Putting children first: a design pattern for parents and guardians who publish online images of their children

June 11th, 2010 • 1 comment Moi Numérique, Technologies sociales
Tags: Children, Children safety, Digital self, EDID09, Eduserv, identity, Moi Numérique, Parents

Please, no more photos…, by Paula FJ

Summary

This pattern highlights the tension between personal online identity authoring and the responsibility we have towards others when their identity is enmeshed with ours. Specifically, how parents and guardians mitigate the risks associated with publishing online images of their children and the resulting contribution they make to a child’s digital identity.

Authors*

Margarita Pérez García, Steven Warburton, Phil Archer, Josie Fraser, Sally Griffin, Jim Hensman, Mark Kramer, Finbar Mulholland, Leon Cych, Jonathan Poole, Mira Vogel,  Yishay Mor. *Please ensure that the full development history remains with this pattern so that all authors are acknowledged.

Problem

Photographs have an important place in presenting, reflecting and understanding our identities, and in preserving our memories. The ease of capturing digital images combined with the proliferation of social sites and services for publishing them online make it is simple to share such content publicly on the Internet.

Parents and guardians who create an online identity that includes images and text about their children inevitably contribute to their children’s online presence. Parents and guardians can unknowingly participate in the construction of the digital identity of dependents who subsequently have little control over how they are presented or who they are presented to.

Whatever the reasons or justifications for the online publication of these images, the problem remains. An online picture of a child that is posted on the Internet contributes and/or interferes with that child’s online identity before they understand the implications and are able to build and manage their own digital identity. At worst these images can present a series of risks that need to be mitigated:

• Potential for abuse – this can be via cutting and pasting images, editing images or changing the context within which an image is viewed.
• Access to personal information – images can be used within flaming, stalking and cyber-bullying type behaviours.
• Identity theft – too much personal information can accidentally be made visible and lead to identities being stolen.
• Attraction of unsolicited communication – this could be to a parent or child represented in a given image via the online service in which the image resides, but this could also translate into tracing a person in the real-world if geotags (geographical identification metadata usually consisting of latitude and longitude coordinates) have been used.
• Misinterpretation – information may be inappropriately represented, errors amplified and false conclusions drawn, for example when images are taken out of their original context and aggregated into pornographic collections.
• Interference – images that persist over time have the potential to affect their adult life for good or ill. The created identity can interfere with the identity the children create for themselves in the future that will evolve over time as they play with their identity.
• Potential embarrassment of children in the short, medium and long term.

Read more »

Portraits by invited artists to Julia Kay’s Portrait Party

April 29th, 2010 • Au fil des rencontres, Julia Kay's Portrait Party, Moi Numérique
Tags: Digital self, iPhone art, JKPP, Moi Numérique, Moi-Je, Portraits

In Julia Kay’s Portrait Party, one has to make a portrait, drawn or paint, of all other invited artists, so far 155 from over the world. In few words: you paint everyone and everyone else paints you. These are, so far, the many portraits of me can be found in my Flickr galleries at http://www.flickr.com/photos/margaperez/galleries/

A fresh start: the story of why I deleted all my tweets

November 17th, 2009 • 2 comments Moi Numérique, Moi-Je par soi-même
Tags: EDID09, identity, Identity management, impression

This is another contribution to the digital identities case stories repository, in the Pattern Language Network. Case Stories describe critical incidents of practice, highlighting key design challenges and possible solutions, They can be found at: http://purl.org/planet/Cases/

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

Recently I have applied for selected job positions within international organisations in Europe. As soon as I had finished preparing and submitting my CV, I started to assess my online presence in case a potential employer ‘Googled’ me. I did not have any issues with my blog or my Netvibes universe: although they can always be improved, for example, making easier the access to relevant and structured information, they are in fact always prepared for public scrutiny! However I had a nagging thought in the back of my mind about my Twitter account.

Task

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

Although I was reluctant to use Twitter, I fell into it in 2007. At the beginning I used it only for personal purposes, but I soon began to tweet about my professional activities as well, mixing personal and professional tweets as my life went on. I was wary of privacy issues and always paid attention to what I tweeted. However, I did not want to build a fake public persona by carefully selecting tweets and retweets according to the editorial line ‘what am I doing now that makes me look great’? (replace ‘great’ by any other self-aggrandisement adjective).

So I have happily tweeted as a professional, but also as a mother and a citizen about all sorts of things that fill my everyday life – when life was clement enough to leave me the time to do so.

