Privacy has been an online issue for a long time. Recently, Facebook revamped its privacy policies and Google Buzz was forced to revamp some of its policies as well. While all this goes on, there are other entities that are working towards stripping those privacies. No, this is not about the CIA, KGB, Mossad or any of those intelligence agencies. It is actually about a company called Teneros, which has released software called Social Sentry that allows employers to monitor the activity of their employees on social networks.

This app is so intrusive it can:

Inform employers when employees are on Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites

Monitor social networking activity by employees regardless of the device they are using (Computer, iPods, Mobile phones, etc)

Monitor regardless of what network is being used to access the sites

Be configured with advanced rules that send out automatic alerts and notifications

Give detailed reports and statistics

Be deployed in under an hour and requires no hardware or software installation

Using this software to monitor employees’ behavior during working hours is acceptable. However, the software also allows monitoring of everything they are saying on the sites even after working hours. This amounts to an invasion of privacy. While that is the negative side, the positive side is that it allows employers to have tighter control on security especially when it comes to company news leaks.

The pros and cons of this software can be argued about for a while. But the significant fact that emerges from this is that – it is a sign of things to come.

Although Tim-Berners Lee called the term ‘Web 2.0’ a piece of jargon that found prominence in 2004, thanks to the attention drawn by the O’Reilly Web Conference, one must say that the internet and what is has to offer has changed drastically.

Prior to this, the internet was largely used to get text and photos with very limited or no interactive opportunities available. However, all that has changed now, as the focus has shifted to creating a ‘rich experience’ for the user, so much so that they continue to use the internet in exploring the opportunities and enjoying information in the form of multimedia that is made freely available. Indeed, the internet connection has become more of a need than just a want amongst millions of its users in the world today.

Technologies such as CSS 2.0, XHTML, ,Ajax and Flex among others have ensured that the crossover is complete into a phase where information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration have become an everyday reality through the existence of web-based communities, web applications, social-networking sites, folksonomies, blogs, mashups, wikis, hosted services and video sharing sites.

Even mentioning the word blogging would be obvious because it pertains to a large part of information sharing through print, but the truth is that it has changed the way people look for written information on various topics. One can share art and photography using sites such as Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa, share audio (music) on sites such as Last.fm and MySpace Music, share videos on sites like Youtube, Viddler, Vimeo and most recently, conduct ‘livecasting’ on Ustream.tv and Justin.tv among many others that are possibly not that well known.

And the reason why this has taken the world by storm is because of its appeal to the masses, which will remain for years to come, not unless we find our future in the hands of Web 3.0…

The idea of consumers generating content only remained a dream until a blast of technology (thanks to Web 2.0!) has spawned a host of users that create content in the form of words, visuals and so on and so forth. Indeed, the world is gradually but steadily moving away from the times when the dissemination of information were purely through the medium of newspaper, television and film and where consumers could only access information and not necessarily use these mediums to produce valuable information themselves.

All that has changed with the advent of the internet (and specifically, Web 2.0), and with blogging in print and visual form, information does not rest in the hands of just journalists, but to common folks as well. Apart from just the communication of information, several other avenues of multimedia has sprung forth such as the sharing and broadcasting of video, photographs and music, that can accessed for no charge at all.

Although, the vision of social media is to help people share media freely, the issue of copyright has also come to the forefront. For example, when the Dark Knight was first released, despite blocking all the routes, it was made freely accessible to users with a broadband internet connection in a matter of 18 hours!

Finally, social networking and bookmarking are also ways by which the ‘online community’ can share ideas, thoughts; keep in touch with friends as well as save information that can have an impact on their lives on a daily basis.
All in all, it seems that we are smack dab in the middle of the ‘Attention Age’.

When Mark Zuckerburg started ‘Facemash’, little did he know that he was spawn a trendsetter of sorts in social networking, otherwise known as Facebook, that found itself online by February 2004. In April 2008, even though this ‘idea’ that wasn’t so well received initially, Facebook overtook MySpace (another social networking site) to become the most popular application to be used, with its unique visitors hitting almost 130 million in number.

It is obvious to point out that the word ‘Facebook’ which is proper noun, is now referred to as a verb (facebooking) due to its overwhelming popularity that has made it synonymous with the idea of ‘social networking’.

From being a simple site providing a user with the platform to connect with school buddies that are in other states or countries, this site has expanded to the point of not only allowing users to create profiles and post pictures but also allow developers to create software as well. Not only can you access your Facebook profile on the internet but also through Smartphones as well.

Since users can post comments, join groups, play videogames, update their personal status from time to time, write notes on walls while also using the instant messaging, this can turn out to be source of much mirth and entertainment and has drawn the wrath of companies that do not want their employees wasting their on Facebook.

While being the recipient of several awards, it has been subject to criticism most notably in the form of Lamebook (parodied on the name Facebook) which post conversations on Facebook that one might find funny as well.

With the company financials in the ‘red’ since September 2009, it sure looks like things are looking up for the ‘grand-daddy of all social networking sites’, also known as Facebook.

It’s evident that publishing has come full circle today ever since it was first declared in The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) that the freedom of the press is one of the greatest liberties that a human being is entitled to, and should not be controlled by despotic governments.

While our distinguished members of the Press continue to point out the apparent lack of ‘objectivity’ through citizen journalism, it still does play an important role in the fact-checking of any incident that causes concern on a national or global scale. Take for example the tragedy that struck Mumbai in November 2008, where instead of journalists providing us information, the blogs were written by normal citizens ‘in situ’ that gave people a play-by-play update of what was happening.

And one can only assume that in this heyday, the networks (read: despotic governments) that controlled the flow of information in one direction to the customer is now finding that they have no way to control the ‘nature of the beast’ while it expands exponentially through the power of the internet and creative applications (Read: Web 2.0) at their disposal in the quest for truthful journalism by letting people express their opinions as well, and thus creating an even playing field.

It’s obvious that the old cliché ‘history repeats itself’ makes itself apparent here, and thanks to the million of bloggers and those who share information both in the print and visual format, the world has turned into a place where people remain better informed while having the ‘freedom to publish’ once more.

After all, there is no room for double-standards when our goals in the collective aspire towards democracy.