Dr Rachel O’Connell, VP of People Networks and Chief Safety Officer at Bebo gave the keynote for the Identity and Trust theme at Futuresonic’s Social Technology Summit. Formerly the director of the Cyberspace Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire, O’Connell was recruited by Bebo to boost its safety profile in the light of various media alerts of the risk of paedophiles grooming kids on the net.

I thought she’d talk about safety, trust, corporate invasion of social network sites, kids’ changing understanding of privacy etc. She didn’t. What she did do was dance around the idea of ‘corporate social responsibility’ defined as ‘safety online’. Now I’m increasingly suspicious of this kind of corporate deflection from return on investment. What I think O’Connell’s strategy comes down to is: ‘facilitate safety by facilitating hits to Bebo which is safe because I work here. This increases brand loyalty which guarantees that Bebo can deliver eyeballs to those advertisers who pay the salaries of people like me and increase the dividends of those who invest in the company’. Maybe I’m just an old cynic but when I hear such people say “social network sites are just aggregators of messages”, I’m screeming, ‘whose messages, whose organisations and for what purposes?’

So, what O’Connell ended up talking about was ‘technology for well-being’, a kind of ‘be well on Bebo’ campaign started at the end of 2007. Bebo has partnerships (the terms of which are unclear) with a variety of support, health, and mental care organisations such as Childline, the Samaritans, Beat Bullying and the Drugs Awareness Programme. The idea has been to embed support organisations into the places where kids actually hang out. Hardly novel … but apart from having a ‘presence’ on Bebo, O’Connell didn’t give any idea of the impact that those organisations may be having online. There’s clearly a research project or three here.

As social networks become more ubiquitous and more closely woven into the fabric of our lives will the distinction between social|work, social|school, friends|teachers break down? I suspect it will. The evolution of networks is characterised by increasing openness. At the moment some of us still seem to be influenced by a vague notion that students don’t want us on their social network. It’s bizarre but that’s what I get talking to a number of colleagues. And I think that idea has stopped us from being more engaged with learning in social network sites. But this US/Them; Ning/Bebo; Facebook/MySpace will disappear. We’ll just all be socially networked in sites with non-existent or permeable barriers.

That was a little bit tangential to Rachel O’Connell’s last ten minutes – I was losing patience and my notes began to … wander!