#16 (23 Things)

Q: How might you use this tool in your personal and professional life?

A: I probably would not.

Without guarantees of a solid and legal sort, I would be fearful of my content being made public, stolen or co-opted. Sounds farfetched? I refer you to Facebook "Terms of Service" change...

"...Consumer advocacy blog The Consumerist phrased Facebook's fresh policy as "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever," pointing out that Facebook's ToS spruce-up removed several sentences in which the company said its licenses on user content expired upon account deletion. And that's where the hysteria began.

"Facebook should now be called The Information Blackhole," one Consumerist commenter proclaimed. "What goes in never comes out. Be careful what you huck in there...."

In short,with the stroke of the pen, anything on a site like this might not be mine anymore. True, I could sue. But what are the chances of me beating Google?

And to be brutally blunt, observing Google's practices in China, and their business practices here and abroad, I wouldn't trust them to park my car, much less not appropriate my intellectual properties.

It is entirely likely that they already own everything on every site that they control.

Q: What issues come to mind about using this tool with students (IE, they need email addresses to log-in)?

I would make the "23 Things" training session a MANDATORY part of the 7th grade curriculum. Further, I would negotiate a special Student ID which would protect the student, help guide them away from suspicious and inappropriate sites, and make sure that they were on all manner of info lists and RSS feeds for colleges, successful schoolwork, tutoring, etc., etc.

The possibilities are endless and the marketing rights alone should pay for the entire thing, offer huge discounts, and make me a fortune!