Justin Smith over at Inside Facebook raises an interesting point during his recent post "Facebook Connect Making Blog Comments More Authentic."
In the few days since Facebook Connect launched, we’ve noticed something: blog commenting is becoming more authentic. The presence of trusted Facebook identity is creating a context for more meaningful conversation on the web.
For example, when Facebook Connect launched on Inside Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, several people at Facebook, and dozens of people in the industry commented on Inside Facebook for the first time. Why? Because for the first time, Facebook Connect has enabled real identity on the web. In other words, everyone knows who’s actually talking.
Justin concludes that the identity verification made possible by Facebook Connect will have a couple of positive implications for blogs:
- If your comments are connected to your Facebook identity, you’re not going to publish things you might say anonymously.
- Because comments connected to a Facebook identity are connected to a real person with a reputation (usually), they are more trustworthy (at least to the extent of that person’s reputation).
(I'd encourage you to click through to see the whole post, and if you haven't already, subscribe to Justin's stuff - he consistently writes a superior blog)
I don't disagree with Justin's points here. On RateItAll we occasionally see some pretty nasty stuff - particularly in sensitive "third rail" type topics like politics, religion, and race. We've often thought that folks would be act a bit more civilly towards each other, and measure their words a bit more carefully, if their real identities were associated with the post.
But is transparency always better than anonymity? I would like to say yes, but practical experience might say otherwise.
Topix CEO Chris Tolles recently said during a presentation that removing the registration hurdle from an online community - in other words, making posting completely anonymous - increases the volume of content posted by 20X. How much of this increase is due to the increased convenience of not having to register, and how much of this has to do with contributors' desire to be completely anonymous with no email, no nickname, nothing? In this blog post, Chris actually takes on the anonymous vs. registered debate, shares some numbers, and concludes:
While anonymous posts have a roughly 50% higher kill rate, they also account for 3X the comment and commenter volume. If one asks, “where are we getting the most acceptable comments from?”, the answer is clearly the non-registered user base. As pointed out above, that there are as many registered users on Topix is partially due to offering anonymous comments.
For most user generated content sites, success is directly correlated with the volume of content created. More volume means more activity which means more potential hooks into your site which means a faster growth rate. If increased identity transparency among your user base slows your content creation, it may very well slow your rate of growth.
And from a user perspective, when you are faced with a reality of publishing content that will be part of your permanent, real life record, to be seen by your friends, dates, work colleagues, employers, and kids, I don't think it's farfetched to think that some folks will choose to publish less, or not to publish at all.
And what about quality? There is certainly a strong case to be made that folks are more likely put more thought into their posts if their real life reputation is associated with their online identity. However, it's not hard to think of cases in which increased transparency might lead to decreased honesty, which might well be considered damaging to the quality of discussion. Anyone who has been around the San Francisco tech scene knows that there is a fair amount of online backslapping done not because of any actual agreement or respect, but because of the realities of having to do business with folks that you might secretly find boorish. Might not the conversation be more productive if more folks felt free to say what they really think?
As a caretaker of a fairly large, mostly anonymous online community, I'm excited about the possibilities of increased transparency and authenticity. But I also know that it's going to be a big, scary jump for many of our members, and worry A) that content production will go down; and B) honesty will go down.
In the short term, I don't think this is a make or break issue. Services like Facebook Connect can be offered as an option, letting sites continue to provide anonymity if they choose.
But whether or not increased transparency and authenticity is a net gain or not, it's coming. Understanding and managing the implications of this shift from anonymous identities to real identities will likely be one of the big challenges / opportunities of 2009.
