WebRev Blog

I have written several times about how using a pseudonym online is one way to maintain privacy and security.  Writers and artists have done this for centuries, either to protect their privacy, or to be able to focus on one genre at at time (someone who writes both horror fiction and documentaries, for example, might use different professional names for each pursuit), or because their real name is not very memorable or someone else has already become famous with that name.  People also sometimes do business under names other than their own, and these names sometimes registered as "DBAs" (doing business as), or "ficticious names."  The names, when used correctly, represent real-life people, who intend to be responsible for all of the activity they do under that name. 

What is not acceptable, is when someone creates one of these names to impersonate a real-life person, or to engage in unethical or illegal activity without getting caught.  This problem of "imposter profiles" that sometimes arrises on the popular social networking site, Facebook.

A friend of mine (not a famous person) recently had her profile duplicated after signing up for one of the games on Facebook.  The imposter copied her profile image, and her name (one character different from the name she was using).  She believes this was done for phishing purposes, either to try to get her passwords, and/or to spam her friends.  She followed the instructions, HERE for reporting this account, and was disabled pretty quickly.

This was a concern for the Facebook administrators which has disabled more than once the account of a person who, unfortunately, has the same name as Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg.  This is actually the man's real name, and because he's older than the creator of Facebook, it was actually his name first.  While he is handling this with a lot more grace and humor than I probably would have, one can easily see the need for the Facebook admins to protect their well-known founder.  It would be too easy for someone to scam A LOT of people using Mark Zuckerberg's (the famous one's) name. 

Bottom line? Pseudonyms are generally acceptable, as long as they are used for legitimate purposes, and the person behind the pseudonym takes personal responsibility for the activity they do under that name.  Imposter accounts are NOT acceptable on Facebook or anywhere else, if they're being created to harrass, humiliate, or defame others, or if the person who created the pseudonym is hiding behind the account to do unethical, illegal, immoral or other dubious activity. 

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. 
 

Yesterday, we discussed Why Facebook is a good way to incorporate social networking into an online profile management and web communications strategy.

Today, we'll continue with examining whether you will need a profile, group, page, or combination of these.

Profile

 

The Facebook "profile" is for individual networking and personal communication. "Personal," does not necessarily mean that every person who is a mutual friend on your profile is someone you have had over to dinner, and are willing to share your deepest, darkest secrets with. Remember, NOTHING is really "private" on the web. In most cases, these are friends, relatives, acquaintances, and friends-of-friends with whom you share common interests.

 

Facebook requires a first and last name that sounds like a first and last name for a Facebook "profile." Occasionally, the site will go through a purge, and dump accounts that appear to be using "fake" names. Therefore, it is not wise to invest a lot of time into building a Facebook profile under the name of a blog, business, or political statement.

 

The Facebook Profile has much more options for security, and communicating with potential friends. You can adjust your settings to reveal all, some, or none of your information to just about anyone you wish (within certain limits).

 

Group

 

The Facebook "groups" are for collaboration around a certain idea or topic. They are similar to the Facebook profiles in that they have some security features (they can be "open," or "closed," to the public), but different in that any name can be chosen for the group. Groups are for sharing videos, photos, links, and for hosting discussions. Administrators of the groups have the ability to send direct messages to everyone in the group at once. Group members also have the ability to invite all of their friends, or several of their friends to a group at once.

 

Page

 

The Facebook "fan page" is the least private of these options, however, they have the advantage of being indexed on the search engines, so they are good for search engine optimization (SEO) when developing an online profile. They have some of the same features as group in that users can share links, videos, and photos; however, it is not possible to send direct messages to everyone on a fan page at once.

 

So, which is better for you? You'll need to have a profile in order to set up either a page or a group. You may choose to use that profile to keep in touch with people you actually know while you use your group or page to keep in touch with your extended network. There is currently a limit of 5,000 friends on a Facebook profile, so if you think there is a possibility you will surpass that, it is better to just start out with a Fan Page, to keep everyone from having to switch later.

In upcoming posts, we will discuss some basic "do's" and "don'ts" for using Facebook.

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.