Defragging online identities

Online social networks are a part of our lives in a big way. They have been for years however the pervasiveness and rate of adoption of these networks has reached a level where almost everyone and their dog has a Facebook or other online social profile. Facebook alone has an active membership now larger than the worlds 4th most populous country. I feel like I should say that again. Staggering. What’s more is that it’s not inconceivable that this figure will rise to a 1, particularly if it is able to spread into China.

What all of these sites have in common is a profile. A projection of yourself to the rest of the network, written and edited exclusively by you, the user. So now we’ve all become self publicists, blogging our life under the umbrella of social networking; marketing ourselves to faithfully represent who we are and commonly what we do. It also suggests as Fred Vogelstein, observed in an excellent Wired article that the famous adage “on the internet no one knows you’re a dog” is resonating less strongly.

Role play

The plethora of services I use (or have accounts with) means I also have many associated profiles. Maintaining these can be a pain although in some cases a funny excursion into the past where monikers of our previous online selfs echo in the past having not kept pace with our evolution (RIP Dil8ted, RIP BillBeef, RIP TonyTonieTone, RIP Marquess541…).

This way of speaking about the self may sound a little strange, as they are I, not entities in and of themselves surely? The point being that we can name ourself and assume a character and as that character participate in the online space. As Sherry Turkle pointed out way back in ‘95 “Windows have become a powerful metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple, distributed system…The self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings at different times. The life practice of windows is that of a decentered self that exists in many worlds, that plays many roles at the same time.” Sherry Turkle has researched and written about identity and our online self in great depth and is recommended reading.

With this ability to assume names and personas comes the implicit recognition that we are role playing. Taken to hideous extremes people commit cyber-crimes but more commonly it is the nuances in our interests that separate and motivate us to form groups, in the same way Paul David Hewson goes by the name of Bono. We like to role play whether we think we are doing it or not, if we’re online we have a username, it is expressive and allows us to communicate and connect with people in ways we might not otherwise.

Facebook makes it hyper real(!)

That is of course until we revealed our RL self and got proof about the dog. “Internet users behaved differently on Facebook than anywhere else online: They used their real names, connected with their real friends, linked to their real email addresses, and shared their real thoughts, tastes, and news.” Fred Vogelstein, Wired

This creates an environment of accountability. One expects more of a user, potentially imbuing them with greater trust, e.g. Amazon “real name” reviews, if they can be placed in the real world than an abstract transient moniker and arguably most significantly this changes our expectation when we leave the domain. Facebook Connect makes it easy for their population’s “Real Identity” to persist elsewhere as their blog announcement outlines, “Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.”

So now it is reasonable to expect to find John Smith and Jane Doe all over the web instead of Sureshot and Rach2k. What would the complexion of this evolved real-virtual-web be like and how will we choose to interact as a result? what implications for designing social proof into applications does this present? What risks to identity theft arise? What happens when your namesakes comment, post, flame..?