Our Story: Distributed Identity in Web 2.0

Often we think of our online identities in terms of our logins, passwords, and various other ids.  Identity Theft is theft of these things.  But, in terms of the collaborative web, there is a great deal more…our story.

Our identity can me measured by our story and our story is made up of what we do.

In terms of Web 2.0, what we do is:

• Write articles
• Comment on articles
• Modify wiki articles
• Upload media such as pictures and video
• Decorate content with metadata such as tags
• Blog
• Micro-blog
• Contribute to open source

When you join an online community and begin interacting, your story can be told in two directions inward and outward.  The former tells the members of the community who you are by telling them what you have been up to outside of the community.  The latter tells people outside of the community what you’ve done inside the community.  You, I assume, are interested in both directions…I am.  Below is how these directions work in practice:

Inward Identity Sharing

Importing what you do at other sites is usually done by importing from those sites.  You usually do this by giving the community links to feeds and/or profiles from these other sites.  The community can then keep track of what you are doing elsewhere.

Outward Identity Sharing

Exporting from the community is done by giving addresses of your feeds and/or profiles from a given site to other sites.  These other sites can then keep tabs on what you are doing in that community.

Sites like FriendFeed and FaceBook actually do both directions rather well.  Other applications don’t.  FriendFeed , in particular, even broadcasts both directions…acting as a thirdparty broadcaster.

Personally, I think that this is an important dimension to judge an online community.  By honoring your users’ story, you honor them.  This respect won’t go unrewarded.  Users want this because they want their story told…everywhere.

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2 Comments

• 

  By Mark Harai, March 4, 2009 @ 9:10 pm

  This is great insight to: “transparency” – this is how people discover what you are about and a road map to discovering like-minded individuals that you can build a relationship with.

  Kudos,

  Mark

• 

  By kostenlose spiele, July 20, 2009 @ 5:40 am

  one more nice topic in your blog and nice comments too keep it up, If you advise some more related links to this topic.

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