Blog 3 - Contemplating my Online Identity

            My identity online is something I’ve given much thought to, not only in all my classes in MCC, but also on my own or in discussion with friends and family. I find identity and self-presentation fascinating, especially in social media sites, which act as a sort of “perfect storm” of identity mediation.

Personally, I’ve never been one to “list” off tastes, although I did have an embarrassing phase where I’d list what I believed to be quirky or weird things. Cue me as that jerk, “Oh, I just love cardigans, bright nail polish and Star Wars!” See? I’m irreverent and you can’t put me in a box! Cue the eye rolls. While I am (thankfully) out of this phase and no longer list tastes, I do think links I post speak to my tastes in different way. Whether it be the content – a music video, article, show clip, etc- or the source, it is saying something about me. If I post a clip from Bill O’Reilly (I don’t) it says something different than if I post an article I liked on Jezebel or The New York Times.

Further, not only do I find that my friends and I have similar tastes, as indicated by the endless links we share, but I also gravitate towards people who like or discuss content that I like, as well. For example, I had classes with a girl, and liked her, but we bonded as she would post 30 Rock quotes and stills, and it was really from Facebook and Twitter that we started to hang out “IRL.”

            As I’ve aged, I change my information less and less, mostly because the information provided is the bare minimum. I have a vague Twitter profile, although I do maintain a separate, public one for class, since I like to tweet without hesitation on my private one. When I was younger, however, I changed my profile practically every hour. My AOL profile felt to me as the only “true” extension of myself during the beginning of my angsty adolescence. I needed to change my “Relationship status” every week to reflect the changes of my 12-year-old love life, and if a new quote inspired me, I needed to share that, too. I grew out of that eventually, with a brief stint putting bad alternative rock quotes as my AIM away message, and went completely in the opposite direction.

Now I hate sharing any information,  and am active more in communicating with others than in changing my pictures, information, statuses, etc. I’ve become very cynical about much of this action, as well. Someone who constantly posts statuses or changes their relationship status often I see as engaging in a twisted sort of publicity stunt. Sometimes I fear that Facebook, MySpace, AOL, Twitter and other sites have given us this constant platform for our voices, which while great, has blinded us to the value of meaningful silence.

 

Ceci Diaz 

Building Identity Online

Given that I’m no longer present on Facebook, I was skeptical about how I might respond to this blog prompt. However, I am active on Twitter and Tumblr, and while they do not have the traditional profile view as Facebook they are still projections of self. First, I believe it is important to mention that as a Twitter user I have two accounts – a private one for friends and, oddly enough, work, and an alternative one for this class. My Tumblr situation is much the same: I have one blog I post on for a class and another which is for personal writing, photography, and general debauchery. The private one is littered with images on naked girls, tattoos, bicycles, potty-mouth hip hop, and intimate blogs about my oh-so-cool 21-year-old life. If my Business of Media professor stumbled upon this blog instead of the one detailing the finances of the magazine industry, I'm sure he'd be a little more than surprised. I believe this is a strong example of what boyd and Marwick are talking about when they discuss “context collapse”. By separating my accounts, I am able to project one image to my friends, peers, and select followers and another (completely different) image to my classmates and professor. I recently started following (on Twitter) a couple writers at my internship, and they in turn requested to follow me. While I do use this account to track news stories, it’s also my outlet for snide remarks and the occasional, “I miss my ex”. These projections, while normally intended for friends, end up on my coworkers’ timelines, creating the context collapse discussed in “Social Steganography: Privacy in Networked Publics”.
Aside from these formats, I also maintain an OKCupid profile. Newly single, I am not very engaged with the platform and therefore my profile is vague and lacking much depth. I figure if the little that I have posted about myself is intriguing, than a person messaging me must be truly interested in knowing more. I’m a bit apathetic as to what happens on OKCupid as I don’t really want to meet other people, I just feel obligated to. Is the construction of such a profile an act of false identity then?
I remember hen I did have a Facebook profile, I carefully selected the quotes, books, music, and photos I posted to represent me. I don’t believe the selection of certain things makes you necessarily less genuine, though I understand how the act of leaving certain titles out is a sort of censorship. On the other hand, I don’t see how one could possibly convey the entirety of himself or herself on a site like Facebook or OKCupid. Isn’t that why people hang out offline, to get to know a person better? Can you really know someone from there online profiles alone? In addition to the careful selection, there was also quite a bit of updating taking place depending on changes in identity: a new hair color, a fresh tattoo, the introduction of a relationship. Toward the end of my Facebook life, I was mainly using the site to share articles and photographs I found interesting. Since the birth of my Tumblr page, however, all these posts have found a new home. Facebook is dead to me. Perhaps I feel I no longer need to keep tabs on my high school friends nor really care anymore about projecting a certain tailored image to 900 "friends". Maybe I've outgrown the platform.

