“I can’t access myself!”

They have just sent me this photo and after a good laugh, I couldn’t help but wonder the chaos that social networks trigger off in our “inner self”, or in terms of Web 2.0, in our “profile”. Or to be really precise, in our multiple profiles circulating in hyperspace. If we were only to have just one, what has been so far the simple task of “identifying” ourselves would be even simpler. But as we have so many profiles, and all so different, things get rather complicated. So much so that I think we’ll soon have for instance, a new dysfunction in psychology labelled, “inability to identify oneself in the net”, filling the waiting rooms at psychiatric clinics.

And the problem isn’t just the social networks we belong to, in each one we are someone else. And of course, we have a different profile. The serious professional with a double degree, a couple of Master’s degrees and a brilliant career under the belt in Linkedin, or the wacky friend, a compulsive lager lout, a Rolling Stones groupie and fan of extreme sports like some of those Play·3 games where you get killed several times a minute…

Actually I think it is “almost” not even necessary to mention just how unwise and dangerous it would be to “mix” both profiles. Especially as companies have started to do the detective work on their “future” talent, surfing through all the social networks that have ever existed or have yet to emerge, looking for the dirt, our dirt, like many American companies for whom a Facebook photo of a candidate  caught smoking is already cause for “dumping”….

The Web is going crazy, the users are going nuts, and the companies too. Who are we? What sort of image should we portray of ourselves to others? And in the social networks should we “touch up” our profiles according to the social circle we find ourselves? And what about the companies….how legal is it for them to search every little detail of our lives in Facebook, Twitter, Tuenti, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, Linkedin, Xing, Delicious, Digg…?

Well, my dear friends, I don’t have the answer….