A few weeks ago some events made me reconsider my twitter activities:

• a blog post on the Internet titled “Is twitter my new CV?”

• the proliferation of fake public personas within the EdTech panorama who are effectively using their Twitter accounts as an eReputation trampoline

I realised that my Twitter account is definitely not my online CV in action and I did not want it to be. I am not building myself as a professional using Twitter. And I don’t want people to build my online professional profile based on my Twitter stream.

With this idea in mind I reassessed my Twitter stream and found a portrait of myself that wasn’t uplifting for my professional self: a mother busy living a challenging life.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

I didn’t want to delete my Twitter account, I just needed a fresh start. As a consequence I decided to delete just the Twitter stream and decide later whether I was interested in continuing to twitter or not. I deleted all tweets using TwitWipe, a tool that deletes all your tweets in one go: http://twitwipe.aalaap.com/login.php. When my Twitter stream was deleted I tweeted an explanatory message announcing that all 573 tweets had been wiped.

Results

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

Deleting all my tweets feels like a success. I instantly felt weightless, without worries about the kind of professional profile that people can build by backward screening my Twitter account. However, given that the number of tweets in a profile are an identity marker, I would have loved to keep this indicator. I don’t want people to think that I’ve just discovered Twitter!

Since I deleted all my tweets I also feel less pressure to use Twitter. I have only one tweet explaining that I have erased everything else, I don’t have to twit anymore as well. I can escape from the banal world of ‘Hello Twitterverse!’ I do not even open my iPhone Twitter app. My life has changed: I have more time to concentrate in important things and be productive. I can always blog!

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

I gained a better appraisal and management of the so-called spontaneous and ephemeral online activities.

CV Builder plugin for WordPress: a interoperability scenario

September 16th, 2009 • Moi Numérique
Tags: CV, Eduserv, HR-XML, Interoperability, plugin, Resume, rhiz08, Wordpress

Here a diagram of the interoperability scenario for the CV builder plugin for WordPress developed in the field of The Rhizome Project.

Using the plugin to create CVs is a simple 3 steps process: create a Master CV, customise Views and Export them!

1. Once plugged to WordPress, the user can store his data in a single XML file that acts as a vault for personal and professional information: this is the Master CV. The user can create one storage file or Master CV per language, in all official languages of the European Union.
2. With the data contained in the Master CV, the user can create as many customised Views he needs. At least three structured formats are provided: short profile, Europass CV and HR-XML. The user can also take advantage of customisation functionalities in terms of display of information and integration on media to create free form CVs.
3. For each View, a range of Export possibilities exist: ODT, PDF, HTML, XHTML and XML. Online publishing can also be password protected.

Design principles for the custom CV Builder plugin for WordPress compliant with Europass and HR-XML specifications

August 6th, 2009 • Moi Numérique, Portfolio et ePortfolio
Tags: ePortfolio, Europass-CV, Moi Numérique, plugin, rhiz08, Wordpress

The development programme for the custom CV builder plugin follows 10 design principles: user-centric, interoperable, recognised, flexible, multi-lingual, multimedia, secure, portable, accessible and open, all described in detail here:

1. User-centric. The CV builder employs a user-centric approach to personal data management by allowing individuals to control their personal information and digital self-representation. Individuals can decide where to store their data and have administrator rights to manage it. In this way data is not held with third-party web CV repositories or Job Board administered applications. The Europass CV Builder is fully integrated with WordPress, as a plugin application.
2. Interoperable. CVs are compliant with the latest HR-XML Staffing Exchange Protocol specification. By using a standards compliant CV format, individuals are able to establish a fluid exchange of personal information with eRecruitment, eLearning and Human Resources bodies.
3. Recognised. The builder produces CVs that comply with the widest European and internationally recognised standards for representation of personal data, qualifications and competencies. This allows the edition of a complete CV following the official Europass template and latest Europass XML specifications, recognised by audiences not limited by sector or geography.
4. Flexible. The CV Builder can produce flexible and fully modifiable views of CV content. Individuals can customise their CVs and target them according to their personal or professional needs and goals. To create a targeted CV, the user selects relevant content from the Master CV (the vault for personal information) and creates a View. This can be built using out-of the box templates or by creating new templates that can be customised with the addition of extra sections and fields as required. These fields may be outside of the Europass template but present in the HR-XML specification and therefore HR-XML compatibility is maintained. Allowing user-created fields will break standards compliance but this option is being considered to enhance customisability.
5. Multi-lingual. The entire interface is multilingual and content can be filled in by the user in any of the official languages of the European Union.
6. Multimedia. Text fields within the CV can be linked to any media (pictures, certificate, video or audio record); these can be added as evidence of performance alongside the tagging and aggregation of content from distributed locations. Support for WordPress ‘short codes’ allows content integration within blog posts and pages, adding ePortfolio-like capabilities.
7. Portable. Individual CVs are accessible via Internet and can be packaged, exported and moved from physical locations e.g. hosting services compliant with HR-XML specifications.  Users can also select the publishing format of their choice for each targeted CV or View, including: XHTML and HTML (integrated in blog pages), PDF, ODT, HR-XML feed and Europass XML feed.
8. Accessible. CVs are ergonomic, usable and any user, through compliance with accessibility standards such as WAI, can readily access content.
9. Secure. Stored personal data and CVs are secured for personal access via the WordPress authentication protocol. Individuals can set access permissions and the builder is granular enough such that portions personal data can be cordoned off. Publishing rights are available to allow both public versions of a CV for open consultation via the Internet and protected CVs held in a secure location. Each export of a targeted CV or View can be protected by an access code defined by the user.
10. Open. The CV is open and not related to any proprietary technology. Its online forms are built using XForms.

