12/29/2004 02:47:00 PM

December 29th: The Fifth Day of Christmas
Selective Disclosure

While it is a useful phrase to communicate something of the authenticity or simplicity of someone or something, there really is no such thing as "face value."

We are always already about the work of mediating our own identities. It comes naturally. Selective disclosure is not a nefarious tool of deception and intrigue. It is a survival pattern, a coping mechanism and the practice of all Homo sapiens engaged in contextual relationships.

We engage our grandmothers in a manner appropriate to the relationship as we do our professors, bosses and brothers. This is not Multiple Personality Disorder. This is the normal expression of nuanced interaction that follows the contours of our specific relationships.

We interact with people differently in the real world all the time and yet remain the same individual. In the digital world our interactions are often far more blunt. We have a public/private binary switch on some things, but are only of late beginning to see techniques for a more nuanced filtering of our digital self. SmartCommons Personas are one such mechanism.

Bob Jacobson comments on the Many2Many post about SmartCommons:

"...while I'd like for all my offline friends to be online-accessible, I don't think I'd like to tie them together quite so ruthlessly...."

I so agree.

SmartCommons probably isn't for a lot of your friends. So be it.

For those that it does make some sense to include in your commons I've whipped up a pretty simple (but I hope somewhat sophisticated) tool that allows everyone to set up points of entry into their digital self. I call this feature SmartCommons Personas (pretty original, huh?).

Basically, personas are a way for you to have loose circles of friends and family keyed off of things that make sense to you: by a project at work or by your small group at Church or your extended family or, my favorite, an "I Don't Know You" persona for all of those people who inevitably ask to be your friend when they barely rise to the level of acquaintance (btw, no one sees how you label your personas).

Personas can be crafted from many different angles. They can be massaged and deleted as you see fit. Try one out and play around with it for a bit. Personas can have their own friends, communities, projects, collections, pictures... the only thing they cannot have is their own profile. You have one profile. It is you. Your personas segment out that profile for the different communities you inhabit.

I think that is pretty cool. Not earth shaking, but cool.

It is nuanced self-disclosure that allows SmartCommons to be just a tad more useful than many of the other offerings gliding about in social software circles--at least more useful to me.

Thanks again for checking out SmartCommons. Things are still amazingly early in this whole thing. We have caught and executed many a bug since Christmas. There are some that remain, but we are vigilant... Drop me a line if you want and let me know what you think. Or better yet, add me as a friend so I can put you in my "Don't know" persona.

Just kidding.

::Added Bonus::
SmartCommons Tip #1
Did you know that you can add something to your SmartCommons Collection directly from Amazon? When you are signed into Amazon and are on a product page you will notice in the left menu about half way down the page a little check box that is labeled, "I own it." Tick this box and the item is added to your Collection.*

It is that simple. Try it.

* You have to have Amazon synchronization set up in your SmartCommons Settings. See The Third Day of Christmas for more on this.


Cheers.


-------The Twelve Days of SmartCommons Christmas-------
The First Day of Christmas: A Share Something Christmas
The Second Day of Christmas: Cataloging the Christmas Sh*tstorm
The Third Day of Christmas: Social Ownership
The Fourth Day of Christmas: Compatriots
The Fifth Day of Christmas: Selective Disclosure
The Sixth Day of Christmas: Doing Stuff Together
The Seventh Day of Christmas: Happy New Year
The Eighth Day of Christmas: Resolutions
The Ninth Day of Christmas: Presenting Oneself
The Tenth Day of Christmas: The Future: Part I
The Eleventh Day of Christmas: Watch Lists and The Future Deferred
The Twelfth Day of Christmas: Just the beginning - The Future: Part II