<\/a><\/p>\n

Get past the awkward and dark predetermined searches like \u201cI hate my boss<\/a>,\u201d \u201cI lost my virginity<\/a>\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m not a racist but<\/a>\u201d \u2026 and look at what youropenbook.org<\/strong><\/a> presents to us as journalists.<\/p>\n

While the 105 million+<\/a> people on Twitter<\/strong><\/a> know their tweets are default set to public, they are still a fraction of Facebook<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s 400 million+<\/a> users that post T.M.I. they\u2019d only share with their closest 300 friends.<\/p>\n

Facebook gives you a false sense of private… but by now you should know better.<\/p>\n

The walls around the Facebook garden have crumbled because of the company\u2019s seriously flawed privacy settings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And while as a user you should be freaked out and proactive about your personal settings (and more conscious of what you are posting!), as a journalist this is presents an incredible, unfiltered opportunity to access your community on a diversity of topics. <\/p>\n

Hold your nose and thank youropenbook.org for making it easier to access your the community on Facebook \u2013 for better or worse.<\/p>\n

You can now quickly query what\u2019s on the mind of the millions of users that are sharing their raw opinions about any topic\u2026 sadly, they usually think it\u2019s \u201cprivate,\u201d often sharing their opinions with their social guard down.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a quick search on the some newsy topics.<\/p>\n

Arlen Specter<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Bangkok, Thailand<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Illegal immigrants<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Even boring old healthcare<\/a>.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to the site and do a search on something related to your beat or community. Who knows how long this tool will actually last (Facebook has sued before<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But while this is still around, look passed the initial shallowness of the tool and look at the possibilities that help you improve your journalism.<\/p>\n

Oh, and do yourself a favor and check your privacy settings on Facebook<\/a>\u2026 come to think of it, just check your privacy at the door before you log onto the Web. It\u2019s all public\u2026 whether you like it or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get past the awkward and dark predetermined searches like \u201cI hate my boss,\u201d \u201cI lost my virginity\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m not a racist but\u201d \u2026 and look at what youropenbook.org presents to us as journalists. While the 105 million+ people on Twitter know their tweets are default set to public, they are still a fraction of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,24,25],"tags":[47,244,251,91,101],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webjournalist.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}