Do you like to 'check in' on Facebook? You might think twice after reading this...

So I think by now it's pretty well known that I have something of a privacy complex with regard to my personal information being made available online for all to see etc... You can therefore imagine my apprehension when I came upon the following post on the Mashable.com blog: App Tells You Which LinkedIn Connections Are in the Room. According to the writer, there is an iPhone app called 'Sonar' which pulls data from a number of social networks - and most recently, LinkedIn -  to tell the user which of their connections are in the same place as them. So effectively, all you need to do is check in via Facebook on arrival at a particular place, and someone using Sonar who is connected to you will be able to see this. You don't have to use the Sonar app as well - all you need to do is check in via Facebook.

Now while I realise there may be some benefits to this - perhaps at a conference or other event, where you want to network with others in your community, and so it could be useful to know which of your LinkedIn connections are actually in the same place as you. As the blog post says, the aim is to make networking easier and to facilitate introductions and so on. Don't get me wrong, I definitely get it...but at the same time, it still makes me feel a bit uneasy - it's just a bit too 'big brother' for me I'm afraid. Facebook check in in itself is something I rarely indulge in; but knowing that activating this functionality on Facebook could actually mean my LinkedIn data is coming into play too...hmmm. Call me old fashioned, but our data and actual physical whereabouts is just getting a little too available at times for my liking...

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