Self Expression through Social Media

Chris Poole, founder of Canvas, "a place to share and play with images" gave an amazing talk the other day, Self-Expression through Social Media, you can see it below:



Chris speaks about how identity intersects with the forms and methods of self-expression. He says that, for services that enhance self-expression, it's not the audience that matters, it's a users' context within that audience:

"Its not who you share with, it's who you share as . . . Identity is prismatic . . . We are all multifaceted people, we are more like diamonds, you can look at people from any angle and see something different and yet they are still the same."

Pseudonymity provides opportunities for rich expressiveness. Further, pseudonymity not only accurately reflects "prismatic identity" but it can also enhance creativity by allowing for creation and sharing from different sides of the diamond. One only needs to look at Canvas, or Tumblr, or Reddit for many examples of this.

"Its not who you share with, it's who you share as" is an amazingly insightful description because it recognizes that the power of social applications comes from the people, and even moreso its comes from what they call themselves when sharing.