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My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

blog.windsoc.co

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Re: My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

#11

Post by cobralibre »

Fooman wrote: post #3

You worry about annoying your followers by talking about the wrong topic. Sounds like preaching to the choir. Flip the coin. You can be more interesting by providing information or point of view that isn't expected. Embrace your broadness and don't siphon yourself off into well defined silos.

It's not unreasonable to want our communications media to facilitate siloed interaction.

I look at it this way: If somebody I know avoids talking to me about that things that bore me -- say, pro football or New York Times bestsellers -- I wouldn't see that as a lack of boldness or a species of dishonesty; I would see that as a form of consideration for my time.

Re: My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

#12

Post by enjalot »

lusis wrote: post #5

I think I've found a healthy balance. I don't use twitter for generally personal stuff (except for the occasional twitter commiserating with other parents) and I don't use Facebook for any technical stuff. My blog is mostly technical and the only place I'm even linked to the company I work for is LinkedIn. I don't HIDE that fact that the two "personas" are connected but I try to keep a separation in place. My family…

I also use Facebook for personal and Twitter for work/code. I try to spill over a little of each so that my friends can see my work and my peers can see I'm a human. My blog has a mix of technical and personal, but lately it's mostly technical.

I think the author has a point, but I think it should be up to the user to be able to "subscribe" to different identities rather than having to choose which one you will post under. I think stuff like tags and categories will help with this. Until then, I'll just keep making noise, I think if it's signal to someone, it's worth it.

Re: My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

#13

Post by DanielKehoe »

So what's the problem? Bits are in short supply so we can't have multiple websites or social network accounts? I've got two Twitter accounts, one for technical tweets for my peers who are Rails developers, another for personal tweets that mostly just amuse me, and if I got into knitting tea cosies I'd probably start a separate Twitter account for that. Same with Facebook: an account for my old high school friends and their political rants; and another for my professional network, where I feel political attitudes or religious viewpoints are as out-of-place as any other workplace.

The biggest problem with running multiple accounts is a UI issue. Many services (such as Facebook) assume you will have only identity and make it difficult to switch between accounts because they save some state (setting a cookie). But one can use separate browsers or install a browser extension that makes it easy to switch sessions. And many third-party apps (such as Hootsuite) recognize users are likely to have multiple accounts. Heck, the latest version of the Twitter native client allows multiple accounts and even Google is making it easier to set up and switch among multiple accounts.

We just need more developers recognizing that we have multifaceted personalities and accommodating multiple personas for our presence online. No harm in that.

Re: My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

#14

Post by Jun8 »

lusis wrote: post #5

I think I've found a healthy balance. I don't use twitter for generally personal stuff (except for the occasional twitter commiserating with other parents) and I don't use Facebook for any technical stuff. My blog is mostly technical and the only place I'm even linked to the company I work for is LinkedIn. I don't HIDE that fact that the two "personas" are connected but I try to keep a separation in place. My family…

This solves the problem only up to a point: How to group and filter among the hundreds of FB friends, some are family, some are colleagues, some are close friends, etc. FB has a mechanism to do lists, post filtering, etc, but I find it to be clunky so don't use it. The result is like you have all you acquaintances in one room, shout what you want to say, and people who are not interested will tune it out. Not ideal. But I can't think of a better alternative.

Re: My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

#15

Post by wccrawford »

cobralibre wrote: post #8
wccrawford wrote: post #4

Wait, is he really trying to suggest that in real life, he talks to everyone the same way? That as a CEO he talks to clients the same way he talks to his drinking buddies? (Assuming he has them.) Why would the internet be any different? If you want to mass communicate, you're going to have to sort your people into categories and communicate with them according to that. Because that's what it comes down to. Mass commu…

No, he's saying the opposite. He's pointing out that most online communications channels haven't solved the problem of filtering your output to specific audiences as you deem appropriate. For any single service, you're generally either communicating one-to-one or one-to-everybody, with no options inbetween. This is a problem that is more easily managed in "real life" by the obvious limitations of presence.

And easily managed on the web by having multiple twitter accounts or email lists.

I really don't see the issue, and I think that's why nobody has done anything about it.

Re: My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

#17

Post by wolfrom »

wccrawford wrote: post #15
cobralibre wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's saying the opposite. He's pointing out that most online communications channels haven't solved the problem of filtering your output to specific audiences as you deem appropriate. For any single service, you're generally either communicating one-to-one or one-to-everybody, with no options inbetween. This is a problem that is more easily managed in "real life" by the obvious limitations of presence.

And easily managed on the web by having multiple twitter accounts or email lists. I really don't see the issue, and I think that's why nobody has done anything about it.

One big issue for me is that I only have one name. I think it's asking too much of people trying to connect with me to have to choose between four Twitter accounts or 2-3 Facebook profiles.

Re: My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

#19

Post by joebadmo »

Jun8 wrote: post #14
lusis wrote: post #5

I think I've found a healthy balance. I don't use twitter for generally personal stuff (except for the occasional twitter commiserating with other parents) and I don't use Facebook for any technical stuff. My blog is mostly technical and the only place I'm even linked to the company I work for is LinkedIn. I don't HIDE that fact that the two "personas" are connected but I try to keep a separation in place. My family…

This solves the problem only up to a point: How to group and filter among the hundreds of FB friends, some are family, some are colleagues, some are close friends, etc. FB has a mechanism to do lists, post filtering, etc, but I find it to be clunky so don't use it. The result is like you have all you acquaintances in one room, shout what you want to say, and people who are not interested will tune it out. Not ideal.…

I think the answer in a post-FB/Twitter decentralized/distributed social network world is to have transient, easily spun-up and spun-down social networks that you could think of as places.

So, for work friends, I'd make (or join) a social network called WorkBuddies, and I'd have a different one for each context. But you'd take your identity with you, and you'd own your own canonical social graph independent of the people in each network.

Re: My Identity Crisis: Why can’t I be more than one thing on the web?

#20

Post by arunbahl »

DanielKehoe wrote: post #13

So what's the problem? Bits are in short supply so we can't have multiple websites or social network accounts? I've got two Twitter accounts, one for technical tweets for my peers who are Rails developers, another for personal tweets that mostly just amuse me, and if I got into knitting tea cosies I'd probably start a separate Twitter account for that. Same with Facebook: an account for my old high school friends and…

It's definitely a UI issue, in that right now the burden of management of multiple identities falls to users, and yes, developers don't usually include facilities to help. It's a pain, and like Wolfrom I sometimes choose to not say anything at all.

But beyond that, I think it's also a problem of expectations mismatch: on an app level social media is about siloing information by person (or possibly by company), but the user expectation is often that they've siloed information by subject matter.

It's a burden most acutely felt by so-called renaissance men and women (which I'd wager are an over-represented group here in the HN community). There's discrimination towards people that talk about/do seemingly unrelated things, that I think Wolfrom is alluding to. People tend to confuse specialization with expertise, e.g. that a software developer that also does visual design and has an interest in making music, for example, isn't as much of an "expert" as someone focused exclusively on code. Unfortunately not separating your content can have an impact on your credibility.

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