Archive for November 2nd, 2007
Is Your Facebook Profile ‘More You’ Than You?
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on November 2, 2007
So: Microsoft’s ‘small’ investment of $240 million has revealed that at least someone thinks Facebook is worth $15 billion. But now that things have had time to settle in a bit, the big question now is “so what?“. Most analysis so far has focused on longevity, essentially looking at how can Facebook increase its ad delivery in the long term and also how it might monetize other things like music so that it might finally have a comprehensive and sustainable business model.
But the focus on Facebook’s ‘usefulness to its users’ – i.e. what function it serves as a social medium – is only one aspect of Facebook. Part of Facebook’s worth that I think has been largely overlooked (except in this piece here in the Globe) is the value of online identities to users. What I am concerned with here is not the function of the identity – i.e. what one can do to stay in touch with others or read advertising or purchase products – but what the actual construction of an identity means to the person who created it.
All discussion of online identities have historically been constructed as supplementary – that online identities are an incomplete, shadowy representation of one’s real life that work like little appendices to one’s existence. But I wonder to what extent people are starting to conceive of their Facebook identities as part of who they are; and, furthermore, that the investments in something like a Facebook profile is akin to creating a particular ‘look’ or ‘style’ or other such visual manifestation of one’s identity.
The process of constructing a Facebook profile is to ask yourself what you want to present to the world. Particularly since the arrival of F8, you can choose if you want your taste in films, music, books or a host of other markers of taste displayed in your profile. Our profiles are projections of what we either hope to be or how we hope to be perceived. Thus Facebook profiles have become as sociologically interesting as Second Life avatars; as my much-smarter-than-me friend once said, the reason Second Life is so important is because when it comes to identity, fantasy is the real – that how we project ourselves in fantasy or online identities reveals what we value and why. There is a reason that Second Life contains so many hyper-sexualised characters, much like there is a reason that so many Facebook profiles are filled with carefully picked photographs or deliberately chosen music.
As such, the question becomes to what extent people will grow attached to the projection that is their online profile. In much the same way people are loathe to give up their WoW avatars, will people start to feel the same way about their profiles? Will they be willing to pay to keep the online version of themselves around? And will the idea of identity as a set of images and projections be only further cemented by the epistemological shift to internet culture? So, while you mull those over, I’m off to add some obscure post-rock to my Facebook page…
CanCon on the Internet? Even Crazy Leftists Like Me Say No.
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on November 2, 2007
Today, Michael Geist links to responses to a proposed plan to prioritise Canadian content on the internet. Undestandably, Galacticast producer Casey McKinnon – one of Canada’s more famous online personalities – is less than thrilled with the idea, and argues that the internet is”a land of opportunity. A new world where people had the freedom to make their dreams a reality… Instead of sitting around waiting for some executive to call us to approve of a script, or going to countless auditions, we’re doing it all on our own and making our dreams come true.” She suggests that CanCon rules will destroy this spirit, instead subjecting Canadian content to the same sort of mediocrity that plagues the lineup of the CBC.
The argument is convincing – the sort where you don’t want to disagree even if you, like I, feel you should. After all, this sort of meritocratic, free-market approach appeals directly to the individualist core of North American values – McKinnon even goes so far as to praise the ‘Wild West’ mentality in her post – and it usually drives me up the wall.
But while I am normally wary of arguments that reject government interference because it ‘restricts freedom’ – they so often miss the fact that power, wealth and cultural capital are bound up in self-reproducing networks – I can’t help but get behind Geist and McKinnon on this one. Because of the relatively low cost of entry and potential for word-of-mouth, the internet is remarkably more free that other media distribution methods. As such, McKinnon’s suggestion that it should be funding and not regulation that we focus upon is spot-on: by developing Canadian online talent and destinations, one encourages the development of a new culture industry as the inevitable shift from traditional to new media accelerates. Beyond the fact that it would be impossible to mandate – how exactly would you guarantee that Candians experience 40% of CanCon online? – defining Canadian content online is a mess that no-one wants to get into, so why bother?
All that said, I don’t think we should become overly complacent or naive about the internet totally being a ‘land of freedom’. Even a cursory glance at the domination of English and Western democratic-capitalist ideals online should clear up that particular fallacy. But though I never thought I’d say it, I’m with the business-y folks on this one – leave the internet alone.
