Networks

Fredrik Lundh | August 2007

Just a quick note about social networks; I’m currently a member of two network sites; LinkedIn and Facebook (because everyone else is, you know).

Here’s my current network policy (complete with links to my public pages):

LinkedIn: This is strictly professional; with very few exceptions, I only link to people who I’ve worked with, either directly or on some open source project, and know well enough to recommend professionally.

Facebook: This is a lot more open; if we’ve exchanged mails about something, chatted about something on some blog somewhere, met briefly at some conference, or if you know me from some completely unprofessional context ;-), feel free to invite me.

For both networks, I reserve the right to decline or ignore an invitation, without having to explain myself, or without anyone taking offense. Just so you know.

“Let’s call the problem of lossy context as you move your contact details around “buddycrap”. It’s sounds better than “distributed groupware”, which we’ll see in a minute is another way of looking at this. Dealing with buddycrap fundamentally requires provenance — from where and in what context did this buddy come from?”