Network identity: The five main elements of network identity

Article Description: the five main elements of network identity.

Twitter's former CEO, Evan Williams, posted this week, commenting that online identities have become one of the toughest problems in the way Web services are urgently needed, in part because the word "identity" covers different meanings. At posting Williams tried to explain the different meanings of the word, including authentication, personal prestige, and personalized features. However, one thing he does not relate to is that "our identity" will change depending on where we are and what we are doing, and this is among the biggest challenges that need to be addressed.

This article could probably be broken down into "the 5 elements of a network identity", a concept previously shared by Williams and Twitter's chief technology officer Greg Pass. These 5 major elements include:

Authentication: It's about whether you have permission to do something, like a photo of your identification, a membership card, a bunch of keys to your home or door.

representative Identity: it involves your identity or your claimed identity, as it is with your personal card, personal data, as it allows others to know your identity, occupation, and other background information.

communication: It involves "how can I get in touch with you?" "The question. This is the same as the phone number, but it now involves more communication tools, such as email, Twitter and Facebook.

Personality Characteristics: This is not just a feature of identity, but to start to judge the user's preferences and interests, which is like going to a regular coffee shop, the store is very familiar with your taste, so do not need to ask will serve you a cup of your favorite drink.

Prestige: It is based on what others think of you, the reality of similar control is the personal reputation, credit institutions, such as third-party organizations such as the personal integrity of the file compiled for you.

Eric Norlin, the founder of Glue and defrag conferences, commented on the author of these network identities mentioned by Williams, who wrote that the concept that Williams talked about could be broadly divided into two groups, one set of essential needs of the user, The other group has a transactional type of requirements feature, so the latter requirement may change at any time depending on the activity in which it is engaged. Meanwhile, venture capitalist Chris Sacca said via Twitter that geography has become a key element of network identity.

However, Stowe Boyd, a social-business consultant, made the most wonderful reply to Williams blog:

This is a way of focusing on tools and marketing that ignores or removes the confusing and interesting parts of network identities.

Boyd is right about that. For anyone who wants to really understand the role of identity, the interesting but confusing part is like a ticking time bomb. Williams may have deliberately involved only some semblance of network identity, but it is easy to see that there is another point here, for many people, it is a liquidity concept and becomes more and more liquid.

Mark Zuckerberg may want everyone to be logged in as the only person in the online position whenever and wherever, because he says he believes "it is not sincere to have two online identities at the same time." "He may be right, but many people are happy to have more than one network identity, such as Twitter, Facebook and other social networking identities that connect with their classmates, and they should be different in their own environment."

When Google launched Buzz, Gmail's contacts were able to automatically import the user's Buzz account and then broadcast the social connections, and the search giant's engineers thought the design was reasonable. However, Google Buzz finally failed, which surprised the staff, "Why do people not want to use it?" "This is, after all, the most effective way to connect users and social networks."

What Google doesn't take into account is that some people's emails may be associated with many contacts, and users don't want to be friends with all of them, and many Facebook users don't want to mix business identities with personal relationships. As a result, they either don't play social networking or are very careful to clean up their friends lists.

Williams is right that the question of "identity" is still somewhat confusing. However, anyone who simply treats it as a functional or transactional issue may not be able to grasp the point and end up failing.