Love It or Hate It? Could Social Media Oversharing End in 2013?

I'll be honest: I like Facebook. And Twitter. I love the chance to keep up with friends and neighbors and coworkers, to hear about the updates to their personal lives, to be exposed to funny quips, videos, articles and quotations, as well as the serious headlines.

And I don't mind saying that I still get a charge out of it when I post my own goofy pictures and thoughts and other people think enough of them to add their responses.

Further, I don't have much patience for people who take a self-righteous point of view about it. I'm capable of enjoying my community in the "real" world as well as the "virtual" one.

But could that change in 2013?

Neil Richards, a privacy law expert and professor of law at Washington University, says yes. In an essay for Wired Magazine's UK edition, Richards calls the current trend as "frictionless sharing" — sharing that happens so automatically online, we hardly know it's happening.

And that's what he's specifically talking about: Tools that allow for a more seamless sharing experience.

"Frictionless sharing is on the rise as social media encourage users to share information automatically for a fuller online experience," he wrote. "Facebook 'social reader' apps from the likes of the Guardian, the Washington Post, Spotify and SocialCam have allowed us to follow, automatically, what our friends are doing online."

He goes on later to write: "We are starting to realise that frictionless sharing is not just a bad idea – it’s a terrible one, whose demise will accelerate in 2013."

He may have a point about some of these "automatic" tools. But I question whether the trend to share on social media is going to do anything but continue to grow.

Do you agree? Are you a strong proponent of using social media tools to share and experience what's going on in your community? Do you see a time when people share less online?