The following is to highlight the learning points of the previous discussion.
As mentioned, I support the idea of having multiple identities for a platform, one for personal uses and the other for professional uses. However, after reading Yanyi’s blog post, I developed a new way of looking at this. She mentioned that it may impact professionalism as, “You might end up conflicting yourself when you have too many identities to handle. This will affect other’s trust in you too.” I think this is true, and people should be careful of what they post online.
On Kelly’s blog, she also mentioned that the creation of multiple identities affect credibility and consistency. She shared her experience with linking her Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. Besides that, she also shared how she sees ‘identities’ as a whole in a marketing perspective, which I find is very interesting:
By having various online identities, consumers reveal more about themselves. As such, giving us more information about consumers and therefore come up with a better marketing strategy through understanding consumers buying behavior via identifiers like IP address etc .
Data collection in the digital age has been made easy. Whatever we post online will never be deleted (even if we made sure we did), as they are all stored in the database (Cumbow, 2011). Now I understand why the adults always say that the Internet is a dangerous place.
Another point to note is when users abuse the power of anonymity, bringing rise to cyber bullying, which seems to be a concern of many. I personally feel that this is unavoidable and can only be improved by educating them through causes or adverts. I’ve raised the question for a few of my peers and you can read the comments here: Sylvia & Yanyi.
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References:
Cumbow, V. , 2011, Everything posted online is there forever, even after it’s been deleted. Available at: http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/03/everything_posted_online_is_th.html [Accessed December 2, 2014].
One Identity? Multiple Identities? | Yanyi . on WordPress.com. Available at: http://yanyiyanyi.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/one-identity-multiple-identities/comment-page-1/#comment-4 [Accessed December 2, 2014].
Single or multiple online identities? | kellysayswee on WordPress.com. Available at: http://kellysayswee.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/13/ [Accessed December 2, 2014].
Topic 2 – One or more than one online identity? | Sylvia. on WordPress.com. Available at: http://sylviakangkang.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/topic-2-one-or-more-than-one-online-identity/ [Accessed December 2, 2014].
jeanne 