My second attempt in creating categories in the concepts of virtual identity.

Identity 2.0

A word to indicate the difference between the old identification process and the upcoming new one, check wikipedia for more details. Examples of Identity 2.0 are

Sxip

Sxip are the builders of an identification protocol for access to multiple services, or in their words:

the Simple, eXtensible Identity Protocol is the power behind Identity 2.0. SXIP is a simple mechanism that gives users control over their online identities and provides websites with the ability to construct rich user-centric relationships.

ToWatch: OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0
ToRead:, Digital ID: How are you managing?, The semantic web, digital identity, and Internet governance
Weblogs: Identity 2.0

Microsoft Identity Metasystem:

The Identity Metasystem is an interoperable architecture for digital identity that assumes people will have several digital identities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations, and providers. Using this approach, customers will be able to continue to use their existing identity infrastructure investments, choose the identity technology that works best for them, and more easily migrate from old technologies to new technologies without sacrificing interoperability with others.

Blogs Identityblog
ToRead laws of (online) identity

More information about different identity protocols
tiara.org » Identity 2.0 Bibliography
Pushing String » The long identity tail

Reputation

EBay Feedback

The Feedback Forum is the place to learn about your trading partners, view their reputations, and express your opinions by leaving feedback on your transactions. Such member-to-member comments help the millions of buyers and sellers in the community build trust and share their trading experiences with others.

ToRead:
The Value of Reputation on eBay: A Controlled Experiment
Reputation Systems

Slashdots Karma

Slashdot has created a way to give more experienced users more control

Score is displayed next to each comment. Additionally, any user may set a personal preference to exclude the display of comments with low scores. Users acquire “karma” based, among other things, on the scores of their comments, and karma affects a user’s powers. Almost any user may become a moderator, although this status is temporary; thus the average user is not able to vote on any comment. Once a moderator uses up his votes, he returns to the status of ordinary user. source: Reputation management

Preople Rank

Preople.com The Preople Rank is based on how many times your name is mentioned online, a good way in testing your online brand (I still score very low at 169)

Identity connection

Thanks to all the web2.0 tools like flickr, del.icio.us, lastfm, wordpress and myspace it’s getting easier and easier the question arises how does one tie them together.

Opinity

Opinity belongs also in the reputation category, has some build in extra glue to put flickr, myspace, del.icio.us etc. on one page. Is has a build in check to prove you are the owner (or at least have the passwords) of those identities. Thanks to the possibility to show your personal flickr and del.icio.us feeds you could say its a user-friendly version of the personal portals some technical wizards have build. I think that if they keep on building, and add more websites and communities to verify with, it would be a great help to create a stable online identity. Check my personal profile here.

ToRead:
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
You Are What You Post

ClaimID

ClaimID Looks a bit like Opinity but has not the possibility to have proven or unproven ID’s And thereby claimID doesn’t give you a real proof of who you are, But proof is not where it’s about on ClaimID. It’s more as an easy way of making your own personal portal into your online world. One of the advantages the claim is that you have to option to give your vision on perhaps negative articles published about you on the internet. It’s a way to talk back if your future boss googles you on internet. (my claim id)

ToRead:
Identity and the Web: Information Science Must Pay Attention
claimID Best Practices

Gravatar

Gravatar Is a wordpress plug-in that checks the email address you use in your comments with the gravatar database and returns (if it’s exists) the linked image. The gravatar gives you a feeling of being one and the same person in different places on the web. And is a simple answers on the problem of the (feeling of a) fragmented identity.

ToWorkOn

Still have to check out these site, expect an update later.
iKarma and Superglu

Personal Portals

A do it yourself approach: You can tweak wordpress (or other weblogs) with plugins that pull in the rss feeds from your other web2.0 accounts (like flickr, del.icio.us and last.fm)

shauninman.com/plete/ A great way of putting as much information as possible in a delighted way

mattbrett.com/ The first blog where I really noticed it. Having flickr photos, music, portfolio-items, posts, comments, quick links and much more, all on one page.

http://veerle.duoh.com/ beautifully designed start page

Other examples
jaredigital.com/
lisamcmillan.com/journal/

Further reading

Interesting WikiPages on this subject :Online identity, Digital identity and Reputation management.

