It seems to me that one of the strange features of the new online social networking world is that we are constantly re-inventing ourselves. I have already spent quite a bit of time setting “myself” up on edna’s latest venture me.edu at http://me.edu.au. You can find me at http://me.edu.au/p/ksmith
I wasn’t very inventive with my identity/name- I was a bit afraid people wouldn’t be able to find me. Yesterday I spent some time joining communities and collecting colleagues. At present the tools are still a bit “raw” - you have to search for people, or investigate the “friends” of people who have joined the same communities you have. I’ve started a couple of communities too - CEGSA for one - and it will be interesting to see if they grow. I suspect an online network can be a very lonely place if no-one joins a community that you inititiate.
But I have been thinking about how many personas I have established in the last twelve months - me.edu, Library Thing, Second Life (I am Smik Chevalier- although I hardly count my avatar as a personality), FaceBook, CrimeSpace, my blog here, Smik’s Learning Space, as well as the not-so-modern mailing lists I belong to like oz_mystery_readers, SATEL, and so on.
I haven’t listed everything but one thing that I’ve come to realise is that, just as in real life, we only feature parts of ourselves in each of these places. And what is pushing us to do it? Which will we still be cultivating in 12 months time? In which will the novelty have worn off?
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I think this is a really interesting question and one that I have looked at over the year, although in a slightly different guise. One questions is: do you behave differently in each different guise? How does behavior differ from that of your real persona - what is your ‘real’ persona? One day…when I get time…I will look at this issue in much more depth!!
I think you do behave a bit differently in each guise Sarah. I feel less constrained in my non-work persona. I guess I try not to be too trivial in myeducationau one.
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