experience matters

Anca Micheti | Critical Mass Calgary

Cultural theorists, from Michael Foucault to Judith Butler, have said it a long time ago:  identity is not fixed and determined by demographics, but fluid and multifaceted. It is, to a certain extent, what we want it to be. It is a performance we put on for the world.

Social media makes this identity performance easier than ever. With more than 400 million active Facebook users and 73.5 million visitors to Twitter each month, it has allowed us to become content producers and consequently public performers of our identities. Every digital imprint we leave on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, every blog post, review or tag is an opportunity for identity play. And who’s to say that each and all of these performances are not “the real me,” even if they’re not necessarily consistent with each other, and maybe each paints only a partial picture of who I “really” am.

Identity play does not necessarily mean faking it. I’m not talking Second Life here, where your avatar can be a 6 ft-tall, busty Amazon with jet-black hair and tight-fitted clothes, when in real life you’re a pretty average-looking homemaker with a middle-of-the-road outlook on life. Even that could arguably be an identity performance, albeit taken to the extreme, because the homemaker may be an Amazon at heart, who just hasn’t had or grasped the life opportunities that could have allowed her to develop an identity consistent with that internal state. But that is a philosophical debate for another time and place. For now, let ’s just say that digital identity is fragmented, multifaceted and malleable. This means that we shape and reveal our multiple facets according to the various contexts, channels and audiences in which, and for which, we perform.

We dived into our online research community, ShopTalk for their take on the notion of digital identity. We asked our members how well they think a stranger would know them, if that stranger had access to all their digital imprints on social networking sites, blogs, media sharing sites, forums, reviews, and even a community like ShopTalk. Here’s a very small sample of how they see their digital identity:

A stranger would see a mother and a professional. They would get right about me that I value my family and my role as a mother, but that I also am serious about being a professional. They would get wrong about me that I am a typical working mom, a soccer Mom type, or any other type that they would think they could fit me into. A stranger would get those things wrong because they would be looking to put me into a type. (Caroline, 32, MI)

A stranger might gain some insight into a person’s buying habits, political affiliations, some of one’s interests and probably the trail of surfing habits. The problem with tying this to who a person is, is that it is at best a series of limited snapshots in time. People are just way too  complex to be defined by any limited method. It’s like an electronic vapor trail trying to tell you what model of jet just flew past, and how many passengers it was carrying, and what their individual end missions are. You think that you can know someone even after years of connection, and yet they will continue to surprise you. That’s part of the human condition. We (most of us) are too variable to define very clearly. (William, 66, DE)

The “real me” comes through very accurately on Facebook… I do however, have an “alternate persona,” and alias if you will, for another site where I often comment. This allows me to really display my warped sense of humor and sarcasm without getting “personally” involved. Facebook is where I am accurate on display… another site with forums and chatting is where the “other me” hangs out. (Kyle, 31, NC)

Thinking about the implications of this notion of digital identity as fluid and multifaceted, I can’t help but notice that it may contradict traditional consumer segmentation, where people are placed in neat little categories, based largely on demographics, and maybe some self-reported attitudinal and behavioral attributes.  As revealed by their participation in social media, consumers may belong to different segments with different instances of their digital identity.

In designing cross-channel user experiences, we believe digital identities should factor in the context and audience of each digital “performance.” For instance, Caroline, who gave us the first quote above, may respond to a mom message on a parenting site, yet targeting her as a mom in other contexts, which she inhabits with her other identities, may not work at all. Kyle’s quote, on the other hand, reflects what many ShopTalkers told us, namely that their Facebook identity is very close to their everyday offline selves simply because many of their Facebook friends also know them offline. This doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t another side of Kyle, perhaps less public, but still inextricably part of himself, that would respond to marketing tactics in ways impossible to gauge through his Facebook profile alone.

So I’m curious, do you know of brands that are speaking to our multiple and fluid digital identities in a successful way?