This post was created out of other posts on my weblog:

Categories of Virtual Identity
Identity (Virtual and Technical)
Identity summary
The Personal Portal

(this post has an update at Categories of virtual Identity II)

To create some order in Virtual Identity I tried to catogorise them (although I understand that it’s an impossible task) On Opinity they made 4 categories

Opinity Categories
1. Commerce (Ebay, Yahoo!, Amazon)
2. Dating (Yahoo!, MySpace, Friendster)
3. Community (Flickr, del.icio.us, Yahoo!, MySpace, digg, LiveJournal.com)
4. Games (Yahoo!)

and two “other”

I blog
II e-mail address

If there is a wish at Opinity to be bought by yahoo they are not hiding it, or is it just that Yahoo! is indeed the biggest social company? (as suggested by this article)

Since I’m not into online gaming, nor dating, i will stick to Commerce and Community. I created my own categories in the virtual identity

My Categories
1. Knowledge (As there is in writing and blogging on particular “scientific” subjects)
2. Technical (Like knowing for sure that an identity is real Opinity and Microsoft Identity Metasystem)
3. Economical (As there is the EBay Feedback)
4. Social (MySpace, Hyves, weblogs, MSN)

So why try to categorize it, well partly for my Thesis i need to be clear on which particular subject of identity I’m going to work, right now I think its the most vague one Community / Social. How is ones identity created by interaction with other users (and applications). And still then it’s not possible to talk about the social community as Kim Cameron points it

digital identity is related to context, and the Internet, while being a single technical framework, is experienced through a thousand kinds of content in at least as many different contexts (source)

I think it’s good that i gave virtual identity some borders although there is still a big shared field with the other categories. The remarkable thing is perhaps, that these categories are different from the offline identity categories i would make for myself. I would say I’m a boy, a student, a friend, an employee and a housemate. More roll based categories, while my virtual categorisations is more reason driven? Perhaps an interesting research project would be “how do people divide their virtual identity” (interesting but not mine). An other question is why I haven’t found anything on Instant Messaging, a research subject for comming week.

(this post has an update at Categories of virtual Identity II)

One of my thesis proposal questions was “How do people deal with online identity, and how can the problem of both trust and a fragmented identity be solved” Answers started to roll in with this presentation about identities, it was almost a visual explenation of my thoughts. When I started searching I found some interesting links. Here’s a little report of my journey (which can be followed on del.icio.us)

Sxip and Sxore

Not entirely getting there story already but lets just copy and paste it from their website: Sxip:

the Simple, eXtensible Identity Protocol is the power behind Identity 2.0. SXIP is a simple mechanism that gives users control over their online identities and provides websites with the ability to construct rich user-centric relationships.

An intresting wordpress plugin build by Sxip is sxore, it allows you (and your visitors) to have the same identity on multiple weblog comment posts. Or as their website points it:

Sxore is an identity and reputation system for blog authors, readers and commenters. By acting as an intermediary between blog posts and comments, sxore provides a framework of identity for participants in the blog dialog.

There are still some weak points, like the storage of comments, and the redirection to another page to post, but the fact that I could use my Flickr screen name to get an thumbnail at my comment made it all up.

ToWatch: OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0
ToRead:, Digital ID: How are you managing?, The semantic web, digital identity, and Internet governance
Weblogs: Identity 2.0

Gravatar

Gravatar Is a wordpress plug-in that checks the email address you use in your comments with the gravatar database and returns (if it’s exists) the linked image. or in their words:

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites.

