Like many people these days I wear different hats and represent different things to different people.

Conversely, I have different boundaries and feelings of connection or disconnection with the people who engage and follow me. Increasingly, I’ve been feeling more unsure about sharing so much of myself online and decided to start privatising my feeds. So my sharing is “tiered”

1. Tier one (public feed):
Largely RSS and a small amount of back and forth. Geared to public discussion around items of interest to me. This is more like microblogging.

2. Tier two (private feed):
Direct interaction, conversational exchange, some or no RSS (I may wish to have more private conversations around the items I’ve shared).

Here’s my advice to the “identity” challenged (who also care about privacy):

1. Subscription only feeds

Where’s your Twitter data being aggregated? How many other sites are collecting your feed? Unless you know the answer to this, you might consider making your feed subscription only.

By default, I have made all of my feeds subscription only because I don’t want them aggregated throughout the internet. We’re still not sure what kind of legacy all this data will produce so I say we should really be taking more caution around the distribution of our activities, associations and identity with micro content.

2. One totally private – friends only – feed

It’s a really good idea to create one (or more) small private feeds for people you wish to engage more openly – and as a whole person.

3. Create a social media policy

People are making far too many assumptions about what are shared principles and practices with social media. For example, that it’s just polite to follow somebody back (even if you don’t know them or have an interest in their expression). There is NO social contract for social media. Right now, it’s far too subjective. So I removed some of the mystery and created a DIY social media policy (it’s a personal policy – not a set of rules for others). If the makers of these tools can have policies, so should the users who give those tools value.
http://melaniemcbride.net/2008/04/06/diy-social-media-policy/

I do not believe we can truly be *whole* people yet online. Given the presence of malcontents and trolls, given the privacy and surveillance issues and given the mentality of laggard/traditionalist employers and HR departments, it’s simply not possible for most ordinary people (power holders have a different relation to self expression – they can get away with more than ordinary people for whom the stakes of “sharing” may have more detrimental consequences).

That’s how I’ve handled this “identity” crisis.

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Twitter.com/melmcbride

Anything that I say publicly online, I would say to someone’s face and in a similar manner. As much as it’s a virtual world, it’s totally real and I just think about how I would act before we had the internet.

For work stuff I am ccosmato@radford
For personal stuff I am charley.cosmato
For experimental stuff and creative stuff I am chaz maloney

Ironically I have no problem, in this strange age, letting people know that I actively maintain these three seperate identities. It helps me focus my digital life and I think it helps other netizens follow the parts of my life that is useful to them .

chaz maloney has been blogged about, appeared at Edmedia,does fun techno-cool stuff and takes risks

ccosmato@radford is a good worker and contributes to the home team

charley.cosmato has a family and friends and frequently shares glimpses of his RL namesake to these people.

Anyway, I am looking forward to meeting Intellagirl at the ECVA in Blacksburg.

Cheers,
Charley,Chaz,ccosmato,charley.cosmato

I post personal and professional tweets and have tweeps that I’ve met in meatspace and those that I haven’t. The end result has been that I’ve connected more personally with a number of professional colleagues, and a few folks from my personal life know a little more about my professional life.

I have caught myself thinking twice about what I’m posting given that an increasing number of colleagues at work have started tweeting. However, I think that’s more a function of having the good sense to mind what you say in what should be assumed to be a public forum than it is a new dilemma posed by Twitter.

I wonder to what extent people segregate their different social networks/identities by application. For example, I’ve been encountering professional colleagues in Facebook, and I’ve sometimes hesitated – thinking that I already have Twitter, LinkedIn and others that I use for professional networks, why not keep Facebook for my personal network? The implication of that I think, hits upon a question/issue I’ve heard asked more than a few times, most recently by Matt Croslin at EduGeek Journal. If a learner wants to keep their different “hats” separate, what happens if/when faculty are trying to integrate social networks into formal learning environments, as more than a few seem to suggest we should? While using Facebook in a course may, as many may advocate, “go where our students are going,” Matt may be right. If students’ have the opinion of “keep your class out of my Facebook” then aren’t attempts to integrate social networks into learning spaces simply creating a situation where learners are awkwardly forced (a) to refuse class participation or (b) to allow a class to infringe upon their personal space?

I think I am able to deal with the multiple persona issue because it is so micro. If it wasn’t tagging and contextualization would be VERY necessary.

As it is I treat twitter like a really good cocktail party that I pop my head into on occasion and chat with people.

Cheers,
Silona

I came to Twitter before my employer, Dell, did and while many representatives of our company tweet with the “XYZatDell” moniker, I’ve kept my original @LPT identity. Partially because I tweet both personal and work-related things. Also, partially because LPT is my personal brand that will go with me no matter who my employer is at any moment in my career.

My manager is on Twitter, my coworkers are all over it, heck even my boss’ boss’ boss is on Twitter; so, I’m very aware that as you point out, I won’t tweet anything I wouldn’t be cool yelling out in my cube. And, even though none of my family is on Twitter (yet), I’m conscious that these tweets live on forever in Google search, so I better be sure I’m ok with them seeing anything I vent about them.

That all said, I do pretty much try to just be me on Twitter – and any current or future employers, friends or family who can’t handle me as me, well … who’d want them?

I’m very new to Twitter, too, so some of my current use is really about experimentation. I was thinking over the weekend about how I should start framing my Tweets. I haven’t concluded much except that I’m not going to say or do anything that I wouldn’t in a group of people I know. And that I will be true to myself.

Couple other thoughts: Twitter seems like a great way for introverts to contribute. Twitter also seems like a great place for people with blurting issues to get themselves in trouble. So, someone who is an introvert who typically can control blurting in a face to face situation might have to work in a completely different way to keep blurting under control on Twitter.

Our struggle with identity will always occur, if not on the outside, def on the inside. We yearn for people to know us and like us.

Twitter provides another outlet for people – often not all of the outlets we need, but I think it is important that we represent not an ‘online persona’ but we represent ourselves. I post what is on my mind at the moment. I post who I am in reality…does that mean i still filter…duh…I filter in reality too…if I didn’t I might be in prison.