Joe Maloney

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*note: this piece is a work in progress…

While analysts delineate between media sharing sites and social networks to some extent, I believe that relatively little consideration is given to the nature of the network in respect to personas. Let me put forward the notion that some social networking sites aim to enhance real-world relationships, while others support facets of our personalities, defined as personas.

This delineation is epitomized by the two juggernauts of the social network space – MySpace and Facebook.

Why does persona support matter when you evaluate these sites? It greatly affects the nature of the communication (flirting versus open discussions), the tools and applications the users will leverage (browse versus search), and the construct of the profile. These implications directly impact the longevity of the network, the lasting value to its members, and the role businesses can take in the community.

What is a persona?
The term is commonly associated with the concept of a character, an image that one wishes to show or represent. Within the study of sociology and social identity theory, the persona is accepted as a facet of our true selves, and the natural changes in how we present ourselves relative to different circumstances. In other words, we truthfully present ourselves differently to our coworkers than we do to our parents and peers – we just share different parts of ourselves, different information depending on the circumstances.

What is a Friend?
What constitutes a friend? Tom has millions; this other guy named Tom has far less. Because Tom’s own site can’t delineate between “friends”, he is forced to create multiple profiles (a representation of a specific persona) to support his natural relationships. This of course is an inefficiency in the design of the social network that devalues the utility of each individual profile, creates superfluous profiles (leading to inflated profile counts), and makes comparing user counts between MySpace to Facebook akin to apples and oranges.

Facebook does not have this problem of superfluous identities as they leverage domains to verify identity, effectively limiting any user to one profile. That being said, Facebook’s finite privacy controls are limiting while being overly complex.

Privacy and Personas
Being that we share different information with different people in our daily lives, social networks must adopt to this behavior if they wish to become even more engrained in our every day communication, and outlast changes in our lifestyle (eg, from single to married, from student to professional). Finite privacy controls related to tiers or groups of “friends” that are easy to understand remains an obstacle that I have yet to see cleared.

In closing…
Identities, particularly social identities are situational. Our attitudes, norms, behavior, appearance and mannerisms change based on our active social identity… and it is the same online. People represent themselves differently based on the norms of their online social community and group of friends. Therefore major social networks must evolve to be dynamic and and trustworthy. Users will not wish to share information in the same way to all people, so creating flexibility is essential.

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Social Network Analysis : Persona Support