There are a lot of privacy concerns concerning social media these days.  Most, if not all mention the intrusive type where your data is either stolen, exposed or sold. Not much is mentioned toward the slight privacy tweaks that may still leave our networks open in a subtle way.

As I became more aware of my status within the Hispanic social media industry, I became more sensitive toward my competition.  This is a fine line because in social media we all aim to help one another, yet at the same time we are each others competition.

On the one side, it is agreed that in social media we should help one another.  Yet, on the other side we are competing for business (‘m aware that not everyone is in it for business purposes, or may be competing in different areas; we’ll just talk about this idea and keep it simple).  So, how does one solve this dilemma?

There are a couple of things I do here to achieve this…and I’ll share them below.

Contacts & Networks

LinkedIn

Contacts or a database is a rich goldmine of resources to companies.  They take painstaking methods of obtaining them and keeping them relevant.  They are the leads, partners, supporters and customers of a businesses endeavors.  If you had access to your competitions database you could potentially fleece them out of their customer base and shift the balance in your favor.

LinkedIn, is a powerful networking platform.  And like any social network there are subtleties of privacy that are not talked about by the general population.

You are on LinkedIn, you have a business, and your network is exposed to anyone and everyone who is your connection.  Hide them.  I do.

Facebook

The same can be done for Facebook.  By default, anyone can browse who you are connected to unless you go in and change that.

Below I chose to allow only my friends to see my ‘friend list’  (I changed this to ‘friends of friends’).  This can be a handy setting in a variety of settings.

There are other settings here that are interesting as well.  And don’t forget to go to the next section to see what you’re sharing and with who.

(Log in to FB–>Acount–>Account settings–>Basic Directory Information–>View settings.)

Ideas

Don’t talk about them.  Develop them in secret.  I can’t say how many times others have pounced on my ideas because I shared them too early.  If you do share them, do so with only people you trust (even then be careful), or produce a NDA (non-disclosure agreement).

I hope this helps you lift the hood on your social media network settings and think about how they may affect you.  There is much, much more.  Let me know what you think or how you customize your privacy settings – or not.

Dan’s conclusion: “I think this is likely due to the fact that many of the followers gained by those users on the suggested list are new Twitter users and may be less ReTweet-savvy.”

I like to reverse the order of a statement in different ways to verify its validity. Let’s ask: if these same newbies are the one’s that accepted the suggested selected users, then why are they not ReTweeting them as experienced is gained? Even if these newbies are part of the ‘Twitter Quitters’, surely enough of them are sticking around to become savvy enough to ReTweet. (This would be an interesting study Dan: How many of the top 200 suggested user’s followers are active versus non-suggested user’s followers. Though, I imagine it may be a bit daunting.)

I think, being that Twitter is fueled by what users find compelling, non-suggested users’ followers have actively sought them out based by their focused interest on content provided. Naturally, they are ReTweeted more often.