Blog#3 my identity in SNS

My first participation in SNS took place in Mixi. Unlike facebook profile, profile in Mixi is not only constructed by choosing your demographical information such as gender, date of birth, education and occupation nor making a list of your favorites and interests but it is also created by “writing” a short summary of yourself (like Hi, my name is …I am from…I do…etc.). Mixi users’ profile are more based on texts they write than images. What I mean by texts here are the self-introduction of the users and their diaries if they do not block them. There is a profile picture and features that allow you to upload your photo albums, but showing yourself in profile picture is pretty rare and many people either block their albums or do not post any pictures. Although facebook allows you to write about yourself for self-representation, I believe that a users’ identity more relies on images that are open to friends than texts. Of course, on facebook, people can also present their identities by their listed “tastes”, statuses, and short notes; however, their photos have such an influence on their identities that others heavily depend on their photos to judge who they are.

I remember when I first created my profile on mixi in my high school age. When I joined mixi, it was the first social network site for most of the users including myself. Therefore, it seemed that people on mixi were still figuring out what personal information should be included or not in their profiles. Compared to now, my friends’ profiles and mine at the time, what we write in our self-introductions and our diaries, looked very formal and polite. In other word, we looked all same in mixi; since it was our first SNS, we were afraid of showing such personal information to the public that it can show other users our real “self”. In terms of tastes also, there was not much diversity among my friends’ profiles and mine. I actually didn’t have any list of my favorite, my one-paragraph-long self-introduction consisted of vague information about me, and I had my dog in my profile picture.

As I got used to being open on the Internet and more people started personalizing their profiles to find more friends, I revised my profile. I made my self-introduction sound more casual and friendly and include a little more personal information like my hobbies and favorite artists. So my motivation here for changing my profile is to conform with the unmentioned social norm amongst my friends at the time. They started to add more tastes that reflect their personalities, so I started to do so too. Although I was pretty used to showing myself making a pose in my profile picture because of my use of facebook, my profile picture is still my dog in mixi. It is because I feel it will be awkward if I show my self-pictures in my mixi profile as I do in facebook even though none of my friend does it.

I would say my tastes listed in my facebook and mixi are almost same, but I don’t think that they precisely reflect my true tastes. Quite many times, I have added my favorite films, artists, and other things in my interest according to my mood of the moment, so the lists of my tastes in both sites are partially correct but they include some things that I do not like any more. I just do not want to be bothered to spend my time in getting rid of them because I believe none of my friends really care about my interests even if I change them.

Although my tastes shown in the social network sites I mainly use look similar, my whole profile in each site might not show the same identity. When I am on mixi I expect my audience to be my Japanese friends, and on facebook, my international friends. I hardly write a diary on mixi, but I do write it when something big happens in my life here and wants to tell it all the way back to my friends living in Japan. I do not post any boring information about my every-day life in mixi as I do in facebook statuses. And I think my profile pictures listed on facebook cannot be used for mixi because choosing self-picture (especially nice one) for a profile can mean to audience that you have much confidence in your appearance or you seek for somebody to date with (I believe these are main reasons why a very small number of people have themselves in their profile pictures on mixi and why I still keep my dog in my profile pic). On facebook, I have more freedom. I post whatever status I feel like telling and whatever pictures I feel like setting as my profile.

Thus, I tend to be more self-conscious on mixi than facebook. The audience on mixi is pretty homogeneous, so I try to form my identity harmonize with how the other users show their identities; whereas, facebook users are more diverse, so that I feel I can merge into the “facebook society” even though whatever unique information I add for my self-representation. I am aware of the eyes of audience in both site, but the characteristic of the audience can affect me how I present myself.

sachi