Friday, December 14, 2007
Online Identities
I was amused to see the Twin Cities own Laurel Krahn show up in a reference on one of my favorite blog's articles about multiple online identities.
I don't know if anyone can support all of the multiple online identities at all times -- we all have ones that we use for a little while and then abandon. I've entered items here off and on, depending on how busy my life is, or as I feel I have something to write about. I might use other systems on occasion -- I don't tend to have a lot of instant messaging clients running, but I have accounts on them.
The article in coding horror makes it sound like it's a bad thing that we have this fractured identity -- but I'm not so sure. Do you want every piece of your online self in one bucket? It may be difficult to support them all, but you don't support them all at once. And the person you were five, ten, or fifteen years ago isn't necessarily the one that you are today, and just as you may move from one social networking platform to another so you can do a clean sweep, can help separate that all out. Most of us have separate identities in "the real world" as well, with different social and professional circles, and so it probably shouldn't be a surprise that we have multiple circles in the online world as well.
Especially if you've been online for a very long time, and we have people that have grown up having some sort of online involvement.
I don't know if anyone can support all of the multiple online identities at all times -- we all have ones that we use for a little while and then abandon. I've entered items here off and on, depending on how busy my life is, or as I feel I have something to write about. I might use other systems on occasion -- I don't tend to have a lot of instant messaging clients running, but I have accounts on them.
The article in coding horror makes it sound like it's a bad thing that we have this fractured identity -- but I'm not so sure. Do you want every piece of your online self in one bucket? It may be difficult to support them all, but you don't support them all at once. And the person you were five, ten, or fifteen years ago isn't necessarily the one that you are today, and just as you may move from one social networking platform to another so you can do a clean sweep, can help separate that all out. Most of us have separate identities in "the real world" as well, with different social and professional circles, and so it probably shouldn't be a surprise that we have multiple circles in the online world as well.
Especially if you've been online for a very long time, and we have people that have grown up having some sort of online involvement.
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