Personalized Searching, Connected Accounts, and Other Internet Features I Don't Want

Personally, I don't want my search results "personalized". (By the way, the wording in that sentence was intentionally chosen in an effort to be clever - not a matter of not knowing any better.)

If I search I want to get the same stuff anyone else would get if he searched for the same thing. I don't want my local public library storing all kinds of info on me so they can presume to load up a car full of books and bring them by my home (or else assault me at the door with an armful of stuff he/she thought I wanted.

Without having read much about personalized searches, I don't know off-hand whether there is (or will be) the option to turn off personalized searches and have "same-terms-as-everyone-else" searches. If there are, or will be, great. I'd use that option. Still, I know enough about personalized searching to know I don't want it. I don't like the whole idea or what it takes to provide personalized searching.

Also, I'm not at all "thrilled" with some of this business of "connecting accounts" that goes on. I recently went to my YouTube account (which I only use for my own, personal, purposes) to discover that a zillion people's stuff showed up on my account. I wasn't happy when people shared their own stuff the first time on the Google+ account, so I REALLY didn't want to see the same stuff (that has nothing to do with me or anything I'm interested in anyway) showing up on my own YouTube account.

I don't mind letting Google (who pays me) or readers (who either will or won't decide that I'm credible) have some info on me in an effort to show that I am who/what I say I am. I draw the line on having everything I have online connected (if I have any say in the matter). First, I put everything (or most stuff) on Google+ and Facebook on "private". After the YouTube discovery, I closed whatever friends/circles I have. I don't care about potential traffic from any of them. It's not worth it, and I can't help but wonder if having too many things that everybody-and-his brother posts/shares linked to my stuff may (at least in the end) result in my name having "points taken off" by Google. It's no skin off their nose (to say the least) to encourage "connecting" and "lumping together" of everybody's personal doings and info. I figure, though, there's the chance that a year (or three) from now, Google may completely separate what's social and what's "serious", and treat contributors of one site or another very differently.

I know that most of these accounts offer a variety of privacy settings that let users have some control over what gets shared and what gets connected. It can be too easy, however, to miss one privacy setting or another; only to discover that an account is overloaded with stuff either because a user overlooked a setting or because a site/company has recently begun connecting/sharing stuff without the user's paying much attention to latest "features" and "conveniences".

So for all the reasons I mentioned (and some more I didn't) and for stupid of me (as someone earning from online writing) or not, I'm in the process of isolating all my accounts (and some of what goes on with Yahoo e.mail is another one I'm not thrilled with), myself, and whatever I do on any site - and let the microchips fall where they may.

Things are getting way too out-of-control online for my tastes. I know the whole thing about how the Internet is no longer a separate world from the offline world, and I'm as aware as the next person that the concept/expectation of any real privacy in an electronics age is commonly believed to pretty much be a hopeless cause. At this point, it isn't only (or even) privacy that's the issue for me, however. Like so many other people, I have my privacy concerns (as well as all those other security-related concerns that most other people have).

For me, however, it's three other things to which I'm objecting here:

1. I don't want the world that's being presented to me by the Internet (through my own searching or through anything else) to be skewed in the direction of what someone else assumes I must want to see.

2. I don't want to go to my simple YouTube account (or another similar type of thing) for my own personal reasons, which may or may not be related to my writing; and be assaulted by a bunch of stuff I didn't ask to see (and, in fact, that I may well see as "a bunch of crap"). When any of us ventures into a site where there are all kinds of contributors, or when any of us goes looking for whatever people post online, we all run into a bunch of stuff that falls under our own definition of "crap". I don't know about anyone else, but I have to be in the mood to go looking through stuff and sifting through what it, to me, "crap".

I know that feeds are provided as a way of trying to reduce some of the sifting through "crap"; but for the person like me, who isn't ever going to get so involved with social stuff that any feeds will ever be anything more to me other than "a whole different collection of crap", feeds don't cut it. I sift through the general pool of "crap", or I can sift through a feed. It makes no difference to me. I accept that I have to sift, and I make sure I'm in the mood to sift before looking for things online.

If I'm not in the mood to sift (and most of the time I'm not), I just want to be able to keep my own accounts/sites clean and limited to whatever I want on them. That may not be very "Internet-like" of me, and it may seem unfriendly; but as much as I have more than my share of interest in a lot of what other people post online goes, I don't want it fed to me when I go to an account/site with aim of doing something (like working, for example) other than look at other people's posted stuff.

