Case Story: Identity aggregation

Summary	Identity aggregation
Group / workshop	Digital Identities	Status	seed
Project details...

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

Prior to the 'Web 2.0' age I was reasonably successful at focusing the bulk of my digital identity at a reasonably small number (3 or 4) Web 'home' pages. (There was other stuff of course - like every email I've ever sent to a public list - which was more distributed but I'll ignore that for now.) A Google search for 'Andy Powell' still returns two of these (both on UKOLN servers) as 3rd and 4th hit - http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=andy+powell - after the guitarist of Wishbone Ash (my long-term Google nemesis).

This was achieved in part simply because of the high ranking of UKOLN pages, but also thru a reasonably consistent approach to linking back to my UKOLN home page from email footers, other web pages, open source software README files, and so on.

Since the advent of Web 2.0, my digital identity has become dispersed across a large number of sites - Facebook, Flickr, Typepad, Blogger, Hotmail, GMail, andypowe11.net, Animoto, Slideshare, Del.icio.us, the Eduserv web site, LinkedIn, Plaxo, FriendFeed, YouTube, Yahoo Pipes, … I could probably go on and on.

I take reasonable care to name myself consistently within these services as 'andypowe11' (note the use of digit '1's rather than letter 'l's) but that name is not always available (e.g. Google) or appropriate (e.g. Facebook and Eduserv). In any case, some of the material is hosted on joint work-related 'eduserv' accounts within some of these services - with hindsight this was probably not a senseible approach to take but I'm now stuck with it.

The choice of name (using digit 1's reather than letter l's) has resulted in a reasonably unique name, but can also lead to some confusion, e.g. where people mis-read it as 'andypowell' (with letter l's). It is also not totally consistent for the reasons outlined above.

I have 3 primary email addresses (andy.powell@eduserv.org.uk, andypowe11@hotmail.com and andy@andypowe11.net).

I also have an alter-ego, in the form of Art Fossett (my Second Life avatar), who appears both in-world and on the Web (via a blog and flickr account for example) and in email (artfossett@gmail.com).

I have at least 3 OpenIDs (as Andy Powell - and others as Art Fossett) of which my preferred one currently is http://claimid.com/andypowell. ClaimID have a nice 'verified' option, allowing readers to verify that I own the things I say I own (at least in the context of trusting what the ClaimID site says about me).

My visible relationships with other people (with other digital identities?) are mostly embedded into the sites listed above (using their internal friending mechanisms) - particularly Facebook, Twitter, Second Life.

Facebook is probably the biggest of these. It contains both personal and work relationships. In the main, other services contain mainly work-related relationship details.

I am the developer of Second Friends (http://apps.facebook.com/secondfriends), a Facebook application that allows people to share parts of their Facebook, Second Life and Twitter accounts (in relatively limited ways). This is the major point at which I draw together my two primary digital identities - though in general I make no secret that Andy Powell and Art Fossett are one and the same.

As Andy Powell, I blog at eFoundations.typepad.com, which I author jointly with a colleague at Eduserv - i.e. the blog isn't all my own work. I also maintain a personal blog (intermittently) at andypowe11.net/blog.

All in all, it's a confusing picture.

Task

What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

I would like to consolidate my presence as far as possible, at (or around) andypowe11.net (and andy@andypowe11.net).

Note that this will not be completely possible - my work related material will always reside at (or around) the Eduserv web site for example and will always be associated with my andy.powell@eduserv.org.uk email address (as the most visible unique id).

I also have something of an identity crisis around Art Fossett - specifically concerning how closely the digital identities of Andy Powell and Art Fossett should be related.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

Aggregating blog, flickr, twitter and other content at http://andypowe11.net/ is reasonably easy to do, and I have an ongoing (lightly resourced) activity to do this.

I still need to resolve the issue of whether material associated with Art Fossett should be included in this aggregation.

I also have to dis-aggregate my contributions to the eFoundations blog before aggregating them with my other stuff (so as not to confuse stuff that is written by my co-author). This is done with a Yahoo Pipe based on a 'dc:creator=PowellAndy' tag which is auto-inserted into the Typepad RSS feed from the blog.

I don't currently aggregate stuff from Slideshare and YouTube, though ultimately I would like to - again, much of this material has been made available under a single 'eduserv' account - so I will have to disaggregate it before adding it to my own stuff. Again, this will be done based on the same tag.

I would also like to transfer the Google-juice that is associated with my 'old' personal pages at UKOLN to my new Web presence. Technically, this can be done by asking my old employer to issue a 301 (Moved permanently) from the old URL to http://andypowe11.net/. Whether UKOLN would be willing to do this is another matter - my guess is that they probably would be willing to do so for my old personal page (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/~lisap/) but not for my more formal work page (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell/).

Increase the machine-readability of the information held at http://andypowe11.net/ using micro-formats and related technologies.

Move my OpenID to andypowe11.net using delegation to ClaimID.

Results

What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?

No results to date - other than a minimal but growing presence at http://andypowe11.net/.

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

Think carefully before pushing content into external web 2.0 services using a shared account because disaggregating content back out may be difficult.

Think carefully about where you build up Google-juice because moving it around may be outside of your control.

Licensing

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.