If you want to comment this entry, please go to the Rhizome project blog at: Design principles for the custom CV Builder plugin for WordPress compliant with Europass and HR-XML specifications

Resurfacing the KITE Europass-CV plug-in for WordPress

August 6th, 2009 • Moi Numérique, Portfolio et ePortfolio
Tags: ePortfolio

As part of work being undertaken by the Rhizome project, we plan to enhance the range of existing standalone and plugin CV builders by developing a custom CV creation plugin for the blogging tool WordPress. This will allow individuals to maintain and present views of their professional profile, skills and competences.

Our plugin lies at the crossroads between self-presentation devices like the résumé, profiles maintained on professional social networks such as LinkedIn, and an ePortfolio style systems.

It will allow users to store their online personal data in a secure location of their choice and facilitate individuals in not only presenting their competencies according to the Europass CV format, but also in interoperable formats such as HR-XML and Hresume. Information in the CV builder, for example present educational and professional achievements, can be used to exchange data with educational providers for validation and accreditation purposes as well as enable reflective learning practices, and to store and present  educational and professional achievements.

The Rhizome project will not be developing a solution from scratch. We will be extending an existing open source solution released under GPL in 2007 – the KITE Europass-CV plugin – that was produced within the framework of the KITE project, co-funded by the European Union.

KITE offered an implementation of the Europass-CV as a plugin for three major open source blogs: WordPress, DotClear and ELGG, and allowed users to present their competences and qualifications in full compliance with the specifications under the HR-XML Staffing Exchange Protocol 2.4

The work was started under the KITE project left some deficiencies in terms of usability, in two major areas: the orientation features of the graphical interface and the architectural organisation of the navigation paths through the system.

What the KITE plugin did offer was a major advance in CV building with the ability to create CVs for all official European languages, compliance with HR-XML specifications, the first match between Europass and HR-XML SEP. Separation between content and presentation was achieved using a Master CV that represented a ‘vault’ for all personal information. Data could then be selected and displayed from the vault according to user customisable preferences – these views being exportable in multiple formats such as XHTML, HTML, ODT, PDF, RTF and be held in public and password-secured locations.

Apart from the technical merits of the KITE project, we decided to resurface the plugin as a solution to the problem of implementing a user-centred approach to personal data management that would allow dynamic exchanges of personal information with eRecruitment, eLearning and Human Resources bodies. We identify a number of trends and factors that have suggested this as a valuable approach, including the:

• Increased use of blogs as self-representational devices, and significant uptake in their use across formal and informal educational settings;

• Development of blogging architectures that support plugin and widget functionality that can facilitate data exchange and aggregation of information whilst allowing for flexible presentation;

• Use of the CV as the backbone for identity management systems, personal representation tools e.g. portfolios, ePortfolios, blogfolios, personal aggregators and mashup technologies, and certain social and professional network sites like LinkedIn;

• Uptake of HR-XML as the open standard specification in electronic exchanges related to eRecuitment, eLearning and Human Resources;

• Deployment of European Community Frameworks and tools for the transparency of qualifications and competences, example include ECTS, ECVET and Europass.

