LSMedia or Liverpool student media at liverpoolstudentmedia.com is a brand new website launched by the University of Liverpool's students to promote and support talented Liverpool student's creative written, visual or radio content.

New privacy settings enforce an openness that for many Facebook users will be unwanted and potentially damaging.

As the old media organisations die, there is uncertainty as to what will rise in their place. What is certain is that the replacement will be web based, and may largely depend on user generated content. Twitter is an excellent example of this and has proven adept at spreading certain stories very quickly for maximum effect. For example, the continuing crisis in Iran was brought to greater media attention thanks to dissidents’ use of Twitter to spread news that the oppressive regime wished to keep contained (to the extent that the US government requested Twitter move a scheduled maintenance downtime to allow Iranians to continue to tweet about the ongoing election protests). However, Twitter-storms are largely based either on issues the media cannot or will not cover, such as the Iran election crisis; or are reactions to news stories within the media – such as the Twitter-storm created after Jan Moir posted an article which seemed to suggest that Stephen Gately’s homosexuality was a leading cause in his death.

Twitter news stories tend to be flash in the pan, current events stories that fizzle out quite quickly – with only news stories covering the Twitter-storm and the Google cache to show that they happened at all.

Facebook, the previous media darling before the advent of Twitter, has recently attempted to poach Twitter’s search engine pleasing business model by changing its privacy settings to enforce a new openness in what was previously quite a private social network. Now default settings release all user posted content into the search engines, in the hopes of gaining greater search engine hits and replicating Twitter’s success as a news source.

Where the biggest difference lies however, and where there is likely to be problems in the future, is in anonymity. Despite the fact that Twitter revels in openness, users may still choose to be anonymous (and by and large are). Celebrity Twitter users may be open about their identities, but they already reside in the public eye: while Stephen Fry may have been open about his condemnation of Jan Moir, the thousands that re-tweeted him did it largely behind anonymous screen names.

Facebook however encourages a complete lack of anonymity – users are identified by their real names, lots of users openly post their contact details and even addresses. This was fine when Facebook remained a private, ‘walled garden’ social network of you and your friends; but the new ‘open’ Facebook, with its built in lack of privacy, may prove to be exceptionally damaging.

For example, it may not have occurred to members of the following groups (picked at random from my friends’ groups) that their membership is open to the world (and more pertinently, potential employers):

I say i'm only having a few, and then get absolutely WANKERED!

PARA REG TO LINE WOOTTEN BASSETT AND DO SOME DAMAGE

FUCK OFF! The store is now CLOSED. Keep browsing and ill actually slap you

If 3 million people join gavin and stacey will do another series

When Facebook began its rise to popularity, there was something of a media storm when it was discovered that many people had left their photos open to the public – employers and universities quickly cottoned on. This led most to make their profiles and photos private, however groups and fan pages remain public – including opinions and photos posted within.

Users join these groups to share their feelings with their friends, what many don’t realise is that they are now sharing their feelings with the world. Though privacy levels can be changed in Facebook settings, it is now not possible to conceal membership of ‘fan pages’ from searches.

So before you join that hilarious or morally outraged group, take a moment to think whether you want to broadcast that particular opinion to the entire world.

Facebook privacy settings can be managed here.