Sharing Our e-Indentity

By CHADWICK FLORES

Social media business website Gigya released an info graphic on user identity for the internet's most popular services like Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, etc. The information on what most users utilize and what they commonly share on these sites is interesting, considering the digital age we live in. As an increasing number of people engage in social media communities daily, businesses are quickly developing a foundation in the same landscape.

The graphic may provide some insight on how social media users answer the following questions: What should I share? How personal can I be? How do I convey my news? How does each site dictate how I define my identity? Where do I draw the line? With the immense amount of free information - both public and personal - now archived on the internet, what impact will the information we share with the world have?

Social media fits perfectly into the internet's evolution from a one-way free information avenue to a more user focused, two-way platform to share information. The global ubiquity of technology has opened up new realms of possibility for individuals to gain access to more free information. As our engagement grows to utilize the internet, users have built the most powerful tool in the world: the tool of instant person-to-person multimedia interaction. Users must also understand the public nature of their sharing. Businesses are tapping into this information and engaging with others at the same rate as the rest of us. The interaction between businesses and individuals occupying the same landscape will lead to a future online experience defined either by a more democratic form of consumerism or another means to saturate our user experience with advertisements. As most of us who enjoy the internet already know, the future will probably hold a little bit of both.