It really sucks bigtime when you get used to blogging in Multiply and then suddenly shift to a much hushed environment such as Blogger or LiveJournal. In a sense, you miss the crowds and the replies you get from people no matter how many or how few they are. At least, in Multiply, you know that your space gets viewed, people get curious about your current content and decide for themselves if it's worth commenting or not. In Blogger/LiveJournal, your only consolation is the friends you make in there.There are certain issues surrounding it, however. When it comes to content creation, social networking sites promises personal space and freedom. Meaning, the user has the free capacity to create space and time like it was their own room. And being the owner of your room, you have the power to allow or disallow entry. That's why we have privacy settings - one inviolable right of a social networking site user/client.
But think of it as like Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives. Almost everyone knows what's happening in each household, and every little thing spreads like wildfire. There are friends who drop by to give each other sugar, and live lives of pure simplicity typical of the American Dream. But beyond that seeming warmth and friendliness are mysteries locked from within, or how illicit relationships happen within/without the marriage context. You seem to see Wisteria Lane with a tinge of ideality and say that "this neighborhood is the neighborhood to die for", when in fact, it's like any ordinary community. Only interesting.
That's how my typology of social networking sites use goes. It's like an ideal community that you build, and you share yourself in order to be noticed. At the very beginning, people are very much interested to see the newbie on the lot - is this person amiable? is she likeable? is he very accommodating? Things like that. But once that 'getting to know' stage has finished, things go on a great plateau until the next time you hit the airwaves and make history all over again.
It is with great alarm that I approach one startling trend about social networking sites: the performance of one's identity. In the few journal articles I've read about New Media and the Online Community, researchers have pointed out how teenage Americans use MySpace and Facebook as a ticket to connectivity and "coolness". Although it is not generalizable in the Philippine setting, it is highly possible that a densely-packed service such as Multiply could be experiencing the same situation.
The nearest experience I had towards identity performance is my great wonder why Friend A's Multiply account is always on a reply rampage whenever something new is posted (whether it's a photo album or a [lame] one-line blog post) versus Friend B who has made it a point to post content every single day and be met with a cold, eerie silence over the airwaves. I, for one, receive the least number of replies on blog posts I have 'passionately' made versus those I made just for the sake of it (like those lame three-line blog posts). Does it really have to do with likeability (or how people perceive you socially)? Or is it simply about uses and gratification?
In a sense, social psychology will tell you that a good number of people do things better when watched (social facilitation). And I think blogging in a social networking site is no exception. Why was there a need to put a blog function in Multiply when there's Blogger, LiveJournal, or Xanga to address the need anyway? Why do some people like blogging in Multiply compared to the time when they poured their hearts in the LiveJournal accounts? What is the magic behind the success of the Multiply blog? Is it really because of its release function? Its capability to make your sentiments public? Or simply an avenue to facilitate image reconstruction?
Malene Charlotte Larsen, Ph.D. in her 35 Perspectives of Social Networking once said that in a social networking site, identity gets constructed, reconstructed, and displayed. Such sites also act as co-constructors of one's personal identity. If we were to consider the second statement, one could think that the 'contacts' in a sense affect what we post in our accounts. If we feel it is right and okay for them, we go and post it. If it isn''t, then we don't. Such is the same with posting "controversial content" (rants, especially); we run risks posting these because of popular ethical considerations (which is quite normal). But perhaps the most startling of these is the reassurance perspective where "social networking sites are forums for reassurance and confirmatory messages between young people constantly reminding them that they are all right and someone likes them".
This, then, may perhaps explain why Friend A and Friend B's Multiply accounts are so different! Maybe it has something to do with likeability after all!
Michael Hecht in his Communication Theory of Identity once said that personal identity is something that comes from within, yet becomes influenced by society. Marshall McLuhan will tell you that today's society is an Information Society dependent on technology for building the global village. Globalization has made the world never too far from each other. If we are going to live in this world of closing in and in and in, then what is going to happen to our personal space? How else are we going to decorate our room? How else are we going to restrict passages when we are now called to keep it open?
Perhaps its time to reconsider how we use today's technology: are we using it for our greater benefit, or for our greater enslavement?
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