Posts with tag "identity"
identity

Putting the “Us” back in the Profile equation

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 1106 days ago

Simple question: Who owns “Us”?

In other words – who owns my profile, who owns your profile?

Does Twitter?

How about Facebook?

Or perhaps Google owns it.

Why is it we are being convinced that someone else, some other company, is best suited to look after our online profiles?

Why is it that we are so willing to hand over the keys to our lives to some company?

Another simple question: How much is your life history, your desires, your dreams, your failures, your travels (both online and offline) worth to you? Is there even a price you can put on them?

In other words – are you willing to sell your ever evolving life’s story to the lowest bidder?

We don’t think much about our profiles when it comes to living online but it is those profiles that are our life story. They are integral to who we are, what we do, and most importantly to our identity. Yet we treat this life story with the most cavalier of attitudes. We hand it over to companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google without the slightest comprehension of what it is we are giving away.

We are letting companies dictate what can be done with those stories, with our identities. Do we really place such little value in our own worth that we believe that these companies know better?

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Braindead TechCast EP52: It’s all about the bacon lube and FBI

  • Category: Podcasts
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  • Posted 1119 days ago

In tonight show Sean and I cover a wide range of items that happened in today’s news starting with the fact that apparently you can’t say the word shitty on MSNBC eve3n if you are a Senator in the middle of a hearing. Yes folks shitty is not allowed on television. George Carlin would not be surprised in the least.

The other politically related story we took a quick shot at was the one where Senator Schumer wants Facebook to start explaining itself after which they can expect a visit from the FTC. We both predict this will all blow over in about two weeks unless of course the senators involved figure that it might make for good politicking.

Of course with both of us being windows users we couldn’t pass up on the news that BitDefender has warned Apple that the iPad could be ripe for malware which is sure to get the Apple brigade up in arms and proclaiming no such thing could possibly happen. Ya .. okay.

And finally we talked about the possibility that one of my touchstone subject may actually be answered by Mozilla with a new project called Account Manager that they are working on. We have our fingers crossed.

Posts referenced in the show

MSNBC Bleeps Levin and McCaskill on Drek Deal – Paul Levinson
Facebook Takes Fire From Senators Over Privacy – GigaOM
iPad users targeted by hackers - Telegraph
Bacon Lube! – Daily Shite
Firefox Steps Up to Challenge Facebook’s Claim to Identity – ReadWriteWeb

Enjoy the show

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hailstorm

A new generation, The same HailStorm

I make no bones about it, I’m an old fart. Hell, in terms of Internet speed of time I’m probably a dinosaur. All that means though is that I’ve been around this business for a very long time. Long enough to remember when 300 baud acoustic modems were the hottest ticket around and could set you back a small fortune.

I’ve also been around long enough to see ideas being constantly repeated even though each new wave of smart alec code jockeys proclaimed that it was all new and world changing. Sure the interfaces might have been spiffied up and the undercarriage given a new coat of grease but in the end what we all would like to think is new is .. well .. old.

As fast as Internet time might be the only thing faster it seems is people’s ability to forget what has come before. I think about this a lot as I watch the discussions rage around companies like Facebook, Twitter, OAuth, xAuth, OpenID. I watch as the goal posts once set around identity, privacy and what was acceptable to the community (the real Net community) being moved ever so slowly away from the user.

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identity

Excuse me, but has anyone seen my identity?

In light of Facebook’s moves this past week there is one term that has once again risen in prominence as discussions around Facebook’s motives increase – that being the concept of identity.

To understand what is meant by identity we first have to understand in what reference we are using the word. When it comes to the law identity simply boils down to age, place of birth, sex, height, color of eyes, and if there are any warrants out on your ass.

This is totally different than what the government considers as your identity. For them it includes additional parameters like ethnicity, number of children, income bracket, whether you area homeowner or a renter, as well as any number of other items that one might find on a census form.

However none of this applies to how we think of our identity. For us it is far more subtle, nuanced and full of shades of gray. When we think of what our identity consists of we don’t look at it as having sharp separations but rather of blended times of our life up until this very moment.

Events, both important and banal, in our childhood are a part of our identity. The trials and tribulations of our teenage years greatly affect what our identity will become.

As adults we build up the past to create the face that we put forth to the world, to our acquaintances, our friends, our families, our lovers. This face for the most part is a part of our identity with varying degrees of what parts of our identity that we are willing to share.

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A case for paying Twitter

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  • Posted 1215 days ago

twitter_verify An interesting post by Sheamus at Twittercism about verified accounts on Twitter got me to thinking about how that could be the one reason why I’d be willing to pay a yearly fee to Twitter.

It sure isn’t for their web interface because that sucks. The only time I leave the comfort of my current client is to check out a Twitter profile before following them – or not. Seeing that Verified checkmark icon on an account is a re-assurance.

What could be greatly influenced by verified Twitter accounts is other service sign-ups. A growing number of services already let you to use your Twitter credentials to log onto their sites. This number could grow if web services knew that the people signing up had already been verified.

The question is how do those verifications happen for use regular folk?

As Sheamus pointed out – it is one thing to verify someone like Bill Gates (@billgates) who was almost instantly verified – but what about you and me – the regular smucks on the street?

I’m not sure how that would happen or if it really something that Twitter even wants to think about given the administrative headaches lying in wait. There is one other concern I would have before even seriously considering handing over my cash.

Well two – security and uptime. Granted the uptime has become less of a problem but it is still lurking in the shadows. Security on the other hand is of major concern at the best of times but throw in the verified accounts and it’s a whole different ball of wax.

My worry is that Twitter isn’t; like the majority of Web 2.0 social media services, secure. It has been hacked in the past and the occurrence of hack attempts would only increase if Twitter verifications became a value item. My confidence in Twitter to be able to deal with those attempts isn’t the highest.

That said if Twitter came out with an easy way for me to verify my account and Twitter account sign-ins became more common I could see it being worth my money to pay Twitter for that verification process.

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