Introduction:Since pre-historic times, we being humans, has been socializing through different mediums - through meetings & gatherings at various events, seminars, public places and recreational activities to share our joys, issues, current happenings in and around us and exchange of thoughts takes place through comments and feedback and as time passes by we tend to be part of a group or community whose ideas and thoughts are as same as ours, & we stick on to those group of people and interests clubs in terms of business or group activities and events which would help in increase our knowledge and know who’s who and know the latest stuff happening in our fields. There were bath-houses and local community gatherings and not to mention the parks wherein people used to play event today but all have been diminished to an extent.
Role of online Identities and its importance:With the advent of the internet, improved communication and its boom, all these activities and socialization have taken a setback including offline activity of mingling with people visiting malls rather going to parks. People can now access any information at their fingertips or connect with anyone simply in a few minutes. Eventually, people have now started reinventing the term socialization, by working on methods which can save time and energy and things which could be done manually offline; the same work can be achieved virtually within a matter of minutes.
People have started to connect to other peers of same ideas and interests through online communities, started writing own feelings and expert information through blogs, expressing themselves with digital photos, uploading special moments and events through online videos, shout what they did today or experience through status updates and wall messages which have become a recent fad and a addiction being hooked on to these all sort of online activities. All these activities have to be achieved by accessing different places and locations, due to which people have created multiple identities of themselves in the virtual world which segregates them and other people in each place & location, as each location provides a different purpose and action for the user which lets them get connected to offline world scenarios in one form or the other.
Its importance is that it allows to define who you are, what do you do, what are your feeling/thoughts, what are you good or expert at, sharing your emotions apart from the face there are % of people who are fake and provide information which they aren’t related to, and that leads to further issues. There are some things which we are unable to express to people openly and share things, but by these new online platforms, each new platform allows people to create a distinguished identity to express themselves to their peers and to the world, about what they are good at and what you would be doing.
But all this activities, weren’t at a single place, people have developed innumerable platforms with over the years for people to express themselves in any format which was available, due to which people started registering by creation of multiple user accounts for different purpose and work over the web, which we can see a issue, wherein at some point at a time due to time crunch, people are unable to manage all these activities in different mediums effectively over the time, as people are finding it difficult to keep a balance between both the online and offline world which we will discuss in detail in the next topic.
Figure 1: Traditional and online interaction -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34419182@N08/7484738016/in/photostreamIssues faced currently with online identities in our findings:
• As discussed above, that people have been registering themselves with many new and upcoming sites and platforms, it’s very difficult to remember all online credentials unless the user able to store all data at a central point, apart from it there’s also possibility of data theft and online credentials can be accessed easily by 3rd party apps/vendors.
Users should not reveal too much information over the net about them when creation of every new profile created, stick to only the information needed for that website/application as there are many stalkers, & people and marketers looking forward in getting sensitive and people data and use it for their own purpose.
• Another issue faced, is nowadays with many sites coming up with their own different purpose and feature, people need to remember the website names also, therefore due to website like -
Digg
Stumble upon
- allow users to bookmark site for quick reference afterwards, but what the people actually missing is the accessibility and time consumption is increased as the bookmarks start getting increased.
• In the early days of the web in web 1.0 era, there used be a 1 way communication and expression of content and data exchange, people used to post and upload information for their peers to see and interact, but with the advent of web 2.0, people are now interested in a 2 way communication, wherein they share content and information with their peers and the world like photos videos music documents, so sharing has become a major part of the web and also people also like to receive ratings and comments and likes and analytics data of how other people perceive their information and media content over the web.
• Over time, data and information has been increased and people have accumulated and created innumerable content over the web, therefore people have shared content across to multiple locations managing data separately in different formats, due to which information and media content has been scattered all over the web, and people are unable to share content seamlessly plus people are now interested in collaboration of data and content with other peers of their interest which is only a possibility if bring the data and information connectivity seamlessly across multiple locations.
• Now when, we talk about communications, people communicate through different forms be it SMS, Email, Im, Chat, Blog, Forums, Networking, people have created separate identities for each mode of communication & apart from it people have multiple accounts in the same mode of communication divided into family,friends,business groups etc which further makes complex of managing contacts and managing communication with different people in different modes at a single point of time, as most of time would be spent in writing to different people in different modes separately which leads to decrease in productivity and effective communication.
• One of the other key major issues in online identities space, each tech company is having its separate identity service of its own, but there’s not one online identity to rule them all, apart from the OPENID (http://openid.net/) project, which has recently have allowed participation from top web companies to be a part of this project to help & allow users to seamlessly access multiple accounts and information, but limit to only those websites, providers supporting Open ID.It is a good concept, privacy point of view but also direct access to spammers ,hackers, who access all user data across all networks, impersonation & hide identities.
Offline Identity Crisis in Mobiles:
With the increase usage of smart phones, & the numbers growing fast, we can consider of users identities connected to their mobile devices, the landline numbers were to share with entire families; mobile phones tend to be more private and personal, with each member of the family and relations having their own phone numbers. At one own personal level, mobile phones have come with managing multiple sim cards facility so now users can share separate no’s with different people of their level of relationship where in there’s a need to organize and personalize contacts Recently the portability across mobile carriers has come into place, wherein people are able to retain the same number, even if they change devices or providers.
Also, there should be some security measures to be taken into account to prevent criminals from accessing stolen/lost phones to steal identity and personal information, strong encryption and identity log on needs to be put in place for authentication like digital uid or fingerprint scan etc.
Figure 2: Types of online identities -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34419182@N08/7484740662/in/photostream
The Solutions (our research):
Based on the above scenarios we are researching and working to creation and development in resolving the issues in a step wise manner currently as a web based project ,making things easier and simpler some of the areas we are working on are ,taking the pain points into consideration i.e.:
• No need to remember site names anymore
• Single login required to access all other online accounts
• Time consumption less in accessing site seamlessly.
• Easy communicate and collaborate with peers.
• Broad content, multiple sources, open environment.
• Save user time and energy & completion of tasks.
• Complete end-to-end marketing solutions in various verticals
Some of the Revenue models & business strategies which can be created around online identities space -
•Logins/password managements:We can develop unique key strong credential management system wherein users can store and manage online accounts information in a secured manner to sync data from website to another.It can be further be created for managing offline accounts as well and for internal intranet systems.
•Enhanced communications:We can create subscription based premium enhanced features like scheduling, reports, backup services, blacklist, contact organization, and get activity feeds reports of our peers etc across all platforms.
•Collaboration of data:We can create premium services built around data and information of user generated content of own and others in order to deliver better output in redesigning, changes in content,updates,received feedback and work together provide more interesting content, accomplish tasks together be with photo change video cuttings, music content, document changes etc. as an individual and as a company.
•Backup solutions:We can provide backup solutions based on space and volume of all your virtual identity information and content, incase if account gets compromised, data loss due to mistaken deletions by providing users to sync data from any location and backup all data in a centralized location. A new scope of online data portability can come into place.
