Social Networks Useful to Share Identity

Sharing video, photos and music with friends and family online or How Social Networks Became Useful.

According to a November eMarketer report by senior analyst Debra Williamson, 2007 ad spending on U.S. social-networking sites will jump to $865 million from $350 million in 2006 a close to three-fold jump. By 2010, the report estimates, spending will reach $2.15 billion.

Meanwhile Bruce Nussbaum calls Identity, the New Paradigm.

A while back, I posted an item on "identity" as a new paradigm that could replace "experience" in our business culture. Academia, especially linguistics, has been talking about the shift from experience to identity for some time. The idea is that the concept of "experience" is passive.
--

But life really isn't like that. People are not passive--they make their own lives. People interract with their environments to create their distinct identities. Let me repeat that--people interract with their environments to create their own identities. This amounts to co-creating your own products and services.
--
YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Second Life and in the gaming world, you create an identity. Yes, there are avatars and they are the purest form of identity. But for me, it is the identity you build in the real world working with tools provided by companies that is the most interesting. How you configure you iPod or how you organize your cell phone defines you and reflects who you are. TiVo, Nikes, the sessions and workshops you chose and listed at the World Economic Forum, etc. That's your identity. None of that is passive.