Offering Information vs. Serving It Up

How many times have you given your number to a stranger?

I know what some of you are thinking: NEVER! Is he crazy?!

No, I’m not crazy…and yes, you have. If you ever been to a networking session and shared a business card with someone you just met, a card with your cell phone number on it, you have basically given your contact info out to a stranger.

Whenever people talk about privacy, especially online privacy, I always think about the volume of information that we voluntarily put out there on a daily basis via blogs, twitter, facebook, foursquare, etc.

When I think about my own actions, I probably am on the more generous side. For quite some time, I displayed my cell phone number on the Who’s Blogging page. I took it down in the end because it freaked me out a bit. I couldn’t explain it clearly until today.

Truth is, if you want to find out information about me…it’s out there. Several of my email addresses and my number can be found if you’re really trying to get to me, but more and more, I’ve begun to make a certain distrinction. Here it is:

There is a difference between offering information and serving it up.

There’s some information that you’ll want to offer and some that you’ll want to serve up.

What brought me to this point?

I got an email today which discussed all the iPad hype. Many people, including myself, were wondering why Apple failed to come up with a better name. In the email, however, the person claimed that people would get over the name soon and shared a link to the “facePAD.”

I thought face..wha?

Yep, “facePAD,”the Facebook Photo Album Downloader. It allows people to “download friends’ facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums, en masse, with the click of a button.”

I got into a short dialogue with one of the developers behind it on Twitter. He wanted to know if I liked it, and the honest truth is that I’m not sure. While I get its functional benefit…I think, “benefit for whom?” Not for me, but for the person potentially after an easier way to snag my pics.

While I (or someone else) may offer pics, I believe the general idea is to offer pictures for viewing, not download really. I know that you can download them; just like I know that you can find my number if you really are looking. This technology seems to move the pics into the “serving it up” category, and it makes me wonder….