The gravatar gives you a feeling of being one and the same person in different places on the web. And is a simple answers on the problem of the (feeling of a) fragmented identity. A critical point could be the extern hosting of the gravatar images (as you can see on this gravater plugin blog)

Opinity

Opinity is the first attempt that i came across, that tries to combine all of your identities (flickr, myspace, del.icio.us etc) on one page. Is has a build in check to prove you are the owner (or at least have the passwords) of those identities. Thanks to the possibility to show your personal flickr and del.icio.us feeds you could say its a builderfriendly version of the personal portals some technical wizards have build. I think that if they keep on building, and add more websites and communities to verify with, it would be a great help to create a stable online identity. Check my personal profile here.

ToRead:Claim je identiteit, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, You Are What You Post
Rivals:claimid.com, iKarma, Superglu
(thanks for Ymerce for these links)

ClaimID

ClaimID Looks a bit like Opinity but has not the possibility to have proven or unproven ID’s (there is no need to let ClaimID login in your websites) And thereby claimID doesn’t give you a real proof of who you are, I could have as easily made a Jan Peter Balkenende ID as I could have made my own. But proof is not where it’s about on ClaimID. It’s more as an easy way of making your own personal portal into your online world.

ClaimID is a service that lets you manage your online identity. With claimID, you can track, classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information that is about you online, giving people a better picture of your online identity and influencing search engines. ClaimID gives people, rather than a search engine, control over their identity.

The problem hereby is that it’s true that ClaimID gives you the possibility to manage your online identity, but that it doesn’t change the results of a search engine.(As also augmented in their faq) So I think it comes close to a startpage where to subject is you. An easy to build person portal, without any claim for “real” truth. They give how ever the awareness of how important it is to know and “control” your personal information.
ToRead: Identity and the Web: Information Science Must Pay Attention, claimID Best Practices

Sites of Interest

Microsoft Identity Metasystem:

The Identity Metasystem is an interoperable architecture for digital identity that assumes people will have several digital identities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations, and providers. Using this approach, customers will be able to continue to use their existing identity infrastructure investments, choose the identity technology that works best for them, and more easily migrate from old technologies to new technologies without sacrificing interoperability with others.

Blog of interest is the Identityblog written by one of the co-writers of laws of (online) identity the research report where Infocards is being developed on.

EBay Feedback

The Feedback Forum is the place to learn about your trading partners, view their reputations, and express your opinions by leaving feedback on your transactions. Such member-to-member comments help the millions of buyers and sellers in the community build trust and share their trading experiences with others.

According to research the eBay reputation is already worth 7% of eBay’s trading value. On this subject many papers are written: The Value of Reputation on eBay: A Controlled Experiment and others I found on scholar.google.com (still reading them, probably expect a post later)

Intresting WikiPages on this subject :Online identity, Digital identity and Reputation management.

(this post has an update at Categories of virtual Identity II)

I already absorbed a load of articles about identity and trust, let’s see if I can categorize them.

Identity (Philosophical and Social)

From Descartes: “Cognito, ergo sum, I Think therefore I am” to the postmodern visions of Lacan and Baudrillard, I started out making a little history line with the main philosophers and socialists of identity.

Philosophy My handy list of philosophers, their main identity issues, and some read on links.
Movements My little copy n past list with the main western philosophical and social movements.

Preople.com The Preople Rank is based on how many times your name is mentioned online, a good way in testing your online brand (I still score very low 169)

Identity (Virtual)

On virtual identity I already wrote some posts.

Trust in Blogosphere A suggestion about how trust is created in blogosphere.
Branding yourself How to turn yourself into a brand and beat your competitors.
Personal Identity On how identity is created, and how it works in virtual society.
The Personal Portal how to keep track of the second me.

And reading some books and thesis

Personal Identity (John Perry 1975)
Virtual Politics, Identity & Community in Cyberspace (David Holmes 1997)
Life on the Screen (Sherry Turkle 1997)
Emma thesis: “I Am online: Presenting myself at work through a website”. (Raphaël Mazoyer)
Emma thesis: “Exploring of Brand-defense Tactics.” (Celia Rosa 2004).

