Really Proud Of Your Social Status?

I have been skeptical of the personal side of the social web.

Its a lot of fun. We get badges on FourSquare. We get to broadcast to the world how smart we really are....

Oh yea?

Oh YES BABY

I have been playing a game with myself this summer. Let me see how social I can be and the impact.

OK I can officially tell you it's a bust. I am a great believer in social commerce. And that does cross the line into my private life. My family hate it and all my relatives question my motivation. They tend to fall into three buckets:

Bucket one - Yes - way to go prof well done we want to be like you (this BTW is the minority)

Bucket two - Huh? what the FUBAR is he talking about...

Bucket three - this is so silly and dont include us in this (oh but do keep doing it so we can make fun of you privately.

Bucket three is by far the most numerous of my extended family.

Gowalla, Facebook and FourSquare have been the beneficiaries of my experiment. And no I have never made mayor. (I nearly got in in Neuchatel in Switzerland). And I am approaching Mayor status in America which I just found out is 0.7 miles from where I live.

http://pleaserobme.com/ and other sites are out there urging caution. And rightly so. Interestingly the maturity of the environment is mercifully saving us from people telling us about the social habits and their (er hmm) bathroom habits.

The automatic social web is perhaps the scariest. A change in status on Skype used to be only viewable by people I know on Skype. Not any more. It cascades out. The number of different places your status updates now appear are frightening. AND the speed with which it can happen is amazing. But then I get updates conflicting with updates that come via different interfaces. So actively maintaining my social web is well ridiculous and pointless.

So this marks the end of my social experiment.

I am now happy that I know enough to be dangerous.

Do you? Or are you still inviting that home invasion you always wanted. Insurance companies must love this.

Cheers

and a tip of the hat to Mobile Social Local blog for the image.