It's a Status Thing

The notion of privacy almost seems quaint in the hyper-connected world of social networks, and maintaining the right balance of exposure and anonymity is a tricky combination of art and science. A prudent Facebooker, for instance, will typically want to customize his or her privacy settings for news feeds in order to control what types of stories get published, particularly those relating to changes in relationship status.

Sansserif and I have blogged extensively on this in the past, discussing the varying degrees of seriousness of a particular relationship status, the pitfalls of publicly changing said status, and the sudden ripples that can occur from abrupt transitions between, say, "single" and "married." Indeed, cautionary tales abound on why taking the time to tweak a privacy setting or two is probably a good idea.

Such controls are good for everyday life, but what happens when you want to spread the word far and wide? Well...

...Sansserif and I recently announced our engagement. After telling our families and a handful of close friends, we decided we were ready to go Facebook Official about our big change in status. In our excitement, however, we neglected to make sure our privacy protections were turned off so that word would quickly travel to news feeds far and wide. It took a day of puzzling silence on the airwaves for us to realize our error, whereupon we changed status back to "in a relationship," turned the news feed announcements back on, and got Facebook Official all over again.

Curiously, all of the comments that flooded in after our second announcement appear only on my wall, which strikes me as somewhat old fashioned for a progressive social network like Facebook. I mean, just because we're getting married, does that really mean we have to forfeit our individual comment threads? It seems to be an obvious breach of Netiquette.

Despite the pitfalls of controlling the flow information in your news feed, maintaining an active stance on privacy is still a good idea, especially when the relationship waters run the other way. Consider, for instance, Prince Harry's breakup with longtime girlfriend Chelsy Davy, which only became official when the media discovered her change of Facebook status. Then there was the recent case of Burger King's "Whopper Sacrifice" campaign in which Facebook users were offered a free hamburger for publicly dumping ten of their friends (the program was axed after ending a mere 234,000 friendships).

All I know is that once Sansserif and I set an official wedding date, I'm going to make a pop-up reminder in our shared Google Calendar to change our privacy settings well in advance. After all, when it comes to announcing the big "M" on Facebook, you only get one chance to do it right!

Under the Hood

I've been using Google's browser Chrome for about two months now. I've been a religious Firefox user for several years, and at first I thought, "Firefox has everything I need, what can Chrome offer?" But curiosity got the better of me, and sure enough, about one month ago Chrome became my default laptop browser.

Here's what I like:
1. One box for searching and for entering URLs. (There are privacy implications of this, but I'll put those aside.)

2. It's streamlined. No menu screens as we know them, just tabs at the top of your screen.

3. And my number one favorite thing about it: it's fast. When I click the icon on my task bar, it loads almost instantly.

That final point was what pushed me over the edge with Firefox. Once I tasted Chrome's speed, I couldn't stand waiting several seconds for Firefox to boot up.

Here's what I don't like about Chrome:
1. I like to tweak my settings a lot, and Chrome just doesn't offer that many preferences.

2. No add-ons. Yes, Chrome does have an add-on store, but it's a mess. The organization is terrible and it's brimming with spam. I really, really miss my Firefox themes, Add-Block Plus, and IE Tab.

3. Compatibility. Needs work. For example, I was filling out a survey online and the formatting was a complete mess. Not so on Firefox. Another example: for whatever reason, I couldn't upload a photo for an eBay sale on Chrome, but it worked immediately with Firefox.

Conclusion: If you have simple browser needs, Chrome is the way to go. If you like playing around and can stand to wait, you gotta go Firefox.

At least until Chrome plays catch-up...