Being Social Is About Being Private

From the receiver's end: Like this post says, it creates a sense of urgency as the sender now knows that it's been seen. It also puts the receiver in a tough situation if the sender is an annoyance but the sender doesn't want to possibly hurt their feelings. By default -- without doing anything -- that possibility exists. There becomes an obligation to respond.

From the sender's end: Likewise, if you send a message to someone and you're really nervous about a response (think of a potential boyfriend/girlfriend, for example), if you see that the person has "seen" or "read" your message, and they don't respond, you might begin to worry that they won't ever respond. Of course you know that they might just be busy or taking their time to write a thoughtful response, but the fact that the time is now ticking since they've seen it can make you anxious.

So really, this kind of passive sharing helps nobody.

Of course, they don't. The adjective "social" really refers to commercial exploitation of voluntarily provided information about social networks (edit: I mean the REAL social network, not the website which tries to take over its management)

This requires the violation of your privacy and as Facebook has been at the forefront of this, they have also been at the forefront of trying to stigmatize and discourage privacy.

Systems that allow others to know what I've read or said, without my direct control, disrupt my ability to thoughtfully tailor my interactions with different people. "Oversharing" systems disrupt my ability to decide how much context to include or what to emphasize, and they mesh poorly with my ability to prioritize my life.

That said, I think people are more understanding than this article gives them credit for. If I have to go change a diaper between reading a message and responding to it, most people seem to handle the delay just fine. I don't think the notification is specifically helpful, but it's also not as harmful as this article suggests.

SMS has a receipt option. iPhone doesn't support it, but my old nokia does. I could easily see that my SMS was not only sent, but received by the other person.

Even on facebook, without any seen/read features (which I wasn't even aware of), I can send a message to someone, and then I might see that they posted some updates, added a friend or made a comment on mutual friend's post. Obviously they have seen my message then. Same would happen with email as long as I'm also connected to the same person on fb...

Chats / Skype / Online status - I tend to turn my chats off completely unless I need to, but when I'm online - people see it. If they see me online (e.g. google chat) they can assume that I got the email they sent me...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not justifying making things even more public. Quite the contrary. I wish there were better ways to maintain privacy and what people see about me and when. But the problem is very much already there.

It's like if the postal mail were suddenly posting your mail history for others to see.

It's equally fine to me if a service starts out as more public -- as imessage did, and going back further, as many instant messaging services did. As long as you know how it works before you start exposing yourself to it, it's not only fine, it becomes a feature you might take advantage of. Like a publicly tweeted @message for example, or calling someone knowing they have callerID.

Of course, I believe privacy has its place too -- an important one. We're working on an app called Burner that generates private phone numbers and will release soon.

The new "Seen" aspect for Facebook messages is particularly sneaky, and I'm not a fan, but whatever. I expect people to respond in time eventually.

Read receipts make messages more useful. You don't have to guess if someone is a frequent email-checker. You simply know if they've seen it or if they haven't. If they haven't and the message is urgent, you can try other means of reaching the person.

Relax. It's going to be okay.