Personas:
One of the main issues with social software as we’ve known it is the fact that they treat you as if you have one face you show to the entire world. In Real Life, we present nuanced “versions” of ourselves to different people, determined by context, trust, etc. We make interaction-specific decisions about how much information
we’re going to reveal about ourselves, and we behave differently in different circles. We wanted a social software that took more of Real Life into account, and this was the key “missing ingredient” we saw. Sure, I can have Friendster for my “hook up” profile, LinkedIn for my “professional” profile, MyPlace for my “band dude” profile, Orkut for my “catch all” profile…but what a pain in the proverbial bum. What if there was one online social tool that let me interact within all my various communities in a realistic and nuanced way? Hopefully SmartCommons is coming close…
Setting up Personas:<ul><li>Under your picture there are buttons for “Edit Profile” and “Edit Personas” …click on “Edit Personas” in case that wasn’t entirely obvious!</li><li>Enter a name for your new Persona and hit “Create new persona.”</li><li>Now you can specify which pieces of your “core” profile you share from this Persona. Notice that you still use the same profile information, you just expose more or less of it. You are still the same person (you can’t create a “persona” that is actually a fake identity…you’d need a new account for that…heheh), you are just using more finesse in how you present yourself within your different social circles.</li></ul>There are some really cool things we plan on doing with Personas in the future*, tying them to personal content management so that you can safely and centrally publish stratified content specific to your Personas…but I don’t want to get ahead of myself…
Other people talking about the 12 Days of Christmas: miniette and jonny baker.
*Should pigs flying overhead begin to crap money upon us.
{Possible pub night tonight at Lion and Eagle. Contact me if yer interested.}