Workshop: Menu-Driven Identities

Question One: Hotmail and Yahoo! request the user’s full name, country, gender and date of birth. However, they only provide a set list of choices, thus making many assumptions about their users’ identities. ‘Country’ doesn’t include non-territorial options, such as for the Roma people, and those with non-specific genders are ignored. Similarly, there is no option for those who do not know their date of birth (like those who had their birth certificates confiscated by authoritarian governments). While Second Life allows you to choose an avatar, it still wishes to know your real-world details. Of course, this information is invaluable for targeted advertising.

Question Two: Lavalife

Lavalife profiles use categories that Lavalife thinks singles would consider important, such as age and religion. Again, these categories are also important for advertisers. The categories seem to offer few choices; for example, body types were slim, average, few extra pounds, fit and muscular. Importantly, however, there is a space for users to write about themselves, while many choose ‘prefer not to say’ for some categories, relegating the importance of these aspects in some way.