Identity (Virtual and Technical)

I was already reading about eBay’s reputation manager and will hopefully write a post about how commercial reputation differs from bloggers reputation.

And yesterday I found Sxip Identity a company that’s building a simple, secure, and open Identity solutions for the Web. A must see on this subject is this presentation about what Identity is. And the weblog identity20 on the same subject. an other interesting weblog on the same topic is the identity blog by Kim Camereron and his paper about the laws of (online) identity which is also one of the foundations of on the Microsoft Infocard system. And not to forget Sxip’s little brother sxore a wordpress plugin to identify your commenters. And another solution is Gravatar your online shared avatar.

I here by present you my temporary thesis proposal

Description of the individual project part:

I want to explore the meaning of virtual personal identity. How one’s self is created on the internet and what the effect of being online is on the understanding of self.

Just like companies since the fifties, people try to concentrate their identities under one name at one place. Personal branding, or to put it in one line: Personal image construction as an answer to postmodern identity fragmentation

My project will be on proving/ testing my assumption. And build an experimental test case on it

Description focus of thesis part:

The focus of the thesis will be on what identity is. How it has merged over the years and how the internet is giving new meaning to it.

How people deal with online identity, what has trust to do with it. And how can the problem of both trust and a fragmented identity be solved (And does it need a solution)

Research how companies deal with their identity and how it can be compared with people doing the same thing.

Came already a long way from my pre-proposal

Een verslag van de masterbeurs in de jaarbeurs in Utrecht, mijn doel was om en informatie over studeren in het buitenland te krijgen (algemeen zowel als specifiek), over de financiering van deze studies, en ook gelijk de Nederlandse universiteiten maar even uit te horen.

Nederlandse Universiteiten

Tilburg:Bedrijfscommunicatie en digitale media kernwoorden: digitale communicatie, multimedia evaluatie, communicatiecases, onderzoeksvaardigheden, onderhandelen, scriptiekring, interactiviteit, en zelfstandigheid, en paar zinnige en paar loze kreten dus.

Leiden: Media Technology The learning goal or objective for the master programme in Media Technology is getting to know the latest technologies, to realise their values, to make use of creative knowledge and successfully creating multidisciplinary projects. Keywords: creativity, innovation, technology and media.

Utrecht: Nieuwe media & Digitale cultuur Master vanuit de kunst en cultuur hoek. En zie ook deze pagina

Maastricht: Master Arts and Sciences (AS) en Master Media Culture (MC)

Amsterdam: Nieuwe Media Master(journalistiek en media, Journalistiek en communicatie wetenschap, communicatie wetenschap)

Buitenlandse Universiteiten

Goldsmiths London (UK) hebben verschillende media studies en zitten centraal in Londen

University of Kent (UK) Hebben niet direct een passende media studie, maar sturen nog informatie op. Hebben wel duidelijke informatie over studie faciliteiten, zoals prijzen voor campusverblijf (vanaf 69 pond per week)

Edith Cowan University (Australië) School of Communications and Multimedia

Master of Arts in Communication (Research) Canberra Australia

Hobsons Study service (UK) Study UK een organisatie die informatie levert voor studenten die in UK willen studeren. (en een goed doorzoekbare website hebben

Algemene informatie

the official master guide boek aangevraagd maar ook de website geeft zeker concrete nuttige informatie

Nuffic Een non profit organisatie, die verschillende fondsen voor verder studeren in beheer heeft, en informatie geeft over studeren. Flyer mee genomen van vsb-fonds en een bijbaan in het buitenland en een algemeen boekje studeren in het buitenland meer info op wilweg.nl

Studyworld Organisatie die helpt bij het studeren in het buitenland. De medewerkers van StudyWord staan je graag te woord wanneer je vragen hebt.

Abn Amro heeft master leningen voor studenten. Zodat je zonder financiering door je familie toch kunt gaan studeren.

