Second Life Education Research

I just listened to Joseph Jaffe’s Across the Sound podcast. It’s a new media marketing podcast but today’s episode is about identity and marketing and it’s absolutely fascinating (episode #38).  Jaffe and Eric Norlin are interviewed about the problems with identity and internet marketing. It’s fantastic to see the issue of online identity discussed from a new point of view. Take a listen.

I’m not a marketer per se but I spend a lot of time thinking about how to “market” the knowledge offered in my courses to my students. I want to appeal to them as whole people, to engage them and excite them to learn what I have to teach them. So, in a sense, I am a marketer to a rather captive audience but nonetheless I still concern myself with getting their attention and keeping it.

A few ideas from the podcast got me thinking about aspects of identity development I hadn’t considered. Norlin and Jaffe both point out that the more we share of ourselves online the more we increase other’s ability to communicate with us, get to know us, and the more rewards we can reap from our internet use. Personally, I long ago gave up any pretensions of separating my real-life self and my virtual self. I have found that joining the two, being a genuine ME everywhere, is much more rewarding. However, I don’t think this approach works well for all. There is distinct value in being able to test out aspects of identity in anonymous online environments (as I’ve discussed in other posts below). The concept of aggregating all of my online identities into one (as ClaimID offers) disturbs me in a way even though I am ME everywhere I go. I’m not sure I like the idea of total open sharing of all my interests and all of my sub-identities. I wonder if aggregating them would take away that element of experimentation.

However, on the other hand, perhaps thinking of your online identity as ONE identity might encourage today’s MySpace and other bloggers from making tragic mistakes with their online presentations of self. Pierre Levy (in Collective Intelligence) says that evil only occurs online when we forget that there are other real people at the end of the circuit. There’s another version of this wisdom that I’d like to suggest: We only get caught up in the thrill of self-exposure when we forge that there are real people at the other end of the circuit. For example, kids who are shocked when they learn that their parents, teachers, or principal has viewed their blog or Facebook profile. It’s public, people! You put it out there. Don’t be surprised when people actually look at it, read it, and maybe even mention it to you.

Perhaps aggregating our online identities would make us more aware of the total picture that we present of ourselves in the various disparate realms where we interact online. This is something to think about.

Jaffe and Norlin also discuss the ways that the internet brings the public and private closer but I think we need to remember that this exposure is all self created. To a great extent, our online identity is entirely up to us. There will be exceptions of slander and gossipy behavior or misattribution but they are the minority. We live in the age of self-branding now. We are our own best commodity. We should present ourselves in the best light we can, as a product that has value and worth.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Research, Ponderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.