I came across an article on the Pentagon and NSA’s potential use of social networks. It is meant to scare, shock, and alarm you, but I think it highlights some very important concepts in online identity:

Managing Your Authorized Identity
The Internet is a highly effective and sticky communication channel. Therefore, you can leverage it to build a portfolio and a reputation, but with that will evolve peripheral perspectives of your identity. Some of these perspectives will, by the nature of the Web, have higher attention ratios. Therefore, I have found it is critical for you to maintain an authoritative, or at least authorized, version of your identity. Here are a couple of mine: billrice.org and my LinkedIn Profile. Why is this important? And how do you do it? Well the ongoing debate over Fred Wilson’s self-edit to Wikipedia regarding his identity highlights both questions. It was important because another Wikipedia entry referenced him, but linked to an incorrect “Fred Wilson” identity, which causes confusion at the least and at the worst in a different contest potential identity theft or slander. As to the important question of how do you properly correct your identity when it is misrepresented–we have a dilemma what is authoritative. Do we trust the embellishments of a proud self or the third party perceptions of the community around the identity?

Managing Your Relationships
This is an important component to identity and increasing hard to manage, particularly as it occurs on the Internet. Social Networks like LinkedIN, Plaxo, and others encourage indiscriminate weak relationship building. I am just know thinking about this concept, but I think it is a dangerous practice as our relationships often define us or at least contribute to the perception others form of us.

Detecting Conflicts of Interest
I think detecting conflicts of interest (pdf) is going to become a crucial and very important body of research for Internet commerce. Most consumers are using the Internet as a research tool to investigate their decisions and purchases. So, know what happens when your buying research and decision incorporates information from a hard to detect conflict of interest? This is best demonstrated with an example:

Let’s say you are looking for a lead management solution (full disclosure: this is the business I am in). So, logically you go to Google and search for “compare lead management software” and on the front page of the search result you find the perfect site: www.compare-lead-management.com and on the front page it confirms you have definately hit the jackpot.

You need a lead management system now. Which solution is best for you? We can help you decide.

You continue your research and you see a great feature comparison chart that firewalls Leads360’s product and Leads360’s gracious acceptance as the best product in the market. Notice their top competitor, icoSales (full disclosure: my company) is not listed.

Who do you think authors this site? Well let’s take a look:

www.compare-lead-management.com
www.leads360.com
www.lead-management.com
www.thinklogic.net
www.betterleadmanagement.com

See the inherent conflict of interest that is very hard to detect by the average consumer looking for a lead management solution?