To the extent that v2 social networking allows people to be themselves in all the different ways they wish to be, the more likely it is they become close to people who see other parts of the world in ways that differ from their own. Critically, though, unlike Facebook or Twitter, that exposure happens in an environment of trust that encourages understanding, not posturing.
It is interesting to think of alongside Ian O’Byrne’s discussion of building up your digital identity and Kin Lane’s exploration of personal API’s. It also seems in opposition to Dave Eggars’ TruYou. I wonder what this means for the notion of a ‘canonical’ self?
I think Ben Thompson gets the broad strokes right. In traditional social media, you broadcast to the whole world. That’s old-media thinking. It constrains what you might want to say, and it makes achieving any sort of consensus difficult. Social Networking 2.0, by contrast, is about having different identities where messages are constrained to smaller groups or communities. That’s what I get with Mastodon and blogs and Imgur and Flickr – but would never get with Facebook, where as Thompson says “having one identity is a core principle,” which is “great for advertising if nothing else, but at odds with the desire of many to be different parts of themselves to different people in different contexts.” Via Aaron Davis.