so now i'm sitting here thinking about features i would add to social networking sites like twitter or facebook if i had the chance. earlier i talked about what i would do if i rewrote twitter. today i'm thinking about identity in a social network. in thinking about identity i'm reminded of william shakespeare's paraphrase of the rock band RUSH's song lyrics:
"all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exists and their entrances; and one (wo)man in (her)his time plays many parts..." -- w. shakespeare, as you like it, 1599
when i read this (or listen to RUSH on my phone) i ponder the truth of this statement. most mornings i'm a parent, getting my child out of bed, fed and off to school. some days i'm an office worker. other days i'm an artist. still other days i'm a couch potato. on very rare days i'm a divorcée looking for a fun night out.
but strangely, when i go on twitter or facebook, i'm ALWAYS the same person. and i think that's odd.
it may make me sound like i have multiple personality disorder, but it turns out i like to focus on different things at different times. during the day i like to focus on work. in the evening i can think about hobbies, family and friends. in the evening, some days i'm in the mood to talk about computer programming. other days i'm in the mood to talk about knitting. or movies. or ...
so i'm thinking, why can't i create separate "personas" for my twitter account? if i could, i would probably create a "family persona" for all of the disney / g-rated things i want my parents to know about. i might also create a "professional persona" that talked less about knitting and more about internet protocols. and for when the offspring has been put to bed, then i can pull out the "dating persona" and talk about LGBT dating issues, "intimate" robotics and erotica. i don't think anyone would be surprised that i have these different aspects; and i also don't think anyone would blame me for wanting to keep them separate.
in the past, the way to do this was to setup completely distinct accounts. but i'm lazy and i don't like to remember passwords. so what if we (software developers) started making systems that allowed for multiple personas per user. that way i would have one password per service and not have to worry about remembering so many different passwords. if i had this ability, i would probably have a couple different personas: family meadhbh, work meadhbh, professional meadhbh, social meadhbh and r-rated meadhbh.
it's entirely possible that there could be a "i'm doing something i don't want my boss/partner/mother to know about" meadhbh, so i would want it to be my option whether i publicly linked my r-rated meadhbh persona with any of the others.
to be sure, there are risks associated with this idea. what if you're logged in as your "sunday school teacher" persona and you make a sexual innuendo because you thought you were logged in under your "r-rated college student" persona?
but if your personas are tied to an account with a scarce resource (like SMS messages, mobile minutes or in-game script) it might make more sense. rather than having to shuffle virtual money between your Second Life accounts, you could have your game cash associated with one user account, and then available to all your personas.
i also wonder if, in the future, after we all share our most embarrassing moments on flickr and facebook if prospective employers or in-laws will start to get people a little slack. maybe in the future we'll adopt the convention that someone's personal persona is their private business, even if someone could link your job application with pictures of you dancing with a drunk upperclassman twenty years ago.
so i think the next identity management system i work on will support two classes of accounts: user accounts that own resources and personas that are distinct public identities.
the system can be described with this graph:
- user accounts contain personas.
- user accounts own or control resources.
- personas may be publicly linked to user accounts or other personas.
- resources may be allocated to personas.
- user accounts and personas contain key-value pairs.
- resources are probably represented by key-value pairs.
Another motivation for multiple social accounts is to focus topic-related posts that appeal to a non-general audience, such as virtual worlds, social issues or family news.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely love this. I've heard that the best strategy is to not post anything online that you wouldn't want your mother or an elderly relative to read - but where's the fun in that?
ReplyDeleteOn Facebook, I use lists in an attempt to control who sees what. Although my worry is that someone might mention something I wrote to someone from a list who couldn't see it. Could make for some interesting awkwardness :S