Are we genuine online? Does it matter?

So much for the old on/offline behaviour divide. Social media is frequently positioned as the home of disinhibition and idealisation, a place where we abandon our real selves for posturing and role-playing; but new research from the University of Texas suggests that our online personalities match who we really are.

“The scientists, led by a psychology professor, Sam Gosling, collected 236 profiles of young adults on Facebook as well as a similar social networking site in Germany. ..The researchers expected the Facebook profiles to match an idealized version of the user’s personality. But to their surprise, the online Facebook profile matched the real-world personality test…Dr. Gosling said the findings suggested that online social networks could provide users with an opportunity for genuine social interactions.”

In the comments on the New York Times post, several people point out that Facebook is uniquely ‘realistic’ as it’s built around networks of people who know each other, so that frauds will be quickly found out. However, many different platforms have an inherent ‘reality control.’ Twitter works best as a passion-connecting tool, and effectively maintaining a false or idealised self across several tweets a day would need pretty dedicated attention to detail for little discernible purpose. The most successful or popular bloggers and forum members such as Robert Scoble, Seth Godin and Justine Roberts of Mumsnet have traded on a sense of accessibility and personality. Aspiring opinion leaders follow their lead – its why Tuttles and Twestivals and other offline meet-ups are so popular. And the increasing popularity of video blogging and live streaming makes maintaining an element of online self-fakery pretty damn difficult.

It’s a debate which is highly significant for brands getting involved in social media. If you’re using the opinions of these people as a basis for change and prioritisation, it’s pretty important that they’re expressing genuine approval or grievances. On the other hand, does it really matter if some WOM is calculated to give a false sense of status or personality or to fit in? Isn’t it still influential to the thousands, regardless of its individual integrity?

My experience is that a sense of the genuine still strongly affects our trust of WOM online. While we’ll certainly be generally influenced by the general volume and sentiment of comments, those that touch and change us most are ones where we do have a sense of context – where what we read and see of that person assures us that what they share comes from their heart.

What do you think?

Brought into the world on Monday, December 7th, 2009 and filed under 1000thoughts, Measurement.