Fred Wilson wrote a great post recently, Lightweight Identity. It has some really important themes in it, but the main contention of Fred’s post is that Twitter is, or has become, the lightweight identity on the internet. It’s obviously public, which means we don’t hold mental tension around people finding us there. There are things about me on Facebook which I wouldn’t want shared publicly, which forces Facebook to think more about how they build their service around identity. It can’t be open, because you fundamentally need to friend someone first.
Twitter is the lightweight identity of the internet at the moment. At least, that’s true for me. This last week as I’ve been blogging more I’ve been more inclined to mention the people that I’ve been spending time with. Many of the posts for this week have directly stemmed from conversations with those people and I felt it important to share with you who those people were. When I’ve done that, I’ve shared their identity on Twitter.
The idea behind this is directly linked to useful identity. If you’re interested in following more of that conversation, you can do so by seeing what those people are talking about right away. It also removed me from the middle of that relationship, as you don’t need my permission or help in connecting to Alex, Ross, Pete, Tim or anyone that has been mentioned here this week.
The Squiggly Line 
One thought on “Lightweight Identity on the internet”