I frequent various on-line forums to follow my interests, and much of the interaction is participation in forum or discussion software. One example is Seasoned Gamers, and community founded by a group of adults that played Halo 2 on XBox Live. Seasoned Gamers has since taken on a life of its own, beyond Live, Halo, and even beyond gaming. Due to its origins via Live, member’s identities use a gamer tag, which is required to be unique across all of XBox Live.

My Live gamer tag is gregnnn, a minor variation of my real name. Most folks use gamer tags that are completely different from their real name. I’ve interacted with this group for a bit more than three years now, and I identify members by gamer tag. Both Season Gamers’ forums and Live use avatars – small-ish icons or pictures to visually identify individuals.

There are a couple of problems with the use of gamer tags and avatars as on-line identity. The biggest of these is that people change them. People change avatars from time to time, and some folks even change their gamer tags. This can dilute or destroy identity, in the same way than changing your name and your appearance periodically in real life would make it hard for your friends to keep track of you. Given the global uniqueness requirement, many gamer tags are unpronouceable and hard to distiguish. This makes it hard for me to recognize some folks, and I often find myself mixing up identities.

The other problem is that this on-line identity is separate from your real identity. Maintaining some anonymity has it’s uses, particularly if you don’t want to suffer the consequences of your on-line persona’s actions in real life. But the downside is that you’ve diluted your presence and subjected everyone to a mapping problem between your identities. I wouldn’t depend on the use of an on-line persona as means of protecting your personal privacy, or insulation from you behaviour on-line. Most people do not have the knowledge, skills and discipline to stay completely untraceable on-line.

So, I’ve come to some conclusions about on-line identity and its uses:

Pick One
Don’t dilute yourself across multiple identities. I’d go with your real name unless privacy is really important to you. Whatever you pick, use it everywhere, that is, one user name, one e-mail address. Mine is: Greg Nichols/gregnnn/greg@atomicspatula.com. If I could own nichols.com I’d buy it in a second. Note: Atomic Spatula isn’t me, it’s a place.

Make it Good
It’s fun to see people who start out with Live gamer tags come to grips with their mistake, realizing that ” xXx LeetSniper xXx” isn’t going to play well for a 30 year-old adult on a forum about gardening. If it’s not your real name, pick something that you’re comfortable with everyone using everywhere. As for avatars, I’d go with a reasonable headshot. I like Seth Godin’s recommendations on this, though I’d say there’s a lot more at stake than your “personal brand”. Us humans have invested millions of years of evolution into facial recognition. It would be silly not to use it. I use my real name where possible, and I really need a better head-shot avatar that I’ve got right now.

Don’t Change It.
Changing names or avatars is something you should do very rarely. It’s akin to plastic surgery or name changes in real life, and not something you’d do on a whim.

Finally, I’d consider what the goals are in maintaining an on-line identity. You’d like it to be the foundation of personal recognition that you build a reputation on, whether it’s for professional purposes or purely social interactions.