Social Internet

Online Identities & Social networks

My friend sent me an invitation to join Social Chat on facebook. Out of curiosity, I installed the application to check it out. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but meeting strangers on facebook is not a functionality that fits within my framework of facebook.

I was confounded when a private message popped on my screen (deja vu –1998/1999–  rediff chat anyone? excite.com chat?! ) and asked,

A/S/L?

I haven’t heard that term in over 8 years. (For those not familiar with the term, A/S/L stands for Age/ Sex/ Location - a phrase that was used in the heyday of online chat when people were just discovering alternate ways to meet other people online)

But we are in 2007 now. There are social hierarchies in place. We have various identities online for specific reasons. An individual’s identity on J-Date is going to be different from their persona on linkedin or even facebook. My identities on certain networks are built to meet people (ning, linkedin, cyworld)  but on other networks, namely facebook, I want to connect with people I *already* know.
Applications like Social Chat dilute the meaning of facebook for me. Thankfully, it is only an application and I have opted out already. But this leads to an interesting question - should content, in this case, applications, be curated on facebook? Should there be an editorial team that decides what makes the cut and what doesn’t?

Or is it best left for the public to decide?