Trap My Contacts

One of the beautiful things about voluntary, personal information sharing is that we have the option to interact with our friends and colleagues–as part of our social network–using a variety of tools and Internet services. It’s often a harsh reality check to be reminded that some of those tools and services don’t really want us to share in ways that we would like.

So it goes with sharing between service providers Google and Facebook. Each of them have useful collaborative, content sharing tools such as Facebook’s walls (telling in subtle ways) and photos, and Google’s docs, groups, and YouTube. Both providers also have ways to use your login as a single sign-on with other services (Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect).

What’s new: Google is reminding us that sharing your contacts with Facebook is a one-way street. It’s helpful to have a reminder that our sharing is not just about us, but often includes details and data about our friends that they may or may not wish to share about themselves. It’s a messy world while we figure this out.