Sarah.

Blog 3

 Last winter I was participating in a residence life conference where we all had secret buddies to facilitate bonding. Since most of us had ever met in person a lot of people utilized some time-tested facebook stalking techniques in order to bring appropriate and useful gifts to the conference. Incidentally, I wasn’t one of those people and my buddy received a generic array of small gifts.

 

However, the person that had me as a buddy did research me through my facebook account and surprised me with a gift taken straight from the interests section on my profile page. It was a startling amount of Sour Patch Kids candy, and though I do generally enjoy that kind of candy, I had no idea how he knew about my slight preference for Sour Patch Kids. Even when he confessed that he checked my facebook profile, the only thought running through my mind was “Where on my facebook does it say that I like Sour Patch Kids?”

 

The point of this story is that I don’t actively manage my facebook profile, a fact that I didn’t realize until an almost stranger was presenting me with a packet of Sour Patch Kids. I’ve tried to think back to the first few hours of my facebook account when I added the interests that still identify me to the general facebook public. In attempting to get into the mind of the fifteen year old Roxanne, I realized how naïve she was about her presentation in the world of social media. Basically, she added interests as they crossed her mind, and when she couldn’t think of any more she exited the page and continued with her life.

 

There were infrequent occasions when I felt like adjusting my page, but I was always deterred by the “Roxy Dyer has updated her Interests” post that facebook automatically generates. It seemed like a rather dramatic statement that implied I was going through something life changing. This is the extent of my profile management, at least as far as text goes. Even though it’s pretty easy to delete hyperbolic posts from my wall, I’ve always felt a little strange about deleting posts. I’ve always had a certain idea about transparency on the Internet so I need a very compelling reason to actively delete posts.

 

Since the interests tab on Facebook isn’t visible unless you actually click on it, or if you’re not one of my friends, I don’t think about what my interests are or how they reflect my identity online. It’s only when I am confronted with those interests in my real life, like for example at the residence life conference, that I reflect on my interests page. Otherwise, I am pretty content to let the world believe that the only books I’ve ever read are by Philip Pullman.

 

Roxanne Dyer

@roxyredstar

My Facebook thinks I have no interests anymore!!

I used to be extremely into my Facebook profile…and yes it was carefully constructed! For every S Club 7 in the Music section, there had to be a Franz Ferdinand to balance out. As I grew into myself, I began to weed out the things I had added in to seem more well-rounded (such as artists I had in my iTunes, but to whom I rarely listened). In high school, it was definitely important to have similar tastes as friends, and it meant a lot when an artist you introduced a friend to appeared in their Music section. They also served another function: you could click on them and be taken to a list of people who also had the same things listed on their profile. 

However, when Facebook transferred these sections from enabled links to badges of pages for those artists, I grew disinterested immediately. What had been an active process of keeping the tastes section updated immediately shifted to having the section blank or near blank. Just because I had a certain film listed did not mean I wanted to be intimately associated with it; I just happened to enjoy it. It also made joke entries (such as "My Autobiography" in the Books section) not nearly as funny because they weren't accompanied with a pretty profile photo. This "upgrade" made me feel extremely limited by the structure of Facebook and was one of the major factors in limiting my Facebook use.

On my Twitter, there is no real "interests" section, although I think who I follow is more indicative of my tastes than could be described on Facebook. I try to retweet content that websites or blogs I read tweet out, or tweet links to content I find interesting. This seems to be a much more active way of portraying taste compared to Facebook's more static display.

As for updating or changing my profile for certain life events, the only changes that I make on my Facebook at this point are to take away information from my profile. I'm not really interested in broadcasting my whole taste profile out for everyone to see anymore. I suppose it was just the junction of maturity and Facebook "upgrades" that pushed me over.

