The always interesting Marcus Brown has initiated ‘Social Psycho, a Creative Commons project’ – which is a crowdsourced work/works of fiction around some interesting questions relating to our increasingly social and networked world.
Dave Cushman has already started thinking about it a bit. I’m not sure I share his optimism, but one interesting example to look at is Hasan Elahi’s Tracking Transcience, which I wrote about back in 2007.
(Incidentally, anyone know how to stop my formatting going bonkers if I’ve embedded a Slideshare presentation?)
(Edit…I seem to have located a lot of random /div tags which were causing it..)
identity
Does Google mean I’m famous?
Just had a boost on a wet Tuesday morning – a name search on Google has always brought me up fairly quickly – but mainly because I worked on a pretty big website within it’s niche.
But having registered www.danthornton.net, and done pretty much nothing with it, I’ve ended up with the eighth result! Take that, owner of danthornton.com, who said they would consider selling and then never came back to me!
The plan was to use that address to accumulate my many networks and conversations, but I still haven’t quite got round to working out exactly how that’s going to work. In the meantime, simply redirecting it to my About page has meant that I’ve got some personal brand presence online that’s totally within my control.
And as Jeremiah Owyang pointed out, there can be big impacts on someone’s online identity and reputation in some circumstances….
MeasurementCamp – and Twitter
Wednesday saw the latest meeting of MeasurementCamp (Big thanks to @willmcinnes for setting it all up and @helenium for sorting out the venue at Dare Digital). It was a bit strange, as I made it to the inaugral event, and then missed the next three for various reasons. There were quite a few new faces in the room, which was good.
Unfortunately both my son and the train service conspired to make me rather late, but I was still able to get a fair bit from the format, which saw groups tackling one of four real world scenarios – it’s great to be applying our skills to something real rather than debating semantics (buzzwords rather than Web 3.0!) as often happens with social media geek gatherings.
And it was quite funny to see how many times Twitter was mentioned compared to just five months earlier – particular as I missed the chance to meet a lot of people, but I was already following everyone in the room except for one (now added!). I still managed to catch up with a couple of people, which was good – and I’m looking forward to the next one.
Keeping on the subject of Twitter, I had the pleasure of chatting to @amandita about microblogging in my first ever academic interview… She’s interviewing a veritable army of people, so I’m really looking forward to seeing the insights she draws out of it…
The only annoying thing was a though that occurred to me after I’d headed back to the train station, about the position Twitter occupies in my online persona – and why it’s probably the most realistic image of me. On other services it’s easier to slip into a certain subset of my identity – either consciously, or just through habit. But the constant and almost instantaneous nature of Twitter means it’s almost impossible to keep up an act unless it’s a real conscious decision – e.g. @amandachapel. And the fact it is a calculated work of artifice is comparatively obvious. The nature of the fake ExxonMobilCorp showed how suspicions could be raised.
Whereas I tend to be fairly serious using LinkedIn. And depending on the recipient, usually fairly serious in email. And Facebook for me is mainly around photos and events with friends, so I tend to be far more sarcastic then normal.
I’m intrigued to see whether other people think they’re more ‘real’ on Twitter, or whether they find themselves slipping into a persona, either consciously, or without even thinking about it.
Is your online identity in your control?
This post was inspired by a request by an individual to be removed from the voting on The Rock Stars of Web 2.0 list on Ditto.
We quickly complied and I want to make it absolutely clear that there’s no malice or irritation at someone wishing to be removed. If it had been an article of a blog post which was in the public interest, things would have been different, but the list is intended to be an interesting bit of fun, nothing more. Although I’d always suggest polite responses will get a quicker reaction.
But it raised some interesting questions about online identity, as the reason given for removal was that the profile listing (Image, name and main claim to fame) ‘was not approved’ by the individual in question. It’s lead me to wonder if anyone can really hope to control their online appearances to only those which are officially approved, especially if they have any level of internet ‘fame’.
