If you didn't hear, Blippy, a site that encouraged users to share details about their credit card purchases in another escalation of the TMI world of social networking, had a wee glitch where a few actual credit card numbers were indexed by Google, not just the details of what was purchased and for how much. (Who didn't see that coming?)
Yet another site taking the concept of over-sharing to new levels is failin.gs which asks (or rather helps you ask) “What is wrong with me?” then lets your friends and others in your social circle give constructive criticism on ways you could improve yourself.
I'm usually pretty quick to join whatever new Web 2.0 fads come along and I actually thought about giving fallin.gs a try just to see what kind of feedback I got. Then I thought – actually there are probably some things better left for a private performance review at work and/or the detailed performance reviews I sometimes get at home! 😉
[Edit: The NYT has a story about formspring.me, another site that's similar to failin.gs and which is apparently quite the rage among teeangers right now, precisely because it allows anonymous criticism and attacks.]
Comments 2
Yikes. Slam books were a fad years ago – pre-Web2.0 – and they do nothing but damage. Teachers and parents had to work hard to get the slam books stopped. That was when there was a physical book.
This just takes it to a whole new level – as if cyberbullying isn't enough of a problem, now there's a site whose main purpose is pretty much that? Ouch.
I wish we'd more often ask ourselves: “Just because we CAN, does it mean we SHOULD?” Hopefully failin.gs goes bust quickly.
Kids will always find a way to be cruel to each other but yes, technology extends that reach greatly (and often makes it permanent too!)