Small World Labs

If you’re involved in or use social media, the issue of privacy inevitably comes up. What you choose to share or not share online can become a dilemma. We worry about losing the concept of a “private life” but also are beginning to understand that greater transparency and openness tend to lead to better outcomes, in both our personal and business lives. I have a little personal anecdote I’d like to share that I think supports this.

A week ago Monday, my wife and I drove up to Dallas from Austin to see an in vitro fertility specialist. She and I have been trying to have a baby for a while and we are enlisting the support of modern science. However, as we found, you don’t just jump into in vitro fertilization. You have to be tested to see if you are a good candidate. So, during the past month I was tested and my wife was tested (several times). Last Monday was the last major test, involving a count of the number of egg follicles. And... the results came back positive. We could give in vitro fertility a try this month.

On the drive back (my wife drove so I could work while riding shotgun) I was excited, pulled out my Iphone, loaded up my Twitterific app, and promptly announced to the world that I was “heading back to Austin with the misses after a visit with Doctor Le. Will be placing an order on www.ivfmeds.com.

The next morning, things started to happen. One of our sales guys came by and said, “Sounds like the visit with Doctor Le went well.” “Yep,” I replied, “I’m getting ready to order the medication online but they’re pretty expensive, over $3,000.” Our sales guy, Julian, then told me that his wife was on one of the IVF (in vitro fertilization) boards and knew of all the places online to learn about IVF and find inexpensive medications.

One hour later, I received a call from my wife. She had just logged into Facebook and saw my Twitter post. It had appeared in her “update status” area because we are friends and I have the Twitter Facebook Application installed. She asked me to take down my post about the ordering of the IVF drugs. Normally, I would probably relent on something like this, but as the CEO of a social media company, I felt I had to press a bit. We had already made a conscious decision that our fertility treatment was no longer a private matter and had already told several family members and friends. However, Soledad’s gut reaction was understandably that Facebook was just somehow too much. After all, it was online… She asked me why I wanted to leave the post. I asked her what the harm was. She found none. She asked me what the benefit was. I asked her to wait. She agreed and the post stayed up.

Three hours later I had spoken with Julian’s wife and received an email with several IVF patient message boards, including IVF Connections and Fertile Thoughts as well as the medical area of of a website where mothers often sell unused IVF medications, Free Garage Sale.

In our IVF treatment cycle the expensive drug is Follistim and retail it via an online pharmacy it costs $2,250. So, I checked out Free Garage Sale. An hour later I received an email from Alison. Alison had the exact amount of Follistim we needed, we agreed on a price of $1,000, and she mentioned that she and her husband used to live in Austin. Given that we were talking about a possible $1,000 transaction, I decided to check into Alison. If you travel overseas you may know that a popular con technique used to gain trust is for the con man to tell you that he or she has a family member or close friend that lives or used to live in some particular town or area near you. Proximity breeds trust. So, I looked up Alison’s email on Facebook and found her. I requested to be friends and was approved. I then looked up her full name on Google and found that she graduated from Texas Christian University in ’98. Things added up sufficiently such that in the course of one day, Alison had earned my trust, I was sending her a PayPal payment for $1,000, and I was saving $1,250 on the cost of our Follistim.

I went home and recounted the story to my wife. She was pretty excited.

The dilemma of determining what information is private and what is public is an ongoing one. However in today’s online age of digital histories and search engines, there’s a magnifying glass on what we disclose. Information is more accessible, and often permanent. For some, this causes concern. For others, this provides an opportunity, an opportunity to embrace transparency, extend conversation, leverage the collective wisdom and experience of others, and optimize our decision making.

This opportunity transcends public and business boundaries. In my wife and my personal situation, it helped us quickly optimize a buying decision that saved us $1,250. But these same tenets apply in the business world where we make decisions regarding the vendors we work with, the products and services we buy, the people we hire, and the customers we seek. By embracing transparency, extending conversation, and leveraging the collective wisdom and knowledge of others, we become more responsive as vendors and competitive as businesses.

If you have any thoughts or similar experiences, I’d love to hear them.