Introduction
Knowledge can be found in the works of experts they said. At first it sounded quite logical to me, experts where the people that everyone trusts, the ones that publish important articles in important magazines. Than the doubt came, experts in the old media are quite easy to recognize. But how does one recognize one in new media? Especially those homemade experts that use a weblog for their knowledge transfer. After several posts I think I found a method to judge expertise on. Expertise can be judged on content, context and design.

Content:
The simplest and the hardest one: Your message that you try to put trough should sound logical to me, and be well supported. I should get the feeling that you know where you’re talking about, and that you took the time and effort to put it in the right words. And off course it should be without any spelling errors, grammatically correct and well written.

Context:
The site that link to you
If a site that people trust links to one of your articles, the reader is more willing to put time and effort in understanding your story, because s/he came from a trusted source s/he relies on the acclaimed expertise of that linking source. (Compare it with a publishing house, if a publisher you like and trust publishes a new book, you at least give it a try.) Some online examples of trust creators are 9rules, DutchDirections and Emerce and it’s blogging partners.

The site’s you link to
When you have read the same sources as I trust, we have something in common, and you show that you know where you can find the sources that matter in a certain field. (To be compared with the bibliography at the end of a paper a book or research report.) And if you haven’t found site’s to link to, do some research in finding site’s that acclaim your vision

Your name
If people remember your name and have a positive association with it, they are more likely to read your articles and are more willing to believe your visions. (Compare it with the book of a famous writer, or if you see an e-mail from your boss)

Transparency
Just like in real life you want to know with who you’re dealing. Therefore in my opinion some transparency is desirable. A way to reach that is to give some insights in who you are and what drives you. (for example my del.icio.us, my blogroll and my photos by giving you that information, you can at least see what interests me, and in case of Flickr the likelihood that I do exist increases)

Design:
Web design
The design of your site, how can I take you serious if you don’t even take your presentation serious. It’s perhaps because I’m a designer but I do trust sites that put time and effort to display their content in a way that it’s easy readable more than the once that obvious didn’t care.

Layout
And especially text layout, although this is also a point of writing style. If your text is one big story without any paragraphs, lists or quote’s. Your vision can be world shocking, but if people won’t read it, it’s still noting

Conclusion
After getting these three quantities of presentation in words, I found out that you can use them for almost any example where trust is involved. If you want to know if I can be trusted, you listen to my story(content), you ask your friend if they know me(context) and you check how much attention I paid to my appearance (design).

note 1: If this sounds so obvious to me, why hasn’t any one told me it before.
note 2: As you can see context is the biggest list, is this because you can consider the internet as a medium of context?

Credits
This post wouldn’t been possible without reading the following articles:

Discovering the iceberg of knowledge work: A weblog case (Efimova. 2004).
I Am online: Presenting myself at work through a website (Mazoyer, R. 2002)
The Cathedral and the Bazaar (Eric Steven Raymond, 2000)

In my opinion in these wild post-modern times, where everyone on the internet can be a 20 different persons, there is a need of focus and trust. One good way of regaining trust would be consider yourself as a brand. Your name is the reason why people trust you, and will give you the attention you so desperately want.

I found two papers that had at least the right words in there title’s

Branding Yourself (Richard Snodgrass and Merrie Brucks)

The Brand Called You (Tom Peters)

Although both articles weren’t what I hoped for, it gave me some clues on branding and personal branding. Here a small summary of both articles

Brands came up in the consumption boom of the 50’s, when the physical differences between products were becoming increasingly small. (On cyberspace there is in basic even no physical differences between people/products).

One of the reasons people should consider their self’s as brands is that readers will determine on your name how much time they will take in reading your articles and how serious they will take your points of view. The brand is a promise of the value you receive. (like the name of the e-mail sender gives you an idea of the value you receive from the time you spent on reading the message)

A brand is a abstract notion associated with a company or person. It is your personal header. Second follows your function (slogan) than a small description of who you are, your CV and eventually your work in this world.