Clarke B

Individual Profiles on SNS: Performing Identity

Performing Identity via SNS is interesting since it affords us a chance to cross-segment our personality (as the term is defined by William James). James said: “Personality implies the incessant presence of two elements, an objective person, known by a passing subjective thought and recognized as continuing in time.” When we look at our profile we have the objective person reflected back at us, via image (a flattering profile picture) text (a list of hobbies/movies/books we like) and the temporal element reflected by the augmentation of these identity-markers as the author of the page sees fit. I wonder how my individual identity is presented on facebook and if it is making use of the tools available to me via social media.

I have looked at a lot of my friend’s individual profiles on social network sites and studied their taste statements—and I feel like a lot of them are making use of technology to link to things that help display their identity. Since I don’t have a list of taste statements on my facebook page, I interviewed two of my friends who I consider very savvy with social media. They are two girls that have curate pages to reflect their interests in a very successful way—since there names rose like cream to the top when I was reflecting for this blog post.

I can see how Liu’s study of SNS yielded a lot of data around the process of curating. By composing interests around a common theme, profile users craft their ‘‘taste statements” to represent who they want others to think of them as—in a simple example: I turn to facebook to see if a friend likes a certain genre of music. If she does, I would invite her to a concert a few weeks later. Therefore, the expressivity on SNS can shape your experiences and is simultaneously shaped by your experiences.  

While I agree with Liu’s proposal of a semiotic framework, his categorization of expressivity falling into one of the four categories—prestige, differentiation, authenticity, and theatrical persona—seems too rigid for such a fluid exchange.

To get all meta I have a fluid exchange with two friends about this fluid exchange! I first talk to Jovana and she explains that she feels like her page is random and doesn’t have certain preferences up or downplayed. She offers that her friends are often more specific and have what I would call “specialized” pages that are centered around a theme. Anna is an example of a person who composes tokens around the theme of film and after talking to her I learn she sees SNS as a tool to show her favorite videos and “things that have meaning” to friends.

Both girls said they never thought enough about the “curating” process to feel limited but I guess one reason I didn’t add interests is because I want to keep my tastes between my offline friends and not advertise myself. Maybe that notion I had when I first created facebook my freshman year of college is no longer something I identify with—perhaps it is time to list to further perform my identity. Since it would be ridiculous to claim that I wasn’t performing my identity through facebook, instead I’m just not tapping into all the tools available to do so. Almost like I didn’t want to give the full picture because I reserve that information about my tastes for in-person interaction. Reflecting this way makes me realize that my imagined audience influenced my choice not to participate in listing taste statements.

I have looked at friends' pages at various stages of our friendships. Most often, I turn to this after a first meeting (to determine quickly what type of a person they are through hobbies and indicators of lifestyle).  I am starting to wonder if it is unfair that I elected not to participate in self-expression (hobbies, music, TV shows) via SNS since I know I turn to it when meeting new people. 

In another class I am taking, Media and Identity, we talk about the nonce taxonomies that make up an individual. Given the idea that identity is idiosyncratic and fluid, its construction should take place using tools that are receptive to a playful and flexible take on the person—social media appears to be the perfect tool. Yet, I don’t feel comfortable using it as such. On my “info” tab you will see a list of my past employers and schools, my blog and one activity: synchronicity—an ironic and sole listing that doesn’t reflect me much at all. I elected not to list my tastes on facebook because I think it is too often an insincere performance. People can click on a sport and add it to their list without having played in years (as I would be tempted to do with horseback riding). Similarly, liking brands can prove problematic since the like is ambiguous—does the “like” imply patronization of the label or merely drooling while watching the runway show online?

Another thing that interests me about performing identity on SNS is that the sphere of influence you have is much larger than the sphere of influence in an offline setting. Now networks are large and with loose ties. The preferences you list must be enough a part of you that you are okay with loose ties seeing them—so in that sense your authenticity correlates to the scope of your sphere. 

Certain life events motivated me to change your profile picture—which to me indicates how identity is connected to relationships and our ability to broadcast those relations online is a subtle form of identity performance that I favor. I changed by profile picture (which had been of me and my three roommates for over a year) when we all started moving out. All our profile pictures started to be singles of ourselves, as we each went separate ways—yet still all remaining friends.  In a way this unspoken profile update communicated that the relationship status between my fellow (former) roommates and I changed.


--@kayla8thecity

Blog Post #3: My Online Identity

On Twitter, Nicole pointed out Willett’s claim that SNS users felt they’d socialize less online and more in person as they get older. I thought this was an extremely interesting point, as while I have never really thought about it, I definitely have scaled-down my social media sites and usage as I have gotten older.

