This summary review is primarily concerning the recent changes that have taken place on the site. The integration(and not’morphing’ as some are wont to call it) - of an essentially Product Info / Consumer Review dotcom into a site with a different take on network engineered Social interaction - is an interesting model, with wider implications than seem obvious!
Any and all of us involved in any way with the information potential of the Web would be watching the formative phases of this phenomenon keenly. May be it will be feasible soon to see a Mouthshut we knew one year ago, now treading new territory of Social Engineering, soon become a roaring success with a commercial trading engine like eBay thrown in, too!
But, as of now we are all concerned with the new issues that emerge in the process of incorporating a social network into a mostly anonymously accessed commercial / corporate website. The potential worldwide access to personal information becomes an important KRA to designing such a site. The key parameter is Privacy of information; and other issues crop up, too, involving personal safety if adequate access control is not built in. These issues have to be forthwith addressed, without exposing members to avoidable risks!
As an ab-initio framework, the areas that need to be addressed, based on the direct experiences of m embers, are listed below. These involve access control to personal information, as well as privacy cover to activity while logged in as a registered user.
To begin with, the following is suggested to MouthShut administrators:
1. Anonymous access / search on member diaries should be incorporated into security filters: not permitted.
2. No access to member profiles without registration / membership.
3. Members activity should be under criteria monitoring: new members can only access privacy features(e.g. m2m communication) on being accepted first in the trust circle. Mere ’’addition’’ of a profile to one’s own list should not be a sufficient condition.
4. Restriction of communication, by choice, exercised by an individual registered user. e.g. permission of m2m communication only to’accepted friends’ circle.
5. Access to Reviews could be exempted from the above, provided vital member info, m2m / gift link, etc. is made unavailable on those pages.
6. Corporate blogs / writing Reviews could be subject only to such filtering only.
7. ’Making Friends’ should not be available universally, on the Home-Page: not without the permissions applicable as specified in paras 1, 2, 3 above.
8. All Profile pics and friends’ / Trusted-Circle pics should be subject to above mentioned privacy access.
9. Only uploaded pics/ photos, specifically to be marked by the member as ’Public’ should be accessible to non-friends/ non-members who browse MS. From outside MS, e.g. by Google-Image, Flickr, or other similar engines, only such ’Public’ pics should be allowed as search-able.
10. In No case the ones marked ’Private’ should be accessible, except as specified by the member, even to other MS members .
Some of the above(especially para 7) may seem to be in direct conflict with corporate financial objectives - reducing the number of ’hits’ - of ad revenue valuation and site viability, but then a balanced approach is needed if the requirements of a Consumer/ Product Info/ Review dotcom are to be integrated with being a RESPONSIBLE Social Networking site!
More on this later! .depending on how and what is the response, and how suitable and adequate it is!