I’m organising a panel discussion provisionally titled “The Dark Side Of Social Media”. This is going to be about how Social Media (MySpace, YouTube etc etc) has a ‘bad’ side, and it is not quite the new media nirvana some make it out to be. The Kathy Sierra incident is just once recent, extreme example.

For instance consider these issues surrounding social media which remain unresolved:

• Child safety remains an issue

• Anonymity can promote bullying and a distopian environment

• The ability to “game” social media (Asking people for Diggs, begging for Myspace links for a crap pop band etc) means the currency of social media is falling

• Identity theft – Anyone can create be anyone’s MySpace page

• Privacy – if you expose yourself to the world via blogs/twitter, doesn’t the world bite back? What about Government invasion?

• Google – gradually it will know everything about us and our relationships – does this ‘hard wire’ out reputations? Your mistakes, your accusations are always there to haunt you, and worse still, they don’t date. Are Life Streams and Life Caching really a good idea?

• Brands and their reputations in the social media space – are they playing with fire?

• Online campaigning, lobbying and hi-jacking of political websites – how it can backfire

If you have some thoughts on these matters or are gagging to be on the panel (more later on who it’s for) then get in touch (see mbites.com/contact) and I’ll have a think.

Meanwhile, if you have a more positive outlook than me, check this out:

Goodness 2.0: How can wikis, blogs, social networks, virtual worlds and other web 2.0 tools create new and innovative ways for charitable and campaigning organisations to work internally, to communicate and to engage?”