The future of managing your ‘multiple identities’ in online communication

One of the general motives for people to use social network sites is self presentation. However, the need of people to create multiple identities causes few practical problems when it concerns online communication.  None of the existing social network sites provides the need for creating multiple identities for different social groups. Some sites like linkedin only intent to serve one social group and others, like Facebook, do not make any difference at all.  What information you give about yourself depends on the target group you have. You do not want to share embarrassing holiday pictures with your professional network and inside information about your professional career can be uninteresting for your friends.  Since a few months rumors about a whole new social network site developed by Google is going to solve this problem go round.   

According to several scientists like Goffman (1959) and Jung (1953), people have  multiple identities and more possible selves to show. Which side of our self we show, how we show it and how many we show depends on the situation we are in.  This assumption, says that identity is not a fixed thing. We can influence it ourselves. With modern technologies in communication  this becomes even more easy than it was when a high level of social presence still was required for self presentation.  

There are a few aspects that influence the need of multiple identities. First of all, there always is a tension in self presentation. We want to create an image as positive as possible. However, this image has to fit the picture that other people have from us and this can differ in different situations and with different social groups. Furthermore, choices in presenting our selves are always based on the desire of positive confirmation from our communication partners. The growth of peoples experiences through mass media, traveling and the internet causes more flexibility and options for identifying with different social groups.

The current situation in online communication with social networks requires switching to different online platforms for different social groups and being very selective in what information you make public. The website marketing facts posted about the new social network application Google would be developing at the moment. The article about this new site that is going to be called “Google Circles” says that, this new application will work with ‘the principle of circles of people’. The user can decide what information to share with its different social groups.

In my opinion the selective self presentation allows us to manage our online identity in the most optimal way because it makes it easier to maintain your real life social structure in the online environment.  Keeping the social structure will make communication through social networks more like in real life and therefore more social because the same level of intimacy can be maintained.