Here is an overview of the six ways the Rhizome project is planning to enhance the KITE plugin:

1. Update the application profile for compliance with the latest HR-XML SEP specifications and the new Europass XML specifications;
2. Redesign the look and feel of the user interface and adopt WordPress content organisation and navigation styles;
3. Extend the options for customisation so that users can create views by re-ordering and adding new sections, categories and content. This will allow variation in the model for (re)presenting personal information and allow for ad-hoc profiles that can be used for ego-branding and interactions with professional social networks;
4. Incorporate simple mashup capabilities to allow the aggregation of personal information and distributed web-based content under the competency descriptors;
5. Add support for WordPress ‘shortcodes’ so that CV content can be extracted to pages and blogposts and be used as material for cross-referencing competences and as evidence of performance;
6. Allow widgetisation of the CV for ego-branding purposes.

Steven and I will be blogging here and in the Rhizome blog about the new plugin design principles and key features, as well as the interoperability scenario, the use cases and its detailed functionalities. If comments please leave them in the Rhizome blog at: Resurfacing the KITE Europass-CV plug-in for WordPress

Faces of identity: which you do not make visible online and why?

January 10th, 2009 • 1 comment Au fil des rencontres, Moi Numérique
Tags: DigitalSelf, EDID09, Eduserv, identity, Patterns, PlanetProject, rhiz08

During the Eduserv workshop on digital identity pattern design, at the British Library, we have been invited by Yishay Mor and Steven Warburton to warm up and socialize before team work by doing a sketching exercise, called ‘Faces of identity’. (For more on patterns see the JISC funded project: Planet – Pattern Language Network for Web 2.0 Learning)

They gave us three head outlines to draw three different representations of our identity. Then we had to turn them to our group and present them, answering the questions: ‘Of these three identities you have drawn, which do you make visible online online and why?’. And also, ‘which you do not make visible and why?’

This last question drove us to a space where each of us unveiled some aspects of the hidden rhetoric of our digital selves. We then shared our experience about online identity management: swearing versus non swearing spaces, consistence of icons and gravatars, negation of some aspects of our life that we feel may impact our public presence, including our ‘employability factor’  or aspects from our personal life that interfere with our professional life.

Soon we all found that we had a face of our identity, mainly built in relation with others, that was hidden or somehow protected by some reason, say, safety.  Many stories came together in this exercise: Josie negating her motherhood identity for job search purposes, Phil protecting his children by never putting their image or their names online, Sally questioning herself about how their children may contribute to her online identity, and me controlling social interaction to some of the public images of my children.

I really enjoyed very much this session and felt that we were a highly productive team. We produced the Putting others first pattern. For this very reason I want to tell who these people are. And I hope I will have, in the future, the opportunity to work with them again.

5 people worked during the morning session presenting their stories, linking them, finding similarities and identifying the problem space. These were (from left to right in the drawing by Maisie Platts)

• Phil Archer
• Finbar Mulholland
• Margarita Perez Garcia
• Josie Fraser
• Sally Griffin

After lunch, Mark AM Kramer and Jim Hensman joined the group and we produced the pattern all together.

A pity that the patterns repository doesn’t give ownership to the entire group. However, if someone has to be held responsible for the words on the paper, then let’s say that Phil Archer was responsible for this!

I’m also a STARR: Tell me whom you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are

December 29th, 2008 • 7 comments Moi Numérique, Moi-Je par soi-même, Pourquoi ça n'arrive qu'à moi?, Technologies sociales
Tags: Allaitement, Autoportraits, Breastfeeding, Digital self, Femmes, Flickr, Moi Numérique, Moi-Je, Nu, rhiz08, Social Network Services, Social Software

In the field of the Eduserv workshop on digital identities, the 8th January 2009 at the British Library, Steven Warburton and Yishay Mor invited us to share small stories in which we are the main character (or at least a first-hand witness), and which we believe illuminates an interesting aspect, or dilemma, of digital identity.

A few have been collected already : about disaggregated identities, about the pressure of existing within a Twitter community, about students hands-in-hands friends in FB with teachers, about the impact of an online identity in online job search, and also about the exposure of a teenager photo by a counsellor without a full understanding of of CC licences. Yishay also prepared a short presentation that provides guidance to the task with the STARR template.

Dime con quien andas y te diré quien eres!

