my last post raised some questions amongst friends as to how we would get to the social media brave new world. i would like to take a few posts to step through this new “social media future”.

the first part that raised some eyebrows was facebook as a federated identity platform.

let me make this clear, it could be facebook, myspace or any other platform, i will use facebook because i think it’s probably closer than any of the others to getting there first.

what is identity?

one of the definitions that dictionary.com provides for identity is:

“The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.”

the definition is quite apt to describe what our identity is in the real world in our day to day. the characteristics of:

• how we look;
• our personality;
• our likes and dislikes;
• our friends; and
• what we do for work

are all things that make up who we are. these attributes are how the people we know identify us. some attributes more than others. how we look is one of our primary methods of being identified by people we know.

when we deal with people we don’t know or officials, we use a papers that have been verified by someone who has seen us and our photo is permanently affixed to those papers. think passport, and drivers license.

how does this relate to facebook?

on facebook, there are multiple aspects of our identity already on there:

• photos of us;
• our friends and social networks;
• our conversation with those networks; and
• employment information.

so clearly there are already many methods that already prove our online identity. the next step is to link those identities to prove that your online identity matches your real world identity. credit cards are one way or setting up positive identity vet methods are others. in australia, we use the 100 point check system. 100 points is enough to positively prove your identity to even open up bank accounts or get a passport.

there is no reason why a facebook office could not perform these type of checks.

once it does this, it is well and truly on the way to being able to monetize its services.

in the next post i will discuss security issues and monetization.