FLASHBACK september 2006

facebook is open to EVERYONE 13 and older with a valid email address. before that it was open to employees of certain businesses. before that? to high school students with valid high school emails. and before that? only to college students.
FLASHBACK july 2006
twitter launches. it doesn't gain popularity until late 2009. now people can express an opinion, or tweet about their day, in 140 characters or less.
FLASH FORWARD october 2012
166.1 million americans have a facebook account.
FLASH FORWARD december 2012
200 million people, world~wide, have active twitter accounts.
FLASH FORWARD today
facebook and twitter are the place to be for people that want to keep up with family and friends that live far away. wish happy birthday to people they haven't seen since high school. reconnect with long~lost friends/loves. and express their opinion on everything from aardvarks to zyzzyvas. and express opinions they do...often with the mistaken notion that the person they are EXPRESSING about will never know. WRONG!!! ESPECIALLY in the case of twitter...even if you THINK you are set totally private, people have ways of finding out. 
friend #1...trying hard to have a baby of her own...is less than excited for a co~worker who is the mother of a soon~to~be teen mom. she tells the woman this. later, she posts a status basically saying "sorry, but i am not excited that your daughter is a teen mom." no names. could be talking about any mother of a pregnant teenager. AND the person doesn't have facebook, so no worries, right? right? WRONG! another co~worker sees the status and tells other people at work. friend #1, then, gets called into her boss's office because her post hurt someone's feelings. ummmmmm.... 
friend #2 and i have a disagreement...who doesn't have occasional disagreements with friends?...and it should have ended right then. but friend #2 goes home, changes her twitter settings to private, and blocks anyone she thinks will tell me. she, then, tweets about the disagreement prompting quite a few of her "followers" to chime in. friend #2 thinks it's private, but, of course, i find out. how? after being told about it, i do a twitter search and find all the tweets friend #2 is mentioned in. no...i can't see what friend #2 is saying, but the tweets she is mentioned in make it PERFECTLY clear what is being said. 
so. is there a way to prevent this from happening to you? is there a way to protect your posts and tweets? sort of...

on facebook, you can set different levels of privacy. additionally, you can completely block individuals that you have no desire to be friends with. after her incident, friend #1 decided to be very careful who she was facebook friends with. she went thru her list and "unfriended" people that she doesn't have a real relationship with and then set her privacy settings on the highest level. how do you change your facebook privacy?

• log on to your account and then click on the settings tool
• under "who can see my stuff" click edit and decide between public, friends, friends except acquaintances, only me, or custom. *hint: choose friends. you don't want your stuff public but...why be friends with people if you don't want to share with them?*
• under "who can look me up" click edit and decide who can search for you via the email or phone number you provided (everyone, friends of friends, or friends). *hint: choose everyone. why be on facebook if you don't want to be found? you can, then, choose to accept a friend request or ignore it*
• you can set individual posts to be seen by a select group of people. again, i feel like this tool is unnecessary...you shouldn't be facebook friends with people you aren't comfortable sharing everything with...but if you want to, it's there. 

a google search of my name brings up my facebook page. all the person sees is my profile pic, my cover photo, a list of pages i have liked, and where i went to high school. all these are items i decided everyone can see, and i can change the setting at any time. that being said, i CANNOT control what my so~called friends decide to show my mortal enemies...so, again, it's not always TOTALLY private.

twitter is a little more difficult. as i said, friend #2 set her tweets to private but i still could find her in mentions by her followers. the only way friend #2 could prevent this is to only follow people who are also set to private. and that's nearly impossible. i am not a fan of private twitter accounts. the whole point of twitter is to connect with the world. if i had been set to private, alec baldwin would have never seen my tweet to him...meaning he would have never tweeted me back...meaning i would not have had top tweet that day. but, should you want to be private, here are the steps:

• log on to your account
• go to settings...on your computer: click the person icon at top right corner and then click settings...on your phone: go to your profile and click on tool bar icon.
• click "protect my tweets" and then click save changes

now you will have the option to approve followers and only those people will see your tweets. but i CANNOT stress enough...you will still be seen in mentions, and people aren't stupid. if you are talking about them, they will know.

another hint for facebooking or tweeting...and i have said this 45,000 times before...THINK BEFORE YOU POST. friend #1 had every right to post what she did, and was only repeating what she had already said to the woman, personally. she had NO intention of hurting anyone's feelings. changes she made to her account were made because of the way her post got blown out of proportion. but friend #2? well she, also, had every right to post what she did...however...she is upset that i found out what she was posting. if friend #2 wasn't comfortable with the fact that something she posted might become public knowledge she should NOT have posted it. 

happy posting!!