 

Of course, some of this may have to do with (as mentioned by Nicole) the different structures of SNS sites that I have switched to as I got older. For example, I also used the “helper” sites to give my MySpace a cool background, and I’m pretty sure my Xanga had not only a decked-out background but music and a flashy avatar on it as well. One of the reasons I switched over to Facebook was that I really enjoyed the basic layout of it (and I was notoriously terrible at keeping up with posting on Xanga). Taking away some of the flash associated with those sites fit my SNS “style” more—even on my earliest SNS profiles, I have never been one to share any personal details, with my “about me” and “interest” sections consistently blank. I swear I am being honest when I say it really isn’t due to a fear of being judged but more about not really seeing the point. I understand that having shared interests may open me up to finding new friends, but my use of social networking sites has never really been about making new friends. While I know it’s unavoidable that my profile will give an impression of me, I have always just felt that my likes/dislikes and relationship status are my business—of course, if someone asks me, I will answer, but I just don’t feel a need to share them with the Internet community.

 

Of course, not sharing much personal information has also allowed me to have to update my profiles less. I don’t have to cater as much to my changing interests (or relationship statuses)! When I say I was more involved as a teen, I mean that I used these sites much more for actual social experiences. There were certain people I would interact with frequently on MySpace that I therefore considered to be close friends, though I may not have had any sort of interpersonal communication with them in years, such as friends from camp. I would come home from school and go almost immediately online to continue conversations I had started during the day and to upload and monitor the pictures posted of me. I think I was most concerned about my identity being shaped by the photos of me, which I believed would really prove what sort of person I was more than my interests since it was an actual, physical representation of the person I was offline.

 

Today, I use social networking sites in a much more cursory way—I rarely update my profile pictures, block all of my tagged photos, and tend to have actual conversations less. My Facebook is my most personal profile, so I still do use that to interact with friends, but it is definitely more about sharing fun links or utilizing the event and group messaging functions than trying to maintain actual conversations.

 

Aside from the more rigid structure of Facebook compared to MySpace, I believe a large reason SNS sites become less important for social interaction as teens get older is the growing number of other ways there are to “hang out.” boyd brings this up in “Why Youth <3 SNS: The Role of Networked Public in Teenage Social Life,” explaining that society does not offer many options for teens to socialize, so the Internet is able to provide them with a new “social realm” (boyd, 136). Coming from a small suburban town, I definitely believe the Internet took the place of a “hang out”—there were very few spots that welcomed teens to gather, so the Internet was integral to my social life.

 

However, now that I am old enough to have not only an active social life but also responsibilities to attend to aside from classes, I cannot imagine putting that much time and effort into my online persona. I would now say my identity on SNS is much less about trying to portray a specific image of myself and much more simply a compilation of posts and updates performed when I have time. Since I am less dependent on maintaining friendships through Facebook, I also pay significantly less attention to the upkeep of it.

 

Colleen

 

@colleenhagerty

Public and Private SNSs

For the most part, the information, likes and interests on my profile accurately reflects me and my true tastes. I try not to put too much information on it and “like” to many things on Facebook because it seems a little unnecessary. My friends are supposed to know what I like already and people that are not my friends should find out for themselves. Because my Facebook friends range from people in Taiwan, High school friends, college friends, family and other random people I meet, tastes and interests aren’t always similar. I may like the same music artist as one friend but not like the books he or she read.

I think when I first started Facebook, I had a lot more information on it that I have right now. I remember I listed many films that I like but now all I have left on my interested film column is Closed, a short film my friend produced - so I “liked’ it to show support. There are definitely certain events in my time with Facebook that I changed my profile – first was going to college, trying to reorganize my Facebook profile so people I just met can find me and learn a little about me.

However, I think the most changed I have done on my Facebook profile information happened when Facebook privacy settings changed. When I realized Facebook uses all the information you put up on your profile for other means, I deleted and “unliked” a lot of things. I guess I’m always hoping to beat the privacy games, so I can protect myself in the online community and also as a consumer. It does not feel good when a brand can have the power to know so much about you and be able to cater products to you based on what information you provide publicly.

