Blog#2 Response to http://csmt11.posterous.com/csmt-blog1

http://csmt11.posterous.com/csmt-blog1

This post (maybe Ivy’s?) made me think about users’ identities on SNSs when she talks about her experience of using a Chinese SNS, Renren.  

As it is said in the post, I also think that the feature of “footprint” causes users to make social networking activities different from other sites such as Facebook because it makes them more sensitive to their own privacy. But also, the idea made me think further of this sense of privacy that the users might feel on the Renren. This sense of privacy might be related to how people on the site want to protect their personal identities and others’ impressions on them on SNSs.

This footprint feature of Renren reminded me of the similar feature of Mixi, a Japanese SNS, which I mostly use to connect to my Japanese friends. Like Renren, the system of footprint on Mixi also used to make it visible for users who came to their pages and checked contents such as diaries and albums. Moreover, Mixi allowed the users to know what time the person came to see their pages, which means that they know by whom and how often exactly their pages have been seen.

I do not really get what the purpose of this feature of footprint exactly is (it might facilitate users to gain a closer connection with friends by letting them know their mutual interests in each other’s life, might make it easy to discover and come back to their existing friends, or might make it noticeable who stalks them?). However, in spite of these possible facilitations that the footprint feature can provide, it is true that there are complaints from users that they cannot go to their friends’ pages or check non-friends’ pages so easily in order to see what’s there because of the footprints. They say that they do not want to check others' pages because their footprints are always automatically left. In fact, Mixi got rid of the feature of footprint this summer, responding to this kind of complaints and compensating those footprints' facilitations with another feature, which does not disclose as much information of users’ browsing activities as the footprint used to do.

What makes the users on Mixi be so concerned about the footprint? What keeps them avoiding to make footprints on others’ pages?

Users of SNSs create and control how they are presented on the sites by making their own profiles. They choose their profile pictures and choose what personal information should be open, being aware of public eyes. The information that is available on their profiles is chosen by them to represent who they are or who they want to be on the site.The information disclosed by the users themselves is cues that primarily compose their personal identities perceived by other users. Yet, the users on SNSs are not identified only by these cues. Anything that is visible on SNSs including the person’s activities, comments, and their photos on friends’ (even friends’ friends’) pages might be able to add something to their individual identities – which is described in Baym’s words, “ individual identities are deeply enmeshed with the social identities” (111).

As Baym says, on SNSs, “very small pieces of information, which were often not intended to be sources of information about the self, can become inordinately influential” (120). Even trivial information that came out in the public space while engaging in socializing activities can be a part of "self" on SNSs. Those who did not feel good about the footprint on Mixi might be more concerned that the information which their footprints tell friends and other users can contribute something more than they show on their profiles to their individual identities; even though the footprints information is a tiny part of vast, detailed information available on the site,  for anti-footprint users, it might be a part of their privacies  that can reveal more than they intend to reveal about themselves.

 

Sachi