And because, I’m also a STARR, here is my story: Dime con quien andas y te diré quien eres! This is a Spanish saying my mother repeated me to death when I was a teenager. Literally translated into English, it will be: Tell me whom you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are. But the saying translated into another form would be:

• Hunt with cats and you catch only rats
• Birds of a feather flock together
• A man is known by the company he keeps

S/Situation

I have a Flickr account, since 2004. I have always used for both personal and professional aspects of my real persona. I also have a Flickr account for my avatar, Paz Lorenz, since 2006. I use sets and collections to separate personal and professional content. But also to separate different parts of my personal life. I don’t want my self-portraits mixed with my kids. In this first account, I haven’t really engaged in rich conversations with other Flickr users. I didn’t feel the need to complete my profile, I have only 33 contacts, most of them real life friends and belong to a few groups, mainly related with spontaneous and brutal art. Opposite to Paz who maintains a richer social life and spends her time flickering.

My accounts are frequently aggregated by other users who make me their contact. Some of my photos are added as a favorite, and commented. As a consequence, a part of me is automatically added to other people’s profiles and photostreams: I appear in the list of contacts of a given user. My photos appear in the users’ favorite collection, associated, out of context, with other photos, according to a criteria I don’t necessarily perceive or understand.

T/Task

My problems started with a photo that my older son, Sariel, took of me, while breastfeeding my newborn Forest. In one year, ‘Happy breastfeeding’ was seen 3,464 times. My photo started as a project against people who complain because of breastfeeding in public places, after two awful encounters where I’ve been told to ‘stop doing that there”, even though it was discrete and I had a scarf over the head of my one month old baby.

As an answer, I wanted to replicate a photo of another Flickr user that unfortunately isn’t public whose title is ‘For you pervs out there. . .’ In this photo a mother of a toddler is breastfeeding her child, while she gives ‘fuck you’ sign straight to the camera. The photo, as many other of the kind, is published in the Go fuck yourself Flickr group. So I wanted to do the same: nurse not so discreetly while looking straight into the eye of those people who condemn breastfeeding in public and be rude and angry. But this was impossible with my little clown taking the photo. We couldn’t be serious and didn’t help but laughing out loud. And the result was this:

Since, the photo has been marked as a favorite by many ‘pervs’ who maintain fake Flickr accounts where they do not post any photo, but where they collect other users photos showing nudity, partial nudity like mothers breastfeeding showing part of her breasts or children without Tshirts playing in the nature by a hot summer. Suddenly my photo and I appeared associated to pornography, among the contacts and in the collection of users who are also member of ‘Mature women nudes’ and ‘Delicious oral sex’, just to cite the less offensive groups.

A/Action

When I realised that this was happening, I defined a personal rule regarding my content in Flickr: to block any contact or fan of my photos who is associated with pornography: publishes porn photos, belongs to porn groups, has porn favorites or invites one of my photos to a porn pool.

R/Results

I systematically monitor accounts of people who establish any virtual relationships with me in Flickr, and if not compliant, I block.

As a consequence, and to remain those who do not know how blocking functions in Flickr, these users:

• Can’t comment on my photos (All comments on my photos made by them are deleted)
• Can’t comment on my sets (All comments on my sets made by them are deleted)
• I am removed as theirs (They can’t add me as a contact again)
• Can’t add my photos as favorites anymore (Any of my photos marked as their favorites are removed)
• Can’t blog my photos
• Can’t add notes or tags
• Can’t send me FlickrMail

This obliges me to follow up my social activity closely, as I don’t want to be associated or to have my 4 kids associated with these people. Naturally, I could have set my collection to private contacts or friends-only. But I don’t want this. I want a public collection of photos. And ‘Happy breastfeeding’ is my provocative public statement on breastfeeding.

Not directly related, I also don’t tag my children’s pics, so they are not overexposed. And the titles in general are name+date. I changed most of them to be only accessible by contacts and left only the portraits for the public eye.

R/Reflections

The main realisation was that there is a time consumption issue associated with the management of private-public content on the Internet. Most of the mothers who put their children photo on Flickr are subject to this kind of problem, and yet one faces a dilemma between restricting photos to friends only or deploying strong policies for control of interaction around one’s images. Hence users develop their own strategy to control these issues, like:

• using FlickrMails in a chain between mothers to investigate the good intentions of a certain Flickr user. Followed by massive blocking and reporting abuse.

• using one’s profile to explain what type of interaction policy is suitable for one’s account. Like another of my contacts who states in her profile:

“my pics tells about love and sharing, proximity between parents and child, nothing sexual in it i precise!!! i DO NOT wish my pics to be added as favs on people’s account who are looking for erotic or porn aspect , neither be added as contact i am therefore very happy to share my pics with people respectful to that opinion, motherhood is pure… thanx!”

