WOW – get a room!

I’ve seen “tweets” (instant posts on Twitter) about every sort of sexual activity imaginable – usually between two or more people who are married to anyone NOT present in the online dialogue.

Many women have sent me direct tweets, highly suggestive in nature – some directly outright telling me what they’d like to do with me. Going through my records – remember, whatever you post online, stays online forever – I’ve calculated about 75 percent of these flirtatious posts originated from married women, and more than half of those have one or more children – 64 percent to be precise.

I’m not a bad looking dude, though I’m certainly no Adonis – but out of the 150 tweets directly sent to me on average per day -- combining @jordansdaily and Direct Messages (DMs) – 75 of these are flirtatious messages from married women.

Now to be fair, I’m a professional writer that also happens to be somewhat zany, and highly imaginative. So at first when I started getting these messages, I’d send off some equally suggestive, wild post, which couldn’t ever possibly happen. I’d go off on a tangent, making insanely crazy stuff up as I went – I wa

Image via CrunchBase

s just joking around, letting my creative imagination take me and my online readers on a mental journey.

Little did I know I was fueling the fire of the sad, the lonely, and the desperate.

I check my online social networking sites every day, trying to limit my online stay to about an hour. Aside from spending all day at work sitting in front of a computer as reason enough to not want to spend all my free time at home sitting in front of one, psychologists and addiction experts tell us that an hour a day is more than enough time to enjoy the hobby, without it negatively impacting your life – and becoming a true addiction.

However, whenever I happen to check these online sites – again specifically Twitter – there these married women are. For those not on Twitter, the second you send out a response to someone, unless it is a private Direct Message (DM), everyone who is following you sees the response. Just like email, I go onto Twitter to respond to my messages, and in so doing, inadvertently alert all those married flirts that I’m online.

Literally within five-minutes or less of responding to just one or two tweets, on average I receive about five to ten new tweets from these married women.
Often I respond only somewhat joking – “you still here, you never leave” – because truthfully, some of them never have.
The online world provides an escape, a virtual world where they can forget about whatever is wrong in their real lives, and play with real people, who aren’t real to them. They get so involved in this artificial online world, it becomes the only world they want to be a part of, and so they avoid the real world at all costs.

Some of these women make no bones about their cheating ways – though they probably would never consider this cheating.

One brags about sending these flirtatious tweets while lying in bed, right next to her husband – she sends these messages from her mobile phone. She does this every night. Why her husband never asks her why she’s always texting from bed every night, or who with, probably indicates only part of the problem.

Another woman tells me she’s in the car, while her hubby drives. Another woman tells me she tweets from the kitchen on her laptop, while the husband watches his sports in the living room: “he’ll never get up, not until half-time,” she boasts as she discreetly hides in her kitchen.

If it’s not cheating, why hide? There shouldn’t be any guilt if you aren’t doing anything wrong. Though some of these women are tweeting while their husbands are right next to them – maybe they are flirting with other women online too?

These poor sad, lonely and desperate women. They really must be all of these things – and many more – else why would they seek out sexual attention from complete strangers, often while their husbands are right next to them?

If I was involved with someone and had urges to seek out others for intellectual, sexual, physical or other needs, I’d have a discussion with my partner – or just end the relationship.

It isn’t fair to the other person to constantly spend time away from that person, giving all the attention you should be more than interested in sharing with the person you are married too – instead of some stranger in another country, in some virtual online social networking site, who is really there online, but not really there in the real world. And being there in the real world is what really matters – no matter how popular social networking becomes.

Social networking sites are great for many things. Networking with colleagues, sharing your thoughts, opinions and ideas about the world (such as this blog), learning about new and interesting developments in the world around you, and even making new friends who may become great friends if you actually take the time to meet in the real world.

But social networking sites are also great at distracting us from our problems. They create virtual worlds where we can seemingly interact with others in ways we crave from those in our real lives, but just aren’t getting. And that’s really too bad, because it doesn’t solve the problems we have in the real world – it just makes them harder to confront and deal with.

And dealing with our issues in the real world is the only real way to solve them.

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Social Networking Or Socially Absent?

A couple of months ago I launched a new project to drive more readers to this blog. I re-designed the site, added some rich media content, and ventured into the world of social networking.

It wasn’t all that long ago, where the term “networking” either meant a series of computers linked together, or in a more social context, “networking” was getting out to business-related functions to hob-knob with colleagues in your field or work sector.

Back then, networking was limited to professionals, usually involved wearing suits and ties to bland corporate functions, and having to endure h

Image by dpwolf via Flickr

ours of meaningless small talk just to get a business card so you could call them later from the office and really talk shop.

These days, everyone is on the social networking bandwagon - from kidsbarely out of diapers, to seniors looking for their next bingo hall run, and everyone in between.

Social networking is the act of surfing the web for sites which connect you to other people with similar interests, hobbies, employment, or histories. These websites are online communities, where you can share your thoughts, pictures, videos and just about anything else you want too - with complete strangers. The most common social networking sites are Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.

Prior to trying to tap into the social networks for expansion of this blog, I already used Facebook - it is kind of cool to reconnect with people from your pa

Image via CrunchBase

st, and to keep in touch with others far away. Though I try to keep my Facebook time limited to no more than an hour a day, as it can prove quite addictive - with the ability to chat, play games, or even just poking someone, it can be quite a time sink.

Little did I realize just how much of a time sink social networking could be. I created a Facebook Fan site, joined Twitter, and started using Digg and StumbledUpon to drive readers to this blog.

