New social etiquette: Please ask permission to tweet or tag?

My Facebook log of my weekend trip to D.C., including photos in real time

The New York Times has a fascinating article on reestablishing privacy in the Twitter age. It starts the story with a meditation on Protocols NYC, a “bi-weekly, invitation only event designed to help writers, bloggers, artists, tastemakers, and other influentials connect for business and pleasure.”

Protocols, held every two weeks since September in a small private penthouse in Murray Hill, is hosted by five Manhattan news media types who each invite two guests. The idea, according to a host, Michael Malice, an author and blogger, is to let invitees talk fearlessly in the present.

“We are fighting against this whole idea that everything people do has to be constantly chronicled,” Mr. Malice said. “People think that every thought they have, every experience — if it is not captured it is lost.”

via No Twittering Allowed – NYTimes.com.

Well, Mr. Malice, thank you for allowing the existence of this event to be chronicled for the purposes of the New York Times story. It must also be noted that these events “fighting against this whole idea that everything people do has to be constantly chronicled” have their own website – http://www.protocolsnyc.com/ — with a running chronicle of past guests (IF you have log-in information).

The rest of the piece has less ironic tales of the efforts individuals and commercial establishments are making to give people their privacy back. Pretty soon, you might see “no smoking” signs at restaurants and bars replaced by “no tweeting, photo-taking, or Facebook tagging” signs.

Hattip to David Lat for bringing this story to my attention. In sending it along, he noted that:

Sometimes people let me take photos of them, but designate them off the record — i.e., not for posting.

Dave runs a legal blog read by many and has over 3,000 friends on Facebook, so if your photo is posted to his page, it’s a rather public experience. But you don’t have to have tons of friends to get in trouble with social networking. Chicago resident Amanda Bonnen was sued for $50,000 by her realty company for an allegedly defamatory tweet she made on Twitter this summer. Bonnen had just 20 followers on the site.

So what’s your responsibility to your friends when it comes to posting?  I’ve recently acquired a BlackBerry and am in love with Facebook mobile uploads — taking photos with my smartphone and uploading them immediately to Facebook. I spent the weekend in D.C., and updated my Facebook page constantly with photos of meals at my favorite restaurants, my friends at nightspots, and true paparrazi-esque photos of the Real World Washington house.

One friend who I haven’t seen enough of recently says she’d like to see more of me, but that she feels updated on my life thanks to the mobile photostream. I’m fine with being tracked, but is it okay for me to allow those I’m with to be tracked too?

After reading the NYT story, I think the new etiquette may be for me to check with friends first before tagging:

Celia Chen, founder of Notes on a Party, an online magazine about entertaining, said hosts are often now asking guests to refrain from posting photos and sharing details of parties.

“It’s the job of the host to educate guests about attire, about start time,” she said. “And now when it comes to social media, it’s also the responsibility of the host to share how you want your guests to act at your party.”

As with so many “new problems of the new age,” this is an old problem too. Tom Wolfe infamously pissed off many high-society types when he attended a party at composer Leonard Bernstein’s house in the 1970s and then wrote an article about it — “These Radical Chic Evenings” — for New York magazine even though the party had not been deemed “on the record.”

Some establishments aren’t relying on rampant Facebookers to have their own decency code. They’re enforcing social networking rules:

At the Moth storytelling event last week at Southpaw, a bar and music hall in Brooklyn, the M.C. announced that cellphones should be off, and that tweeting was prohibited during the show.

Milk and Honey, a secretive bar on the Lower East Side, recently tightened its admission policy. The majority of its tables are reserved for members who pay a fee to join and agree to certain limitations.

“I had to sign an agreement that said we agree not to blog about any of the goings on at Milk and Honey and will not put photos on a blog or any social-networking site,” said a member requesting anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his right to visit….

Bouncers at the nightclub Tenjune forbid guests from taking photos of other groups, said Eugene Remm, an owner of the club in the meatpacking district. The club wants customers to dance and drink without fear. Club managers have contacted people who posted Facebook photos, demanding that they remove the pictures or risk permanent exile. “I don’t want that to be the thing that keeps a regular from coming back,” Mr. Remm said.

Now that smoking has been banned in all New York City bars, nicotine addicts have to step outside to feed the habit. I can’t help but imagine compulsive tweeters — faced with a similar ban — secretly feeding their addictions huddled over BlackBerries in bathroom stalls.

I’m okay with being tagged, tweeted, and incorporated into others’ status updates, but as a blogger, I’ve fully embraced living a chronicled life.  Obviously, there are others who aren’t as keen about living publicly. I’ll try my best to resist including them in my mobile uploads.

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