Most of my social network service is set to private settings and limited information. Facebook is my platform to connect with friends and family, not with strangers or businesses. Personal twitter account is generally used for ranting on whatever is on my mind not for the entire world to hear, my personal Twitter is set to private. However, I think Twitter can only be used more effectively if it is public, so one can share thoughts and opinions to the world and engage with the larger twitter-verse. With the Twitter account I set for class, I’m more careful with what I say because anyone can read it. The public can form their opinion of me base on what I say and how I present myself publicly. 


Jess Y.

@jayckah

Identity performance on SNS profiles

The readings on youth and media for this week got me thinking a lot about my MySpace days. I made my MySpace account in 8th grade and used it pretty regularly until I got a Facebook during my junior year of high school. Looking back, I realize that, for me, identity performance on MySpace seemed way more important to me than it ever did on Facebook. I changed my MySpace profile CONSTANTLY, always reflecting what I thought were my most "valuable" tastes, that is, the ones I felt my friends would think were cool/funny/etc. I think I probably updated my "About Me" every week, playing around with the words to make myself sound witty and probably a lot more interesting than I actually was. I think what I liked most about my MySpace profile was how free you were to essentially do whatever you wanted with it (as many of the authors for this week discussed, MySpace had the HTML loophole that many users took advantage of through copy-paste codes from 'helper sites', which I used ALL the time). I didn't really feel limited by this structure; I could type in anything I wanted, add pictures and videos, and tweak it until it was "just right"...at least until the next time I wanted to change it.

As I got older and switched completely over to Facebook, I noticed that my tastes solidified, as did my confidence in who I was. Maybe it was just a function of my age at the time I started using Facebook, or maybe it was because I thought Facebook was more mature (at the time they had just started letting high schoolers join), but I don't think I ever felt the same pressure to make sure the tastes I presented there were 'acceptable' to my friends. Of course, I don't list EVERY band I listen to or EVERY movie/TV show I like, but the ones I do have on my profile are the ones that are genuinely my favorites, regardless of what my friends list on theirs. As Emma mentioned in her post, Facebook is somewhat limiting in the way you can represent tastes: there's no way to differentiate between what you absolutely love and what you sort-of-like-sometimes, unless you explicitly state it in your 'About Me' section. But I think it's because of this format that I, and perhaps others, only list the things they really like. I don't feel the need to update my profile nearly as often as I did on MySpace, although I will always change it if I start a new job or internship.

It's interesting that new relationships, jobs, schools, etc. motivate people to change their online profiles. If you think about it, it's really the same kinds of life changes people have always shared with each other; social networking sites just provide a more efficient, widespread way of doing so. For example, rather than having to call or text all your friends to tell them you started dating someone new (or broke up with someone), you can post it on Facebook where they can all see it and respond if they choose (whether or not they actually DO see it and respond is another issue, though). I think this says a lot about how we perceive identity. Who we are seems to be based on our life situations--where we go to school, where we work, whether or not we have a partner. These are the things that, before social networking sites, we would find out about people after we first met them and got to know them by talking to them. With an SNS profile, someone can learn all of these major things about you at once, sometimes without ever even making contact with you. Listing our tastes adds another dimension to this "all at once" approach: personal likes and dislikes were often secondary things that you could find out after you learned all the 'big' things about someone.

There are, of course, people that don't want to list a lot of personal information and tastes on their profile because they don't want to be judged based on what they list on their Facebook page (as Emma said was the case for her). However, there are many users who do choose to perform identity through SNS's, perhaps because they want people to know up front who they are. I suppose it makes sense in the context of forming real friendships and relationships: you probably don't want to start talking to someone who hates everything you love or vice versa. It has the potential to do a lot of the work for us in weeding out who is compatible and who's not. We should be cautious, though, if this is the approach we choose to take: identity performance is fragile and inexact. People can easily lie about/play up their tastes to make themselves seem more appealing or interesting. Conversely, we could miss out on the opportunity to talk to a lot of truly interesting people just because they don't list a lot of interests on their page. Perhaps this is oversimplifying things, because there a lot of varying reasons why people do or don't list certain things on SNS profiles, but I think this theory could certainly apply to at least some SNS users.