The Whole Idea That If You're On The Internet You're Socializing

In a world in which there is so much emphasis on "socializing" online (and I put that in quotation marks because I just happen to be someone who prefers socializing in person), a part of me feels as if I have to keep saying, "Believe me, I'm not unfriendly. I'm friendly. I like people." Then again, there's another part of me (the "main part") that says, "Hey, I think it's a rare person who doesn't want control over who/what shows up (whether online or at the front door) with his own agenda and on our time."

Peculiar as it may be in this day and age (and especially for someone who spends time online, writing), I have a Facebook page in case anyone asks me if I have one and in case anyone, for some reason, wants to see how to get in touch with me. I do nothing on it other than post a few things so anyone showing up at the page won't find a mostly blank page. I don't have a Twitter account because, honestly, I can't make myself even pretend to be interested in the kind of stuff that gets posted there. Good luck to anyone who has a use for it or who enjoys it, but I can't stand it. I know if someone followed some of the links posted there, he might actually run into something of substance. I don't want to have to FIRST sift through crap and THEN follow links to eventually - maybe - find something worth seeing.

Facebook and Twitter (Etc.)

Also, I know the old (at this point) argument about how businesses "all use" Facebook and Twitter. Good luck to them too. Doing anything that I find so completely and utterly against my nature, just because everyone else is doing it, isn't what I do. People who have business reasons for using Facebook and Twitter can decide what's right for them. I'd rather do without any traffic I might get from these sites because when one is not good at something, or interested in it (and I'm not good at Facebook or Twitter because I'm not interested in either), he isn't going to do very well with it. Besides, with anything that "the whole world is doing", there will always eventually be the need to sort out who/what is "cream of the crop" and most in demand and who/what is "just part of the masses". For everyone who has found some success doing what "everyone" does, there's always those people who find more success by not doing what "everyone" does.

In any case, the point is that because socializing online isn't my way of either socializing or doing business, I have no real wish or need to have everything I do online all blended into one, big, thing. Some people do apparently, and good luck to them too. As for me, I don't want my e.mail account(s) mixed in with any Facebook stuff. I don't want my e.mail contacts sucked into Twitter "for my convenience". I don't want to go to YouTube or any other site and have a bunch of stuff people decided to "share" on another site showing up on YouTube or any others that I treat separately from, say, the Google+ account.

"Etc." - Google+

As for having the Google+ account at all, I didn't even know that when I was presented with the Google+ profile to fill out that I'd end up with a Google+ account. At the time, the profile showed up somewhere, and there was talk about "establishing authorship" with Google. If Google+ accounts (as we now know them) were available to people, they were available by invitation only at the time. I didn't bother looking into the Google+ account and just filled out the profile with the idea that it might help me and/or anyone who found anything I've written. If I'd read more about the profile I might have figured out that the account would follow, but - really - what I saw as I was presented with the chance to fill out the profile said nothing about the rest of the + account. I just figured it was part of being a "Google publisher". I saw benefits to going with the whole authorship thing, so I don't regret filling that out (for now and for the most part).

As it turned out, however, I one day woke up, signed into my Google account, and was presented with a Google+ account for socializing. So, there I was - with my profile all set up and all set for me to socialize and add circles. Since I don't socialize online, the only circles I could think to set up involved the HubPages community (where I at at least kind of know some people). So, I set up the "HubPages Folks and Friends" circles (let's be honest, I'm not all that close friends with a lot of people on HubPages, which is why "HubPages Folks" seemed like a good way to cover that reality). In a way, having that circle didn't make a lot of sense to me, however; because I can be in touch with HubPages people either through their profiles, through the forums, or even by asking them to get in touch (one way or another) on one of their Hubs. Basically, I'm very much a one-to-one kind of person, so it isn't in my nature to turn most of what I have to say into a public broadcast to a big bunch of people. Yes, I know that that's the whole point of social sites. It doesn't matter for me.

I know there's the whole thing that "everyone" says about increasing traffic and audience by using social sites, and I know a lot of people talk about "missed opportunities" for people who don't "make the most of" those sites; but I could make a lot of money playing pro football or opening a restaurant that served the most amazing sandwiches in the world - but neither of those is going to happen, because a) I'm not good at either of them, and b) I don't have the interest that would required to turn either of them into anything productive/successful for me. (By the way, ignore the reality that there's no way in heck I could ever be a good football player, and that that's about the most bizarre and ridiculous example I could have used. That's not the point. The main thing is that you get the idea in general.)

