If you use many social media outlets at all, chances are good that you’ve heard a fair bit of buzz lately about changes in the connectivity and privacy settings of social media behemoth, Facebook.  In a nutshell, Facebook is looking to integrate its platform with a variety of other online media, including sites like Yelp, Pandora, and various news outlets.  The upswing is that one can now comment, “like”, or otherwise draw their friends’ attention to various products/media/articles/events across all sorts of online material.  The downside is that Facebook is requiring new personal settings for the users that want to take advantage of these features, increasing access of those outside your confirmed network to basic information related to your profile, and generally reducing your privacy.

The overall trend of increased online presence and personas is also highlighted by a New York Times article this Friday related to a handful of websites/services that are helping users to expose themselves in their daily activities.  With these new online tools, you can let people know where you are, what you’re doing, and how much it is costing you at all times of the day.  We’ve previously featured Foursquare, and the related Causeworld, platforms that allow users to report into businesses and other establishments in real time.  These popular platforms are being joined by the likes of Skimble, an app used to inform friends of one’s exercise routines and sport’s activities.  Even more of an online voyeur/exhibitionist?  Consider Blippy and Swipely, two internet services that will allow you to report all of your purchases online and through the use of your credit card.  In an era where we are being bombarded by warnings of identity theft, you can guess that everyone isn’t equally excited about these developments.

After all of this wind, you may be asking yourself why I am even discussing this topic on a forum that is concerned with social business.  The answer is entangled with the current notions of transparency as virtue within both corporate and governmental institutions. In essence, the belief is that increased transparency will lead to more ethical behavior in these large organizations because the ‘powers that be’ within them will no longer be able to hide behind anonymity or conduct secret deals that benefit themselves at the expense of the common good.  The idea is quite sound, assuming of course, that someone with sufficient clout is actually watching carefully enough.

So, the question then becomes, can this same logic be applied to individuals?  Assuming that the trends of the last decade don’t reverse themselves (and they show little signs of doing so), we will be likely to be able to find more and more information about our friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances through a simple online search.  Should we be cheering on Blippy as a tool with the same transformative power to help individual consumers make more ethical purchasing decisions with the same gusto as we may be curently calling for increased transparency in the executive decisions of Goldman Sachs?  Or should we berate any friends so naive as to post their personal transactions for everyone to see?  Will a platform for declaring purchases that is integrated with one’s Facebook account lead to consumers taking more thought in what their purchases say about them?  Or will said platform become merely a tool for friends to brag about their latest acquisition of some tech gadget or other superficial indulgences?

Finally, in what ways can the social entrepreneurial movement (which often claims deep ties with the social media movement) leverage this increased spirit of sharing to make people more aware of how their spending decisions connect them to their communities and the world in very tangible ways?

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