Browsing Tag

tools

Complexity: The Context of Identity

The emergence of new technologies continue to change how many of us – as individuals, business folks and our online identities management of our interactions and information is becoming increasingly more complex. Ultimately, online identities can represent people, companies, products and brands. Identity online is becoming more like a house of brands, than a branded house for many of us. The complexity of managing a portfolio of identities/brands is becoming increasingly more challenging as we engage our personal networks, customers and business networks. Context and the complexity of context is making it even more difficult.

Context Defines Identity?

So I was watching The Soup the other day and I was generally amazed at how many of the personalities/identities I actually knew. The problem is I only know of these identities/celebs because of the Soup. I have no other context, except for Anderson Cooper, who wase featured on one of the more entertaining segments in the episode I just got to watch thanks to Tivo. The other thing which has got me to thinking about identity is some work I have been doing with ASC X12 and the context of where the market is, where the organization is and where it needs to go. These two things got me thinking back to how can context of a given set of interactions impact identity or the management of identity.

100_0772 by you.

The Echo Chamber

Context is one of the more interesting challenges of identity and I as a user of many platforms have way too many context sets to manage. I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to streamline my online experience of late, but have been challenged to keep up with the pace of network specific interactions. My initial streamlining was related to getting yet another ID at ping.fm to help keep a consistent pulse across my networks and for that use case it works. The problem with ping.fm is that it is not conversational – you end up with orphaned replies on Facebook, twitter and other social networks.

Leveraging a tool which only speaks AT others rather than listening too is not a good thing for maintaining and developing relationships… With Ping.fm you end up with replies which echo into silence, until 3 or 4 days later when you check in at that given platform. Privacy and conversation are key drivers of the increasing identity crisis folks who are attempting to manage identity online with one way updates just doesn’t solve for.

Do I want my professional network to know the same thing my personal network know? How many networks do I need to update with my the latest picture of my kids?

The 4 P’s of Identity

When thinking about the say 8 accounts I commonly use, the ability to engage AND manage the relationships, responses and outreach can be a daunting task. Beyond the basic administrivia of each account, the challenge of trying to understand how to manage the mix of my activities and platforms continues to grow.

While ping.fm is interesting, it mainly is a broadcast tool, unless there is some well hidden feature I can’t find.   As a tool, it only represents the ability to consolidate presence, not the ability to manage platform capabilities, promotion and placement. Identity as a brand or product is essentially what develops in each of the channels you participate in. If each instance of identity becomes a product, that means as platforms change, people migrate and new capabilities are available on a single platform identity/brand equity is diluted and management gets more complex.

So what are the 4 P’s of identity?

  • Platform – The holder of the ID account from a technology perspective is commonly the definition of a given platform. Typically platforms have unique account management and network capabilities which are not open, for the most part, for third party management.
  • Presence – The capability set typically associated with where you are and what you are doing. Twitter or the Plurk are good examples of platforms which support presence.
  • Placement – Group membership on a platform is one way to look at placement, but as are the ways which you allow to be contacted or how you can be engaged in context of group or platform.  On some platforms you may expose email, others you might constrain to the core messaging option, such as inbox messages or the wall on Facebook.
  • Privacy– Each platform, identity and group has privacy management attributes and rules which need to be managed. The management of privacy is uniquely related to the relationship you have in context of a platform and group.

100_0756 by you.

Why is identity such a challenge online?

If you share content online, it doesn’t go away.   However, if you share something at a dinner table it might be moved from memory, but it definitely isn’t a broadcast or a sustaining reality.  Just imagine if that incredibly stupid thing you said after your 3rd bottle of Silver Oak lived on forever?   It is the broadcast and permanency of content/interactions which make managing context and identity a far more complex thing. As an example, my offline identity is pretty much Jon and maybe a couple of nicknames, each with their own context, but mainly that context isn’t necessarily shared, even if the moniker is used more widely. I recently got a new nickname, Echo, while a seemingly fun name and definitely has an affinity to who I am that identity has no context outside of 3 people, the adoption is getting wider than expected.  While Echo usage is growing, the context isn’t being shared.  On some level the visibility of context is greater and can be shared, not so much in the real world.

The key challenges of managing the 4 P’s of identity are unique to being online and the fragmentation, management and interaction requirements require some type of solution.  Technologies to update, integrate and provide security/authorization are out there, but a great deal of work is needed to actually manage, protect and OWN your data.  Perhaps interoperability isn’t enough, we need to also support portability to better manage identity.


DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut on Vimeo.

Social Media Club: Standards update and Atlanta chapter

Well, I spent the better part of the week just submerged in work, but Aaron Strout and Chris Saad are already syncing up on data portability, Mark Resch over at Cerado is hooking me up with some creative commons folks and the 4 Missions and 4 projects are clearly underway, not just in writing, but in action as well.

So since others are working, I figure I have to continue some momentum on stuff I’ve been hoping to work. I’ve done a fair amount of outreach with limited input, but the input/questions I’ve had were mainly general questions on what some of the standards are, so I thought I would let you know a little more about them, where I actually know something or at least understand via their website.

What is Creative Commons? Well, in their own words:

Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.