On HubPages, when Google's authorship program was new, the point was made that the Internet is no longer a separate world from the offline (real) world; and that people's online reputation would eventually follow them everywhere online. Another point made was that bad behavior (of one sort or another) under the cloak of anonymity might be reduced to some degree if authors/contributors were encouraged to establish who/what they are in offline life (at least better than people have been establishing those things until now). In a discussion about online reputation, it was mentioned that if a person joined a book club in his offline community, and if he then showed up and acted like a jerk, he wouldn't be welcomed at the book club. Point taken (and I have no argument with it whatsoever).

As someone who spends time online, though; here's another aspect to the offline-/online- world thing: When I'm in my home I decide who gets to visit. There are laws that at least try to prevent me from being bothered by too many telemarketing calls (or calls from creditors). Yes, I give personal information for things like bank accounts or any number of other accounts, and it's reasonable that I have the expectation of privacy with such private accounts.

If I decide to go out into the community (maybe to go shopping for groceries), I can either walk or get there using a car. I don't ride down the town's main street on a parade float; with a bull-horn, announcing everything about myself and my life and my every move (or even every piece of writing). There aren't local merchants hopping aboard that float with their own bull-horns and products; so that they aren't only selling to me, but are selling to everyone within ear-shot and/or view of that parade float. My friends aren't all hopping on the float and having a party either.

If offline life and online life are in the process of turning into the "one, big, thing", I think a whole lot of re-thinking has to be done by anyone who believes the way to incorporate "the real world" with "the online world"; because, clearly, the two worlds remain very separate worlds with very different rules of social and professional behavior.

In the meantime, I'm pulling away, to some degree, from any bull-horn (and parade-float) approach to what I do online. I've seen for myself that it's entirely possible to get those groceries by addressing the simple task-at-hand, using my time wisely, and drawing the line on what I'm willing to pay for something that I don't want or need.

I thought Google was going in the right direction with its authorship program. I think Google (and a lot of other companies/sites) is going very much in the wrong direction (at least for a certain segment of the population) with some of the "connecting-everything-together" stuff that's now out-of-control in the eyes of a lot of people. I suspect the Internet-using population will be divided (and maybe become even more divided) about this. Maybe there will be the Internet version of an Earthquake, in which the Internet world becomes divided into two distinct, mini-worlds, with the people who like their business being all blended together between sites and without differentiation on one side; and those who who don't on the other side.

There are those, I know, who will believe that those on the latter side are those who will be left behind and left out. "Left behind" and "left out", however, can lie very much in the eyes, and the aims, of the beholder. I think I'll take my chances and take back as much control as possible over my own accounts and what shows up on any of them.

I know the Internet is one, giant, marketplace full of people with stuff to advertise and sell to other people. That's fine with me. I'm not some artsy, commerce-hating, creative-writer who hates the very mention of the dollar bill. We so often see someone's pointing out that the Internet is a business, and "This is how people do business these days." Well, the Internet is no-doubt full of marketers and people who aren't selling anything but are only socializing (and noticing the ads of those people who do have something to sell). The thing, though, that even though the writing I do on some sites (like HubPages) is my casual, off-time, writing; writing is MY business; and even if I can take off my "serious-writing" hat, I can't seem to step out of my "serious-writing" shoes, put on some tap shoes, and do a little dance just because someone says that's what everyone else is doing and the only thing that will get me where I aim to be as a writer.

Anyone who has ever done any freelance writing knows that a big part of it is marketing one's work, skill, and ideas. Anyone who has ever made a business work knows that keeping control of what is presented to clients/customers under the name of the business is a pretty important thing. Some people believe that Internet writers can't afford not to jump on board the socializing train if they want to earn anything with their writing (whether it's casual, serious, or otherwise). The trouble can be that that train isn't always headed with a person wants to be, and I'm not sure that a lot of writers CAN afford to jump blindly on that train that someone else is controlling and hope they don't find themselves in a giant train-wreck. Right, wrong, stupid, or not; I've decided to get off the train at the next stop - before it gets too far down the wrong track and takes me in a direction that much farther away from where I plan to go.

Writing and socializing have never gone very well together. Life on a parade-float with blaring bull-horns and strangers hopping aboard and trying to sell their wares to any guests in my home isn't the kind of home I want to offer my visitors, - and isn't the kind of writing-life I want.

The way I see it, it's time I draw the line on a few things that are increasingly becoming a part of the Internet, and let those microchips fall where they may.