Re: Are you careful with the information you publish online? Yes, I am fairly careful with what information I publish online. I tend to limit personal and private information to people I know and those who are close to me.

I also buy Mario’s argument above that I’d follow someone from my town, even if they were protected.

I’d also follow someone whose updates are protected if I saw them say something of interest elsewhere — in fact I followed you after leaving your comment on this post.

I’m a little stuck on point #5 though, and I’m interested in your perspective… I tend to be overly cautious, and am often advocating
that users be conscious of who has access to their information (which includes the play-by-plays out to the entire twitter world). I
appreciate the choice of privacy on twitter, even if it means that not everyone can read my tweets. Protected updates don’t stop me from following back, seeing as I can always un-follow a spammer or non-contributor if that’s who they turn out to be.

I do want to contribute to the community, and I enjoy the twitter conversations - but it’s challenging to argue the case for privacy to
other tweeters when it comes at the cost of followers. Even if “number of followers” isn’t a priority, are we really losing the opportunity
to have interesting peers read what we have to say? For me, it’s a challenge because I enjoy having the conversations, but twitter is an open network where even the non-tweeters can view your posts, and maybe not everyone wants that level of publicity- but just are not aware that you can have more control?

Is not following those with protected updates punishing the privacy-conscious? What are your thoughts?

@gtherrien

I generally use the service to connect with like-minded people so I can learn from my peers and hopefully share with my contemporaries.

If all you’re about is seeing how popular you can be with the most followers, or you just want to add as many social media apps as possible to out-do your friends, we’re probably not a good match.