A few months ago, I read that MySpace or Facebook, or one of those sites, released a tracking feature – you could see who had visited your page and when. This backfired pretty badly because (a) people were creeped out when they saw that strangers were coming to their page over and over and (b) people got mad at their friends for not hanging onto their every update. So they pulled the whole tracker concept.
Now Facebook has introduced this feature that shows you what people on your network are up to (e.g. “added a new application”, “changed their profile”, etc) which has been driving people away somewhat (my 22-year-old cousin said “I guess I’m too old – I find this thing a bit invasive. I don’t really want everyone to know what I’m doing.”)
I don’t know how I would feel about a tracker on Flickr – would it be more like seeing who came into my open studio space, or would it be stalking? Would I want strangers to know I had gone to their pages? What would I want to know about someone before leaving my calling card at their open studio space? What about you?
And once I know who is visiting my stream, would I want to, say, restrict those visitors? For example, should I be able to forbid all Flickr users who are members of certain groups, or who have certain tags in their streams, or certain friends, from seeing my stream?
I think the facebook version of tracking is a lot less invasive then some others, because at least you can control what others see, and block what you don’t want them to see. The form of trackers that I think is invasive are the hidden ones, because if you are just looking through a bunch of random peoples’ pages, you can be perceived as stalking, which is unfortunate, because isn’t the point of facebook supposed to be that you can connect with people in your network? To for example my coming to this website–I was just browsing the web and I came across it–that doesnt mean I’m stalking you–I don’t even know who you are.
I think the unhealthy part is trying to figure out who’s into you, because it kind of shows a narcissistic attitude: who’s paying attention to me; and if someone’s not, then why aren’t they? The defense that someone is using hidden tracking devices as a tool to see if someone is stalking them is just inane–if someone is really and truly stalking another person, then the stalkee will definitely know without being told by a hidden tracker. The good thing about facebook is that if someone strange is constantly showing up on a person’s page, then everyone else will know about it as well–so getting away with that sort of creepy behavior is far less likely to happen.