Getting Found Out, Web 2.0 Style

In a world of Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, our little white lies can come back to haunt us. Will we get more honest, or shut off the feed?

by Sarah Lacy

The other night I was watching a clip from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the iconic teen movie of my generation. It's the scene where Ferris and Cameron are at the Cubs game and TV cameras pan Ferris catching a foul ball. Mr. Rooney, the obsessive high school principal who devotes his day to catching Ferris ditching, looks away from the TV just at that second. Ferris narrowly escapes.

It was then I realized just how dated this movie has become. A kid cutting school these days has a whole range of ways, beyond the chance pan of a TV camera, to get caught. Thanks to social media, there's an online trail of everything we do, with "friends" and "followers" as the audiences of the reality show starring each of us.

Imagine Ferris cutting class today. First, Mr. Rooney probably would have TiVo'd (TIVO) the game and had the chance to replay every hit caught by a fan. Ferris would have to resist the urge to change his Facebook status to "Ditching school today. Who's in?" He couldn't blog about his day afterwards. Nor could he post pictures on Yahoo's (YHOO) Flickr. And the hardest for any Web 2.0 devotee: He couldn't Twitter about any of it—not even convincing that snooty maître d' he was the sausage king of Chicago. (Although he could Yelp about those valets who racked up the miles in Cameron's dad's Ferrari.)

You Can't Hide Anything

The comparison underscores one of the downsides of Web 2.0: getting busted. I'm not talking about the dramatic, life-changing exposés, where a man gets caught cheating on his wife or an applicant doesn't get an interview because of incriminating college-party photos. No, I'm referring to the impact on the seemingly little white lies woven so tightly into our social fabric we don't even think about them anymore—until we get found out, that is.

Everywhere I go I hear of people getting busted because of what they disclose online. Valleywag editor Owen Thomas got additional inklings of an imminent Facebook-Microsoft (MSFT) deal when Facebook head of PR Brandee Barker had friended Adam Sohn, Microsoft's head of global sales and marketing PR, through her social network. Days later, Microsoft announced its $240 million investment in the social network. "Yeah, that was stupid," Barker confesses with a blush.

Of course most of us aren't cyberstalked by Valleywag. More common is a story like Shea Sylvia, a travel and entertainment writer for b5Media. She went out drinking with a friend, and both Twittered about it. She'd forgotten that her boss followed both of them. "Needless to say, he was not impressed with my 'I'm sick' when I called in the next day," Sylvia writes in an e-mail. "Not only did he not buy my excuse, he made me come in and work longer-than-usual hours." Sylvia would never again drink-and-Twitter on a work night.