In my words, it’s a way to share content and provide the RIGHT sourcing to provide the credit where credit is due. Social media has made access to content easier and represents an opportunity for chaos and CC looks to balance access and creative rights.

What is the Data Portability Project?

The DataPortability Project is a group created to promote the idea that individuals have control over their data by determining how they can use it and who can use it. This includes access to data that is under the control of another entity. Get a creative commons widget

What the heck are microformats?

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

I suspect that explaination doesn’t really do it does it, now does it? (edit/update: that’s an awful lot of does its – clearly directionally correct, but needs a little work) I’m still not sure what microformats mean for the average person, but I know it’s important or it wouldn’t be on the list darn it. My sheer lack of understanding has made this the lowest priority. Trust me, I’ve tried to figure this out and even after going to the wiki I’m still stumped on the value prop. Since I would like to learn before I engage I’ve sent Ben Ward an email – will let you know, but basically microformats describe stuff, for humans first and machines second. I may have also found my way in another way… we’ll see.

One ID/Username might be cool – OpenID please.

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to.

Open Web Foundation

Well, this is a new one which Chris added to the list, but definitely an important one, not sure how it has been overlooked until now, but better late than never. Even tho their mission seems a little lofty, looks like good stuff. Since it is new to the list and seems like an interesting agenda, the outreach is underway. Here is the basic high level overview:

The Open Web Foundation is an attempt to create a home for community-driven specifications. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification.

Since there are definitely no shortage of opportunities to work on standards in the space, any other ideas let me know and I can bring it back to the group, or you could leave comments over at Social Media Club.

One of the other 4 projects is to expand media literacy and part of that comes through membership I would think. So looking to roll out an event in September 4 for Atlanta to start up again. We are finalizing the location, but tentatively it is at Tony’s on Holcomb Bridge in Roswell, other ideas are welcome as Sherry and I look to re-ignite the group with just a little help from others in Atlanta. Should have it solidified in the next week or so…

It’s Marketing! Because they said it is…

Why are marketers so often not interested in doing something new or rethink some of their base assumptions. Too often technology marketers are too “inside the four walls”, a little too technical or distracted to go back and re-examine core assumptions. Should try and do it as much as possible.

One of the biggest challenges/rat holes many marketers get into is being unwilling to make something up or to look at your product/market in a different way. The challenge is how can you deconstruct and repackage something most everyone already has and make it differentiated. Is there a opportunity to create a position on something or highlight capabilities which in an average day might just be something you expect out of a product and call it something new? Pretty common thing for most product and market folks – you hang around a product so long you forget what is the value add. Today’s general market example of this is Pretzel Dip.

I eat a good deal of pretzel’s and I’ve never thought about buying pretzel dip, instead I spend that extra time putting mustard on a plate for dipping and occasionally adding in cheese. Pretzels have just gotten cooler – they have dips now.

While I didn’t purchase the pretzel dip, I was definitely pleased to see someone creating a niche cheese category. The value isn’t the cheese or the mustard – it’s both together. Novel concept – Chocolate and Peanut butter

While you can never get enough cheese innovation – are there technology examples? Sure, I’ll use my hosting provider – MediaTemple.

Grid Schmid

I’ve spent the better part of the last 5 years test driving hosting providers, Yahoo!, Network Solutions, Go Daddy and a few of the other cheap providers – all had some quality of service issue I didn’t like. Yahoo! sucked with anything which required a data base, the others were slow and some didn’t have ANY customer service. After trial and error, I’m now go to my MediaTemple almost religiously, even though it is a little clunky. The control panel requires too many clicks and setting up a redirect is nearly impossible, but I’m not dissatisfied at all.

I am currently a user of a Grid Server, a product who’s sole value prop is we keep your site running. I would think that most hosting providers have some sorta high availability plan to keep sites up, but not that many give it a name. That’s the idea – sometimes just giving something a name is cool marketing.

Once you have a cool name, you can have mini-taglines like the Grid Servers “Clustered Burstability”. That was enough marketing to suck me in for the initial purchase. MediaTemple is naming all kinds of stuff and letting me know about it. It appears they are indeed naming features and infrastructure components.

In theory, with the burstability of my Grid Server, I’m good should I write anything of real interest need to scale a little. After all, I’m in to them $20/mo — Oh but wait – you NEED a container to really make sure your site stays up.

Gotta Have a mySQL Container!

After migrating and setting up my first site, I began to read about the mySQL container in my cPanel. Quick thought – hmmm, what if I do write something interesting and then I get all bound with mySQL queries? Yup, gotta have a container for another $20/mo. So while I think bought another thing I’m pretty sure I don’t need – the entry level mySQL container, I really don’t want to shut it off. So now, whether I need it or not, I’m up to $40/mo in MediaTemple services, mainly because they gave something a name, which convinced me I had to have it without TALKING to a single person ever.

What can YOU Make up?

So as you look at what you do – what is something you do which could be repositioned as a value add if you just packaged it up?

MediaTemple is at it again they have just convinced me that with a reasonably usable repackaging of the user configuration tools as the newly launched uControl I should be happy…

Oddly I am.

Because they said so..