Diagnosis of Your Online Experience
I was one of the first kids in my neighborhood to have access to a computer and to the Internet I still remember the Dial-Up melody: my modem trying to connect that it required me a few tries to finally connect and surf on this incredible world of information.
Many things have changed since then. Now my computer fits my everyday backpack, connects wirelessly anywhere I go and I don't even need a power source for half of my day - to say the least. But, in essence, what I do online is still the same.
I remember that the fun part for me back then was to connect with people from other places that had access to the same technology I had and just talk to them about whatever was in our minds. Well, you have to understand that we as human beings are social animals and therefore, when the big ISPs opened up those first chat rooms they experienced a huge number of people meeting up there virtually.
Nowadays, we have forgotten about these old chat rooms and of what they meant to Internet and its expansion. Its functionality was very simple: you type in a nickname and where you're from and you're good to go. No need to sign in, giving vendors a chance to find out more about you if they wanted to.
We have forgotten about that and nowadays the "always signed in" culture is charging a premium price: our privacy. The majority of websites require a full-time sign in status, they are collecting our data, tracking our behavior and much more. But I won't even talk about this now, it will be topic for another post. The question for me now is identity.
Let's take this to an online context: from the 2000+ pages you like on your Facebook profile, how many of them do you really like? From the 1000+ friends you have, how many are your real friends? We are living in a digital dilemma: if you show something online that is different from you offline, you're faking somewhere. If you cover something up, then you must have something to hide. In fact, that's the only way we had until now to protect our identities: if one likes everything or appears to like nothing, both ways it's impossible to determine what one really likes and what one doesn't.
Intriguing, isn't it? And what happened to that mid-term? What happened to the nickname? Our screen name that protected us from being completely visible and also told people something about our personalities? Where are the LonelyWolves and JohnDoes?
In my view, this idea is finally coming back and evolving. While most people are defending anonymous or unidentified profiles for real people, we at Evry'U have rethought the process and defend the idea of Multiple Profiles, which is a more modern approach to the nickname - it's both a nickname + a profile for each different nickname/profile combination you create - and you can create as many as you like. You can define your preferences for your LonelyWolf and choose to show how great a partner you would be to someone. That doesn't exclude the fact that U're into bowling and maybe create a profile called BowlingAlleyJack who as him and not LonelyWolf wants to catch up with someone while he's at his favorite pastime of the week.
These new Multiple profiles (or enhanced Nicknames) give you the freedom you need to express who you are, regardless of being signed in and having people judge if what you're saying is true or not, because in the end, what really matters is you and how you feel about people you meet - you decide who you want in your life for real or who you want to forget about you.
Funny enough, a lot of current my "real-life" friendships started online, and the ones who didn't, definitely extended to this online world: contacts on my phone are not only phone numbers, they have pictures, e-mail addresses, Facebook profiles, Google and Twitter Accounts linked to each of them. So I always caught myself thinking: in what moment did I "transfer" people from the virtual to the real world?
In my opinion, this separation is made more and more seamlessly everyday, to a point where we actually do not acknowledge who we are letting in our lives. And it's funny because if asked, we would totally reply "Yes, I really care about my privacy" and the truth is we are not even aware of how exposed we really are right now.
Take a look at the pages you like on Facebook again... So who's real?
Ciao!
Many things have changed since then. Now my computer fits my everyday backpack, connects wirelessly anywhere I go and I don't even need a power source for half of my day - to say the least. But, in essence, what I do online is still the same.
I remember that the fun part for me back then was to connect with people from other places that had access to the same technology I had and just talk to them about whatever was in our minds. Well, you have to understand that we as human beings are social animals and therefore, when the big ISPs opened up those first chat rooms they experienced a huge number of people meeting up there virtually.
Nowadays, we have forgotten about these old chat rooms and of what they meant to Internet and its expansion. Its functionality was very simple: you type in a nickname and where you're from and you're good to go. No need to sign in, giving vendors a chance to find out more about you if they wanted to.
We have forgotten about that and nowadays the "always signed in" culture is charging a premium price: our privacy. The majority of websites require a full-time sign in status, they are collecting our data, tracking our behavior and much more. But I won't even talk about this now, it will be topic for another post. The question for me now is identity.
Let's take this to an online context: from the 2000+ pages you like on your Facebook profile, how many of them do you really like? From the 1000+ friends you have, how many are your real friends? We are living in a digital dilemma: if you show something online that is different from you offline, you're faking somewhere. If you cover something up, then you must have something to hide. In fact, that's the only way we had until now to protect our identities: if one likes everything or appears to like nothing, both ways it's impossible to determine what one really likes and what one doesn't.
Intriguing, isn't it? And what happened to that mid-term? What happened to the nickname? Our screen name that protected us from being completely visible and also told people something about our personalities? Where are the LonelyWolves and JohnDoes?
In my view, this idea is finally coming back and evolving. While most people are defending anonymous or unidentified profiles for real people, we at Evry'U have rethought the process and defend the idea of Multiple Profiles, which is a more modern approach to the nickname - it's both a nickname + a profile for each different nickname/profile combination you create - and you can create as many as you like. You can define your preferences for your LonelyWolf and choose to show how great a partner you would be to someone. That doesn't exclude the fact that U're into bowling and maybe create a profile called BowlingAlleyJack who as him and not LonelyWolf wants to catch up with someone while he's at his favorite pastime of the week.
These new Multiple profiles (or enhanced Nicknames) give you the freedom you need to express who you are, regardless of being signed in and having people judge if what you're saying is true or not, because in the end, what really matters is you and how you feel about people you meet - you decide who you want in your life for real or who you want to forget about you.
Funny enough, a lot of current my "real-life" friendships started online, and the ones who didn't, definitely extended to this online world: contacts on my phone are not only phone numbers, they have pictures, e-mail addresses, Facebook profiles, Google and Twitter Accounts linked to each of them. So I always caught myself thinking: in what moment did I "transfer" people from the virtual to the real world?
In my opinion, this separation is made more and more seamlessly everyday, to a point where we actually do not acknowledge who we are letting in our lives. And it's funny because if asked, we would totally reply "Yes, I really care about my privacy" and the truth is we are not even aware of how exposed we really are right now.
Take a look at the pages you like on Facebook again... So who's real?
Ciao!