Previously, to all my new social networking, when I posted a blog, it would take no more than 30-minutes. I could write the thing in about 20-minutes, proof it in about five, and then post it and do one final proof-read in another five-minutes or less.

Image via CrunchBase

Now that I’m using various social networking sites, posting a blog takes over an hour! I still only need about 25-minutes in total to write and proof-read my work, but then it takes forever to market the thing online.

Not that I mind - social networking is very social, which makes it fun. But it is too easy to get caught up in all the social activity. From chatting with strangers about whatever the current topics are, to just finding someone interesting to follow, to trying to make sure you have a good ratio of friends and followers, to filtering out “bots” which just want to sell you crap you don’t need . . .

WHERE DO PEOPLE GET THE TIME FOR ALL OF THIS SOCIAL NETWORKING?

Where indeed?

There are some that seem to live on these social networking sites, they never sleep, eat, and quite possibly have a tube attached to their naughty-bits, so they don’t have to get up to go to the bathroom.

Some people appear to always be on - and I know they aren’t “bots” automatically sending out messages, because I’ve talked with some in real-time, and the conversation was just too real to be a computer algorithm calculating what to send next.

Some of these even have people have multiple accounts on multiple social networking sites, but have many of the same online friends and conversations.

We’ve all heard about the balding middle-aged science fiction computer geek, living in his parent’s basement, spending all of his time online and eating.

Whether that image was ever true, it appears anyone can quickly become a prisoner to the world of online social networking. I’ve encountered men and women that are obviously addicted to the online world - some with high end jobs, and some beautiful women that are probably forever single not because they can’t get a date, but because they never leave their home.

Technology can and does amazing things for humanity. It has closed geographic distances, building a truly global village, as instant communications are now possible with anyone, anywhere in the world at anytime.

But that has also created a technological boogie man of sorts, which allows us to evade and avoid the real world around us, living in the perfect fantasies we create in our online social networks.

Online, it doesn’t matter if you are fit or fat, wealthy or starving poor, have a successful career, or are struggling to find a job. All that you need is a computer, an Internet connection, and a bit of imagination and know-how, and you too can escape reality, and make your own world anyway you want it.

I don’t know about you - but although I enjoy being social online

Image via CrunchBase

, I prefer the real world of life, to that of the artificial world of the web.

Oh I’ll still partake in the online world - it is too pervasive in our culture to avoid, and it has grown readership of this blog, which was the ultimate goal.

However, I don’t want to be that dateless guy, surfing the net and ignoring my real friends in the real world because I’ve become enthralled with some complete stranger that I’ll probably never really meet or really ever know online.

And you never really know - that hot babe halfway ‘round the world that flirts with you online, could very well be your overweight, unemployed next-door neighbor - because anyone can pose as anyone online. Or worse, it could be your boss trying to figure out how far you’ll go online, to see if you’re a normal person with a healthy lifestyle worthy of that promotion, or some sick nut that should actually be let go.

Time to get a life - or at least get back to the life of the living.

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Techno Politicians – A New Breed of Public Servant

Many eons ago, when I was a print reporter, the only way for politicians and other news makers to get their messages out was through their speeches, media events, and staff. It was a love-hate relationship between us reporter-types, and the spin doctors – I mean press secretaries – working alongside the politician.

Everything that comes out of a politician’s mouth is usually scripted. That script has probably been read, and re-read countless times by their staff, to ensure there aren’t any mistakes in the message being delivered.

When you see a politician on television, answering questions live, all their answers are scripted too. They have been briefed by their handlers how to respond to just about every question you or that television reporter could imagine. It is rare these days to catch ‘em off guard.

What has changed is how direct and informal the messages are becoming, thanks to instant micro blogging sites like Twitter.

Twitter is a cool web-based micro blogging site, which allows peop

Image via CrunchBase

le to share very brief one-liner-type statements about anything and everything that pops into their heads. You can even follow this blog on Twitter, by adding @jordansdaily to your own www.Twitter.com feed.

American President Barack Obama uses Twitter, so too does his rival John McCain. The White House has its own Twitter account, which posts pictures and video they capture as they follow the President. Even the Brits are in on the instant online action, you can follow British Prime Minister Gordon Brown by adding @DowningStreet to your Twitter page.

Whether President Obama actually taps out his own “tweets” to send via Twitter on his Blackberry is doubtful. Those messages, as with everything else that comes out of his – and all other politician’s

Image by DavidAll06 via Flickr

offices – is carefully crafted and vetted by the best wordsmiths in the world.

But what is fascinating about this new method of communications is its directness.

Love or hate the news media, one thing journalists do is analyze, discuss and debate the issues. When a politician or other news maker says something, there is usually some sort of discussion, or alternative opinion brought in, to add context to the story, and provide some balance. You may not always agree with those alternative views, but at least they are there for you to think about.

However, when you receive a message in your Twitter feed – or any other live micro blogging site – from a politician or news maker, you are only receiving the information they want you to have. There isn’t anything to counter balance their information with other facts and arguments – all you’re getting is their one-sided version of the story.

It will be interesting over the next few years to see how this new form of instant, direct and non-objective messaging affects world democracies.

Instead of getting all sides of the story from the media, those on the information superhighway may just get the information which they have subscribed too, not even considering the bias, slant or angle that information is taking. Elections of the future may be won or lost by just how well politicians communicate their messages directly to the people, circumventing any potential analysis or debate for those people.

And that could prove dangerous for democracy, as the discussions and debates about not just the people running our world, but the very laws, programs and policies that make our world, could vanish.

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