I became more aware of certain threats that have an impact on my digital reputation. The ENISA Position Paper No.1 Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks was an enlightning read that increased my understanding and awareness of these issues.

Je porte la mort en moi et la vie

October 29th, 2007 • Moi Numérique
Tags: Autoportraits, Bleu, Corps, Enfants, Femmes, Moi Numérique, Moi-Je, Mort, Nu, Photo, Poésie, Vie

Silencios

La muerte siempre al lado. Escucho su decir. Sólo me oigo.

Alejandra Pizarnik, Los trabajos y las noches

Quelques pensées et questions désordonnées sur les “virtual brands communities” et l’identité numérique

February 18th, 2007 • 1 comment Moi Numérique, Technologies sociales

Je viens d’assister à la présentation de Luis Casaló de l’Université de Saragosse intitulée: Antecedents and effects of participation in virtual brands communities dans le cadre d’IADIS 2007 à Salamanca. Je n’ai absolument pas l’habitude de parler des sujets que je ne connais un tant soit peu, mais celui-ci éveille en moi plusieurs questions de part sa relation avec certaines facettes de l’identité et de la réputation numérique.

L’auteur propose quatre critères pour mesurer la participation des individus dans ces communautés. Ces critères sont :

• propension à la confiance;
• satisfaction de l’utilisateur;
• familiarité
• communication.

L’hypothèse de travail, étayée ici à travers d’une étude quantitative et des régressions linéaires, est qu’une majeure participation dans la communauté aura une incidence positive dans la fidélité du consommateur à la communauté ou enseigne commerciale. A ce point il y a quelques éléments qui m’interpellent:

• n’est-il pas une limitation de ces études sur les « Virtual Brand Communities » que de ne pas considérer les différents types de communautés au lieu de les analyser comme un ensemble cohérent? Tel que rappelé plus tard dans la même session par Eleonore Ten Thij de l’Université d’Utrecht, il existe au moins 10 essais de classement des communautés en ligne selon que l’on adresse l’objectif de la communauté ou l’orientation de l’interaction qu’y a lieu (cfr. Hagel, Armstrong, 1997; Stanoevska-Slabeka & Schmid, 2001; Burnett, 2000; Carlén, 2002; Bakardjieva, 2003; Preece & Maloney-Krichmar, 2003; Preece, Maloney-Krichmar & Abras, 2003; Ridings, Gefen, 2004; Hummel & Lechner, 2002 and Porter, 2004). Mais qu’en est-il des catégorisation ad-hoc des « Virtual Brand Communities »? eBay.com et Amazon.com: en quoi s’assimilent ou divergent ces communautés d’utilisateurs/consommateurs/vendeurs?
• Les comportements des utilisateurs sont ils conditionnés par la communauté elle-même et/ou par les fonctionnalités technologiques de ces communautés? A partir de là, une autre question apparaît: quelles sont les technologies représentant ou matérialisant les 4 critères vus au préalable? A travers quel outils et procédés exprime-t-on/perçoit-on la propension ou le degré de confiance?
• Quels sont les liens entre les technologies sociales de recommandation et les concepts de confiance, satisfaction familiarité et communication? Quels types d’outils d’évaluation partagée des produits ont-ils un impact sur la propension à la confiance et conditionnent-ils l’achat subséquent? Les systèmes automatisés de recommandation sociale basés sur le nombre d’achats, les systèmes semi-automatisés basés dans le nombre d’indexations du produit par le consommateur, les commentaires des utilisateurs ou les listes de préférences n’ont pas d’évidence le même effet sur l’utilisateur/consommateur. Quelle est la relation et la pondération entre ces différents outils?
• Ensuite du côté de l’identité du membre-vendeur, quel est l’impact du gravatar et profil sur le niveau de confiance des membres.consommateurs? Et puis quelle est la relation avec d’autres outils de construction de la réputation numérique, automatisés, sémi-automatisés ou construits par les utilisateus? L’évaluation faite par les membres-consommateurs du membre-vendeur paraît l’élément le plus important, mais qu’en est-il de l’âge de participation dans la communauté et du nombre des produits vendus?

Voilà quelques pensées et questions désordonnées auxquelles je souhaiterais trouver une réponse, notamment pour ce qui ce qui est des technologies et des usages de la construction de l’identité des membres-vendeurs dans ces communautés, une forme d’ego-branding ou self-markéting peut-être?