The discussions on anonymity are back in full force on the web, mostly courtesy Google’s stance against pseudonymity on Google+. Google has its reasons and is supposedly working on it.Considering that I represent myself as ‘manuscrypts’ and an icon/logo on most social networks, identity on the web is an issue that I can definitely relate to.

But when I consider this from a brands’ perspective, I sense an equally grey area. The brand is usually represented on social networks as a logo and a ‘voice’ that cannot be tied down to a person. Most studies indicate that consumers/users would rather talk to a person than a brand. But that also sets the stage for a BBC-Twitter like incident to happen, a scenario I had written about a couple of years back. I have seen only a few interesting alternatives. (eg. Chicago Tribune’s Twitter directory or adopting a persona like Hippo)  There is a different side to it too – how many brand managers would like to associate themselves with the product they manage? (for various reasons) When agencies manage social platforms on behalf of clients, what is the best way to present that? A person has many identities, some he/she wants to share, and some others he/she does not, a brand is rarely given this leeway.

I feel that in all the time that has elapsed since my earlier post, the networks have not yet built systems that allow brands to fully explore the ‘people-conversations’ aspect that makes social work. Twitter and Facebook, the premium players, both lack a way to surface the identities of the people tied to the brand, in context. There is only so much a Twitter bio can hold, and no one looks at the Info tab on Facebook. (LinkedIn is best placed, but very few brand centric discussions happen there.) The focus, whether it’s Facebook’s Ads API or Twitter’s promoted tweets, seems to be on broadcast, albeit more targeted. Foursquare is still early in the game, but the self-serve brand pages are a decent step. I hope Google considers all this when they do allow brands to play on Google+.

If a platform does manage to work it out, it would be helpful for all concerned. Brands could apportion responsibilities. Monitoring systems and reaction mechanisms could build in roles, ‘filters’ and ‘rights’ accordingly, and users would know exactly who to speak to for what issue? The other way, of course, is for brands to build that network themselves, feeding in data, personas and conversations from existing networks. That way, they can even assign responsibility to early adopters within the organisation to test out new platforms on their behalf, and communicate that. With the rise of SoLoMo (social, location, mobile), the need for a distributed social architecture is now of much importance.

until next time, a brand’s personal identity