UPDATE:

HootSuite have added an opt-out of Insights option, now you can turn of insights and block your social profiles from displaying within the HootSuite UI.

#######

Some of you will have noticed that HootSuite (which I love and think is a great service) added Follower Insights on July 13th 2010.

“Follower Insights

Get to know your network with the knowledge behind the “Insights” tab. Learn where your contacts hang-out online including publicly available links to social profiles, a collection of images, even occupations and title — all in one view.”

For most users this isn’t an issue, they probably welcome the ability to view what social networks other users belong too, and for some users they will see this as an invasion of their privacy.

However, for me follower insights puts me in a bit of a predicament, i.e. clients follows me on twitter, notices that I have a Facebook account and submits a friend request. I’m not going to accept the friend request and they will wonder why and possibly hold this against me.  I know the information is freely available online, but its the principle of the matter, allow me to share my information or at least give me an option not to share third-party information.

Since the birth of my children I have new rules for accepting connections via social sites, they are as follows…

1. Facebook – Friends and very close acquaintances only - No Clients or Acquaintances. This is a personal place were I chat to friends and family.
2. Twitter – open to anyone that wants to follow me (I also use a business account which is a professional account)
3. LinkedIn – Clients can connect with me here.

There was uproar when Google launched Buzz, because of the privacy issues surrounding the controversial “auto-follow” feature. Then again with Facebook, which came under fire for recent changes to its policies that have limited what users can keep

To the best of my knowledge HootSuite didn’t ask my permission to display links to third-party sites (it could well be in the T&C’s). If they did or did not there are still lots of inaccuracies that need to be addressed…

1. My last name has a small n and no ‘ after the O - nit picky yes, but its correct above in the title bar.
2. It says I live in Detroit Michigan, which is untrue.
3. It says I am a Regional Account Manager for 352 – which is untrue, I got laid off in Apr 09 from my full time position.
4. It says I am the Principal of 352, which is again untrue (what if my old boss saw this and wondered why I am suggesting I and the principal of his company).
5. It has a link to Match.com, I am not a member of this site, so why is it displayed under my insight profile.

HootSuite in my opinion should have emailed their users before hand and advised they would be adding “Follower Insights” (they might have but I didn’t see or read the email) advising of the upcoming changes, and offered a opt in / opt out button. Even better would be a check box option to show which services you wanted to display – but as I understand it, it’s all or nothing.

UPDATE

I replied to the HootSuite blog yesterday, I get a reply from Dave Olson “We will have an opt-out form in the next day or two — just waiting on a bit of info to compete the form and tool. Thanks for your patience, we are working diligently to effectuate this change.”

I do think HootSuite is a great service, I love using it, and I hope they can get this issue fixed and not cause themselves too much trouble, but most of all learn from it.