Communications Major

I've just had a few weeks away from my desk and laptop and daily routine of tracking what people are talking about online only to return this week and wonder, did anybody even know I was gone?

In an era of breaking us down into percentages - 99%, 47%, 8% (that last figure is the percentage of adults who use Twitter on a daily basis) - and obsessively counting followers, connections, "friends", page views and hits it's easy to get caught up in "your" numbers and start wondering what - if anything - do they mean? And even, if they matter.

This week as reported by TechCrunch, Facebook users have been hearing rumors that private messages - written in 2009 and earlier - were showing up on public timelines. Facebook investigated the claims and found them to be false and technically impossible to be true.

But users are scrolling down their timelines and revisiting old posts on their timelines...and getting nervous. Why? Out of context, these public messages seem private.