Social networking is a novel area. I work with academics who are all busy researching the myriad ways in which we might be able to take advantage of these new technologies. Social networking is exciting and new. It’s also full of people and companies with different agendas and beliefs and sometimes those things clash.

If you join a social networking site and upload content you’re naive if you think you can retain control over it. However if you’re a company that runs a social networking site and you try, or appear to be trying, to exploit your users you can expect a community backlash. That’s what has happened to Facebook this week.

We must give credit to Facebook for owning up to their mistake, reversing the changes and starting a consultation process over how to clarify their terms. However I note they’ve done this kind of thing before: Beacon was before my time as a user but I still remember it. Or maybe they’re learning from their mistakes and we should cut them some slack. It’s been suggested that trial and error might be the best (only?) way to approach this brave new world.

One could argue simplistically that we should all boycott social networking sites until their terms are perfectly in their users’ favour, their interfaces are open and interoperable, and their data are totally portable. However I don’t believe we’ll ever reach that position – and we certainly won’t if we don’t engage in constructive discussions and try to reach a compromise with which the majority of people are comfortable.

So yes, I use facebook. No, I’m not particularly happy with it. Yes, I am careful what I post there; and yes, I feel I’ve been a little bit lax and had my fingers burned this time. But no, I don’t feel like abandoning social networking as a cause lost to corporate exploitation either. It’s too important for that.

I’m proud of the Facebook community for spotting the issue, bringing it to the attention of the company and applying pressure until they got a result. In this way we slowly discover what the world believes to be acceptable practice for online social networks. The TOS might say that Facebook can do what it likes, but Facebook is nothing without its users, and in the macro sense this incident has shown that the community can have just as much clout as a legal document*.

My guess is that Facebook might now implement a Creative Commons licensing feature similar to that used by Flickr. This would be a Good Thing – there would be more Free and Some-Rights-Reserved content in the world (which Facebook could exploit if it wanted to) and users would get to control the terms under which their content can be used by others.

Whatever happens I think the debate around the social responsibilities of running and using social networks has advanced a step this week.

* In my opinion it’s unlikely that Facebook could have persuaded a court of the legality of a TOS change that retrospectively granted them rights over content submitted under a different agreement. Also, in the UK, such a clause might be caught by the consumer protection laws surrounding unfair contracts. IANAL.

Your old Myspace profile might prove difficult to explain in a job interview, but recent evidence suggests it could actually stop you getting that far. Worse: as your name is almost certainly not unique, a case of mistaken identity could easily cause someone else’s website to have the same effect!

It’s never been easier to upload your private details to the web, so it’s no surprise that the phenomenon of googling is becoming correspondingly widespread. In 2005, 43 percent of people who answered a dating-service survey said they type their date’s name into a search engine before they go out. Previous polls have revealed that 23% of US adults admit to searching online for information about someone with whom they have a work relationship.

To retain their privacy, people have traditionally hidden behind pseudonymous nicknames on the Internet, but this solution is far from ideal and is certainly not reliable. Besides, the rise and rise of blogging and social networking sites is pushing people to use their real details for both business and pleasure online.

So given that a gradual reduction in online privacy seems inevitable, how can you manage the issue of search engine misunderstandings in the Web2.0 age?

This is the problem that a new service called ClaimID has set out to address. Just out of beta and now open for public registration, the site allows you to collate on a profile page links that are either about you, by you, or both. This page is then presented to visitors arriving from search engines, together with your comments and other information about the sites you’ve “claimed”. In this way, you can add commentry and context to your online information, and even to articles about you that were posted by others.

Interestingly, you can also post comments about links that do not relate to you. This helps to distinguish between namesakes and avoid cases of mistaken identity.

ClaimID provides some reassurance that, however much information you have “out there”, you can keep control of how it’s being interpreted. Turning the tables, it also helps to ensure you’re getting the real story when a search for someone in whom you’re interested turns up a hit on the site!

The service already supports emerging standards such as MicroID, hcards and OpenID, and further improvements to these facilities are expected as the site matures. Greater scope for personalisation would be a nice touch though: profile page layouts and formatting are currently fixed. However it can’t be long before customisation options are provided; possibly even the ability to integrate pages into your existing website or blog.

ClaimID fills a clear and growing need for online identity management, and goes some way towards redressing the balance of power between you and the search engines. If you’d like to shake off your net handle and claim back your online identity, you could do worse than starting here.