-Nicole @nmf255

Blog Post #3

Do social media profiles accurately display one’s taste? Obviously, as I think it is with most questions regarding identity and social media profiles, the answer is individual to each person.  This can sometimes make it difficult to assess others’ profiles because we don’t know how true the information provided is (ex. Fakesters, people being sarcastic) or how much is being withheld or embellished. It is for this reason that I don’t find myself too concerned with how well my profile ‘matches up’ to my friends.  Also, since have friends in various ‘social circles’ (ex. work, school, etc.) it’s likely that the tastes amongst my network will have a large variety.  However, if investigating a ‘page’ for a television show or band and I see that a friend of mine likes it, I am more likely to sustain interest on the page since the mutual interest from a friend gives the page more relevance- similar to the concept of ‘word of mouth’.  On a further level, let’s say you think highly of a certain friend’s opinion, you are even more likely to engage in a particular page and simultaneously feel a sense of self-validity if you like the same thing. 

 

For my personal Facebook profile, I leave the ‘info’ section pretty sparse or ‘play down’ my interests.  I leave my tastes vague for a variety of reasons.  If you think of your profile in terms of an extension of self – you wouldn’t walk up to someone you’ve just met and start listing off your favorite books, films, etc.  I’d rather not allow people to judge me based on my ‘taste’ alone and for those that already know me well, they’re aware of my likes and dislikes without having to need it spelled out on Facebook.  More than anything though, it’s a matter of how much time and dedication you want to give to your profile.  My interests and tastes are constantly changing and evolving—if I were to 100% accurately display all of this, I would probably be non-stop ‘liking’ and ‘un-liking’, revising, etc. to keep up.  Similarly with photos, I don’t upload every photo I’ve ever taken or have which means that my profile becomes in essence, a selection of what I want portrayed and not necessarily revealing the ‘whole’ self. 

 

Continuing on from the discussion of ‘taste’, structure also plays a role in the portrayal of identity.  Let’s say you have 15 television shows listed as your favorite.  It’s unlikely that you’re completely devoted to all 15.  Maybe a few you watch every week, keep up to date on the actors, behind the scenes footage, etc. while the others you’ve seen a few times and thought were cool.  There’s no way to add a ‘disclaimer’ as to your level and degree of interest in something (ex. “this is my absolute favorite show”).  Essentially, you lose the ‘shading’ and variety of your personality.  Due to technology, things become more black and white; you like it or you don’t.  The format and structure of each individual social media site determines how you can portray your identity.  For example, on Twitter, you are limited in space for your profile bio.  Your identity is primarily based on your stream of tweets which are limited to 140 characters.  Additionally, you may post links within your tweets or post media like photos and videos.  While the technology itself limits your options of self-presentation, it’s up to you to choose content and decide how you’re going to utilize the site to suit your needs.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I try to keep my profile so that it doesn’t require much revision. I’m also conscious of my audience when posting.  For example, while both my Twitter and Facebook are both ‘private’, I have a more carefully selected audience on Twitter which allows me to post a bit more freely.  Facebook makes it easy though to narrow your audience if you wish (Ex. Message = most private, directed to specific people in a contained ‘space’, Wall post = to a particular person, knowing their friends can see it as well, Status = to your whole network, or smaller defined network). This ability to direct content to certain audiences is a way of pre-editing.  If I post something like a funny video that I don’t necessarily want left on my profile long-term, I’ll sometimes leave it up for a few days and then take it down when it’s not relevant.  Occasionally out of boredom I’ll also quickly go through my profile and clean it up a bit.  I generally spend more time thinking about posting something in the first place rather than going back and making changes.   


Emma L.

Blog Post 3 Prompt

For your third blog post you have the same set of options as for Post 2: either respond to a previous post by one of your classmates, or write a new blog post in response to the prompt below. If you choose to write a response to a previous post, please be sure to follow the same instructions as given in the Post 2 Prompt.

Prompt: We have read a lot about individual profiles on social network sites. For this blog post, reflect on your own identity as constructed and performed on the social network site(s) you use. You can answer any/all of the following questions:

Do the tastes listed on your profile(s) accurately reflect your "true" tastes? Are there certain preferences you have up- or down-played? Do you think your tastes are similar to your friends' or different? (If you want, check their profiles to see if you guessed correctly.)

Have you ever felt limited by the profile structure provided by your social network site? Have you done anything to try to circumvent the provided structure?

Do you frequently revise the contents of your profile? Do certain life events motivate you to change your profile? Does this say anything about how we view identity (for example, what might it mean if someone updates their profile whenever their relationship status changes)?

If you are a member of more than one social network service, are your profiles consistent across them all? If your profiles differ, do you know why they are different? How does your imagined audience/network on each site affect the way you present yourself there?

Your post is due by 9am on October 18.