Experience Matters

2008 Predictions: Identity Crash

Sometimes, having a cool wand can be a career limiting move.

We’re all familiar with the stories about people running into problems when their private and professional paths cross in the online space. They aren’t new, but up to this point they’ve been curiosities to the average web user. My prediction is that this will change in 2008. The coming year will bring the collision of fronts to the online masses. This will be due in no small part to a continuing increase in social network usage. It’s going to be messy in the short term, but in the long term we’ll see real advances in how to design experiences that give people better control of their digital footprints. That being said, we won’t get to that place without a little pain. Read on to see why I think we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Representing yourself in different ways online depending on the context isn’t new. What is new is the relative ease in which people can put personal information on the web, and the level of social acceptance around sleuthing out these different representations of self. Additionally there’s a general malaise around the nuances of what people are sharing and who they’re sharing it with. According to Pew Internet, over 60% of online adults don’t actively limit their online information. So as the features sets of social network applications draw people’s different representations closer together, the average user is blissfully unconcerned with the potential consequences. Not because they don’t see the risk, but because they think “It can’t happen to me.” Unfortunately, without effective ways for people to manage this “closeness” AND smarter system design that helps people to understand the risks associated with this closeness, the likelihood of collisions for the average user will increase.

The party is over!

Imagine a house party where you try to keep to keep all of your various circles of friends in different rooms to preserve the peace. In my case it would only be a matter of time before my wife’s family members ran into the creepy anime nerds, who were in turn trying to avoid the scatology-obsessed basketball fans. My co-workers and boss would be able to watch this all unfold from the living room couch. Yikes!

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/pfJYULYZtp8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

If John Hughes was 20 years younger, he’d make this movie in a heartbeat. You’d howl with laughter and thank yourself that things like that never happen to you. In reality, that eclectic social network you’ve filled full of “interesting” characters is enticing people to mix networks with the digital equivalent of a keg of beer on the front lawn. Not something you’d expect or appreciate when entertaining co-workers.

Im in ur F4c3b00kz, r34din ur pr0filz!

Where this lighthearted romp can becomes serious is at the boundaries where personal and professional networks overlap. Trolling social networks is becoming the new “googling” for prospective and current employees. Googling people became an approved business practice the day they covered it in a HBR case study, so for better or for worse, it’s now somewhat socially acceptable for companies to use the web to learn about current and potential employees. Googling people for professionally-related purposes produces results. The information that Google can dig up is significantly richer then what you can find on a resume or in a HR file. When it comes to information, comprehensiveness matters, and you don’t get much more comprehensive then the information that people put into their Facebook profile.

I think the continued competition in the social networking space is pushing the boundaries of what companies will do to make their networks more appealing to people. They may be seeking to create better experiences within their walled gardens, but out in the wild the impact of these features can be very different. We saw a brief example of this with Facebook’s “Beacongate“, but I’m convinced that this was just foreshadowing for what lies ahead. The boundaries between different aspects of person’s online identity are increasingly transparent and it’s never been more acceptable for people to dig into the lives of others. Some might argue that the erosion of privacy online will soon reach a breaking point. I prefer to think of it as a crash.

Welcome to 2008. I think there might be a market for online identity insurance.