Let’s look at this from a technology tools perspective.
My goal is to separate work and private life.
So my iCalendar has two calendars, work and home. Actually three with the dopplr travel accounts.
Also I prefer to use facebook for personal contacts, and Linkedin for business contact. Plus, I am now a bit strict about friends in facebook, as I want to use it to keep in touch with friends all over the world.
This enables me to post “status updates” for work and private life separately.
But then there is Twitter, which you can use for both. Actually you could build two accounts, one for private and one for work. But then I see my twitter contacts mix work and private life in their posts.
My question is: am I resisting an inevitable change? is it possible to mantain a separation?
If not, many people like me will resist this and possibly stop using social tools altogether. As Lee Bryant often says, now web2.0 is not about sharing with everybody, but about intimate context. But how to combine the extreme usability of social software with profiling of different contexts?
That’s why I like RSS so much. It enables you to bring all contexts together, at the end.
August 28, 2008 at 10:50 am |
This is a very interesting issue.
For example, in my case, I maintain more than two “digital identities”. Basically, i have the personal and the professional, both with real name, but also another one with alias. This is necessary because in some situations, in internet is necessary to keep a non public identity, being a universal network, or the information about you can be find an misused by non-friends.
I think that keeping all digital identities working together on the PC is difficult. This is why i use the Navigator impersonation: Internet Explorer for one identity, Mozilla for other, and Opera for the third one.
August 28, 2008 at 12:26 pm |
I agree with Félix is difficult mantein differents sides of the same identity. I have also more than one identity on the net, because in this way I can share differents thins in different context.
August 29, 2008 at 11:21 am |
Hola Felix y Carlos.
So we have a two orthogonal axis: professional vs private, real vs alias.
But the problem is that it does not depend on me only: my contacts have different behaviours from mine. For example I have business contacts trying to become friends in facebook, which I don’t want.
So I have network effects in place. Contexts are mixing up. I am now refusing friends request from important business contacts – are you doing the same?
Good to know that you also have separated the two.
Gracias
david
September 3, 2008 at 12:11 pm |
What’s private life on the net?
I always use the same identity, but I try to keep apart different contexts. I am thinking of opening a new blog to bring together my public life on Internet. Private life runs on email.