As well as being a platform for JKers to have a good old rant about the world of technology and PR, 'Whatever...' will periodically be running guest blogs from friends who live beyond the (fire)walls of Johnson King Towers.
Here’s Graham Cluley, the man from Sophos, on the perils of squid and spanking online…
The papers were recently filled with stories of how Oxford graduates in a post-exam frenzy throw pieces of squid at each other in the street. Bloody students you might justifiably think and wonder why those who went through the public school system don't use calimari. But it turns out that university authorities are ploughing through students' Facebook entries, hunting for incriminating photographs of the fish-fuelled antics. Students have been reprimanded - all because they were dumb enough to post the pictures on Facebook.
The Sun even ran a (rather tacky) story about a policeman who was daring enough to reveal he was gay in his Facebook entry. According to The Sun this potentially put the policeman, who it was said could at some point, perhaps, guard the Royal Family, at risk from terrorists who may try to use the information he posted to blackmail him. They even tried to outrage their readers by saying that the poor copper's Facebook page invited visitors to "bite, grope, lick or spank him". Err - but just about everybody's Facebook page does that!
Then a recent dinner with my PR gang turned into an orgasm of Facebook talk. The chattering classes (Facebook, remember, is for the educated and middle classes - not for the chavs on MySpace) are obsessed with the etiquette of who you become friends with, what graffiti you've left on so-and-so's wall and have you thrown a sheep yet with SuperPoke. With people fatigued by yet another dull roll call of wannabes on Big Brother, the talk has turned to Facebook instead.
And the technology journalists are up on Facebook too. They've created groups and networks where they hang out, talk about the most outrageous media trips they've ever been taken on, and ask each other for help writing stories. But when you speak to them about it they all shuffle their feet, look embarrassed and say "they're only there for research". Ahem.
And then it happened to me. I did my first interview on Facebook. Not about Facebook, I was interviewed by a journalist via Facebook. He didn't email me, he didn't phone me, he didn't contact my PR agency.... he 'poked' me and asked me some questions about a computer security story. Watch out, if you're a spokesperson for an internet company, it could happen to you too...
Is this the future? Should I be permanently logged into Facebook just to see if a journo is trying to get in touch with me? Or will we all be obsessed with something else in six months time?
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