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Editor's Blog: My Freecycle identity crisis
It's not who you are, it's who you say you are that counts online

By Steve Ranger

Published: Tuesday 01 April 2008

Recently I had a bed I wanted to get rid of - one that was, I felt, too good to spend the next 1,000 years rotting in landfill. So I decided to have a go at Freecycling it instead, which to my surprise threw up some interesting questions about online identity.

If you've not come across it before, Freecycle is a group that enables you to donate unwanted goods to the local community. There also seems to be no limit to weird and wacky items offered on Freecycle - who would have thought old video tapes or 5kg of rice could find a new home?

And so, I posted the offer of my bed on Freecycle and sat back and waited for responses, basking in the warm glow of simultaneously de-cluttering my home and living green.

Pretty soon I was gratified to see the responses rolling in, and I had to decide which of my fellow Freecyclers would win the bed. And it's here it gets interesting because it's the point at which online identity suddenly intersects with the real world.

Identity has always been a fuzzy notion online. The web has always offered a means of reinvention, with Dave the Dull becoming Vlad the Mighty at the touch of a button. But this fun has its limits.

Simply - I don't want to have someone who calls themselves doomwarrior666 coming round my house at the weekend to pick up a bed.

And besides, how do I address him? Dr Doom? Mr Warrior?

The same goes for email monikers such as fluffybunny123.

OK, so it might seem rather conservative 1.0 but in terms of someone turning up at my house on a Saturday morning I'm much happier with an online identity I can tie to a real person.

Which is why I was only really interested in giving my bed to someone who sounded like they were from this planet, not one ruled by axe-wielding dwarfs. And so it was someone with a normal name who won out.

I guess this leads to the broader question of the future of identity.

As internet-based services become a standard way to interact, shop and play, the difference between an online identity and a real identity begins to narrow.

Facebook works because you have to use your own identity with a real name and real photos. If everyone were hiding behind a pseudonym it wouldn't work at all.

Now of course there're plenty of valid reasons why people don't appear online by the name on their birth certificate. And that's unlikely to change. Online you will use a variety of avatars, user names and other representations which in some way will reflect parts of the offline individual.

But use the wrong one and you can come off seeming out of touch or just strange. The trick is to remember to use the right one in the right environment - especially if all you want is for me to provide you with a good night's sleep.

Editor's choice - three things you must check out on silicon.com this week:

silicon.com has been eagerly following Heathrow's T5 transformation over the past two years but when it finally opened its doors this week, it was plagued with problems. In this analysis we ask, just how did they get it so wrong?

A great photo story on silicon.com this week looks at getting online while on the move. Here, silicon.com reporter Natasha Lomas road tests wi-fi on trains.

And while you're at it, don't forget to catch up on what our resident Naked CIO has to say; this week - IT staff and their loyalty.