A quick Google search for the name reveals many thousands of mentions, images, quotes etc. Are we right to assume that all of these have been individually approved? Or are they seen as valid if they are on established sources, blogs, or media sharing sites? Is it the voting mechanism which prompted the request?
And how would I feel about a similar situation? I’d be happy if I was considered a ‘Web 2.0’ celebrity (which I’m blatantly not), but what if I was at the bottom of the list? (Luckily at the moment it’s Jason Calacanis, who never seems particularly fussed about risking negative sentiment online).
And what happens if it was a list which I found distasteful or offensive? Something which was racist or homophobic for example? Would I even know it existed in the first place, if it didn’t pop up in a Google alert, or someone didn’t bring it to my attention somehow?
So:
- How do I reassure myself I can find every instance in which I appear online?
- Do I need to check the context of every appearance?
- Should I expect to give my approval every time I appear somewhere?
- Should I expect to be able to request my removal and have a prompt response?
The first task is tricky. A Google search will pick up a lot of things, but not all of them. There could be some bizarre story or rumour about me, hidden away on a tiny un-indexed website, that could, theoretically, suddenly make the front page of Digg at any time (It’s pretty unlikely though!). If my online identity and network are what I base my career on, one big article, image, or video could have a big effect on the people that know me, and a huge effect on anyone seeing me or my name for the first time.
That’s why I do tend to check the context if I see or hear my name mentioned somewhere. It’s not about checking mentions are always positive, and getting upset if they aren’t (Like famous actors, I never read reviews!). But checking that things haven’t been mis-attributed, taken out of context, or words put in my mouth.
But I definitely don’t expect websites to seek my approval before they publish anything about me, or for them to necessarily remove it if I complain. And a removal request wouldn’t be triggered by a positive or negative response. It’s dependant on whether the mention is truthful, although I would expect a right to reply for a negative response, and they should be asking for my response before publication. It’s good journalistic practice and also good from a legal standpoint.
And anything I do online is done with the knowledge that it could be re-used, re-compiled, or twisted with, or without my knowledge, and that although technology and good working practices should mean I have a chance to respond to any damaging mentions, hopefully I’m now findable enough that anything out of context will be obviously so, by comparison to my blogging, twittering, facebooking etc. There will be rotten apples online as well as offline, and having control of a brand, even a personal one, will have a limited impact at best.
At the end of the day, perhaps the best way to ensure a consistent online identity is to be open, and swamp anything out of character with quality insights into what you and I are really about?
I’m really interested to hear what other people think, although I’d like to stress this is about identity rather than a place to spam online reputation management services…
(Funnily enough I just logged into Flickr, and found a message asking to use one of my images for an article on lolcats. Having to register to agree to let them publish it, and in the process having to sign up for emails as part of the Ts and Cs is pretty rubbish, but hey, I’m always interested in crowd powered media. And lolcats.)
The consequences of revealing myself online…
It’s been a few days since I switched from my Badger Gravling alias to blogging under my real name. And bearing in mind it coincided with a weekend away from my computer, and self promotion via the likes of Entrecard, I wasn’t expecting to see any kind of change. And looking at Google Analytics and visits via Entrecard etc saw a slight drop due to my blogging drought (albeit just a few days). On the plus side, less visits from Entrecard did see my Bounce Rate decrease.
But logging into Feedburner to check my RSS stats revealed a bit of a surprise. My subscriber numbers have hovered around the same figures for ages, never varying more than 1 or 2. And yet, by changing to my real name, it’s jumped by a significant amount!
It can’t be due to new visitors rushing to a popular post, because I haven’t contributed since, or had a huge audience surge.
In fact, the only other reason I can possibly find is that I have Twittered a fair bit – to the point where I’m almost worrying I can’t sustain Tweeting so much alongside blogging regularly. But that would only work if every single person referred via Twitter had signed up for RSS. It seems a little unlikely, but if not, it’s a stunning recommendation for the power of connecting to like-minded people on Twitter.
So if you are a new subscriber, let me know whether you came through Twitter, or whether something as simple as being open about who I am made you consider signing up? Or was it something else?