What: Article on the BBC: Re-writing the rules of online ID
When: January 5 2007
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6234663.stm
Reading notes
Young people forget their paswords in Myspace and very easily decide to make a new account, migrate their friends, redisign. Abandon email addresses and profiles. Recent research by Danah Boyd indicates that is a general attitude. Young net users start over with most of their accounts in more places, they do not see their profile as an extensive identity but something to interface with friends at the moment. Adults try to create consistency in their online identitity, but teenagers experimenting with their identities in real life could extend this playfulness to the virtual realm. Not all young users have this casual approach, many invest heavily on their online activities. Young people exploring different aspectsw of their personality through different accounts. A few lessons to learN. it is harder to pin online activity onto a real person. Number of signed-up users is effectively meaningless for companies, not indicator of real people. Many accounts are created just to try out the srevice, in Second Life there are 2 million accounts but only 35 000 are paid for accounts. Some organizations starting to offer tools to manage online identity, prove identity and limit the sharing of personal info.
Comments