“In this view, avatars are not images or characters radically separated from the “real” players; they are aspects of players’ real-life identities played out on virtual stages, not unlike the way the same people might “perform” at frat parties or wedding receptions or in classrooms and restaurants.”

This distinction has profound implications for the design of social software. Designing a social tool following the representation model is a relatively straight-forward, but ultimately limiting approach. Essentially, it involves providing a finite set of fields that users can fill in to describe themselves. However, if we wish to create an application that really resonates with users and becomes part of their social life, it must provide a space for more fluid and dynamic types of identity performance. The choices designers make about the structure of the platform will influence the subjectivities that users develop and experience: “As interaction designers, we might ask how the stages, or interactive ecologies, we create regulate or encourage identity performance.” Since I don’t play many videogames, the only avatar I have much experience with is my Facebook profile. I wonder, in what ways does Facebook enable or constrain different types of identity performance?

A few years ago, Alice Marwick wrote an interesting critique about the model of identity represented in social networking sites (SNS’s) such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook. Marwick argues that the finite profile options in SNS’s are far too limiting compared to the diverse open-ended ways that people express themselves in everyday life. In her words, “the rigid profile structure encourages the user to present him or herself in a way that is partly constructed by the application, not the user”. Interestingly, Marwick also points out that the type of identity performance available in SNS’s may be related to the sites’ capitalist interests: “The user is portrayed not as a citizen, but as a consumer. [SNS] applications encourage people to define themselves through the entertainment products they consume: music, movies, books, and television show.” The central point of Marwick’s argument is that early SNS’s were following a strictly representational model, which she describes as the “problem of authentiticity”: “Social networking sites overall presume that each user has a single “authentic” identity that can be presented accurately.” This assumption is evidenced by the fact most SNS’s do not allow users to create more than one profile. For instance, Facebook used to require all profiles to be tied to a valid university e-mail address. Friendster even went as far as to remove all profiles that they suspected as being “fake”. This rigid, singular construction of identity is in contradiction with the way we all perform identity in everyday life; we present ourselves in various ways depending on the audience and context.

In my personal experience, I believe Facebook has been guilty of these criticisms, especially in its earliest incarnations. When I first starting using the service in 2005, there were not many features available and so the interface emphasis was mostly on user profiles. I recall that most users would typically fill out almost every field of their profile. The result was a laundry list of interests, favorite books, tv, music, etc. that ultimately conveyed a rather shallow and generic picture of a person. As Facebook’s user base grew, the problem of having a single profile for all audiences also became very apparent. Facebook started out as site for college students only. Once the site opened up to highschool students, alumni, and eventually everyone, many users were surprised or embarrassed at having their “college persona” suddenly visible to the whole world. Privacy options in the site became more robust, but this was often not enough. I recall one friend’s reaction when both his mother and grandmother friended him on Facebook. He quickly adjusted his privacy settings so that they would see his limited profile and not any of his pictures. Unfortunately, this setting did not apply to events. He was shocked to find out that his mom and grandma had received notification that he was attending a theme party titled “Future Sex”; they were even able to view the racy invite and party photos.

Countless stories of embarrassment have been written about SNS’s. What I find surprising is that they are usually framed in terms of issues of security, privacy, morality, etc. The point overlooked is that while SNS’s are attempting to bring identity online, they are failing to support the kinds of robust and fluid performance that people are used to. It’s not just that Facebook needs to provide better privacy options, or that college students need to be more careful with what they post. The larger problem is stated by Marwick: “the awkwardness and difficulty inherent in representing oneself in fixed, codified ways will need to be addressed if social networking applications are to move beyond the current fad to become truly useful services for internet users.” Marwick’s research has found that users develop creative strategies in order to negotiate the awkwardness of SNS profiles: “users may choose particular linguistic styles (irony, sarcasm, satire) when constructing their profiles… Other people identify themselves within SN applications by using aliases … Others create “safe profiles”, where publicly exposed information is carefully chosen to avoid possible problems“. I have personally known many friends on Facebook to use each of these approaches. These examples of user adaptation provide important signals for how the application needs to change to better support user needs.

Through a combination of site changes and shifting user behavior, I believe the Facebook community has recently been evolving towards more sophisticated forms of self-presentation. This is happening in two ways. First, the focus of the application experience has shifted from user profiles to user activity. Users can now express themselves in many ways other than textual self-description. They can write status updates, short notes or blog entries, post links, photos, videos, etc. The landing page for the site displays a news feed with all your friends recent activity where you can comment and respond directly. In this way, users can have lots of conversations and interactions without ever navigating to someone’s profile page. On the profile page itself, the self-descriptive information has been replaced with a news feed of that user’s activity. In parallel, I have noticed that many veteran users have been gradually removing the biographical information from their profiles. In short, the means of self-presentation on Facebook is shifting from that of static representation to more dynamic, contextual action.

A second important trend I’ve seen on Facebook (though one that still needs a lot of work) is an increase the ability to customize identity information for different audiences. When the site first unveiled the news feed feature, many users were outraged to have their every activity suddenly broadcast to their entire network. Facebook defended itself by saying that the information had always been accessible in different places of the site and that users had privacy control for their information. This argument completely missed the point that users want control over exactly how, when, and to whom they present themselves. It’s not enough that privacy controls exist; they need to be integrated into the user experience in an intuitive and transparent way so that every time a user interacts with the system they know who they are communicating with. With the last few redesigns, I believe the application has gotten a little better at this. For example, when you friend someone you can choose to let them see either your full or limited profile. Within privacy settings, users can control the accessibility of each different type of profile data. Still I think Facebook could do more to allow users to share specific information with only specific people. One promising new feature allows users to organize their friends list into different groups. In the future, this may allow users to customize how they present themselves to each group (e.g. work friends, college friends, family, etc.) just like we all do in everyday life.

Overall, I think the concepts introduced by Bardzell & Bardzell can help the designers of Facebook and other social software to create more compelling and valuable services. By thinking about avatars as subjectivities and about interfaces as stages for performance, designers will be more likely to create spaces for creative identity play, as the Bardzell’s describe: “The symbolic possibilities available online, when joined with the capabilities of the interface, amount to a software of the self, a tool that enables users to play with their own subjectivities.” I believe such tools will ultimately allow for more natural, human, and fulfilling online experiences.

References
Intimate Interactions: Online Representation and Software of the Self
Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell

“I’m a Lot More Interesting than a Friendster Profile”: Identity Presentation, Authenticity and Power in Social Networking Services
Alice Marwick