Life of an Internet Entrepreneur

I was recently reading Ari Herzog’s post about how avatars changed online, and I thought he brought up some excellent insights that you would enjoy.

According to Wikipedia, an Avatar is

 a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities.

In the early days of the internet, there was much fear of the internet, and the openness of it.  Additionally, slower modems handled small avatar graphics much better than large graphics. These were also the days where internet dating was laughed at because of the unreliability of the photos people did post.

During those days, it seemed safer, and more “fun” to create a fantasy avatar, that either loosely reflected yourself, or was your idea of an ideal self (i.e. – despite your office professional job, your avatar had an electric guitar and you had long hair).

Over the last few years, the mood online has clearly shifted towards using your actual photo instead of an avatar. Here are some suggestions on how that happenend:

Social Networking

Facebook, Myspace, Flickr and other social networking sites made it cool and fun to display our real photos, under the understanding of having protections to our privacy in place. The idea made sense in most people’s minds, and they felt safe enough to post (in some cases, very) private real photos.

Culture of Being Real

Americans have been getting a steady dose of reality shows with “average Joes” leading a very public life. Personal branding experts have been shouting from the mountain tops that “being real” is most important to connecting with and growing your following. Because your personal brand is actually you, it was bad marketing to waste your visitors eyeballs on a mere avatar, instead of branding your true self.

Indeed, many bloggers even use their real name as their domain name, and broadcast their current location from their twitter profiles.  All of this has created a very strong preference for being real, being authentic, and being public about it.

Big Pipes

As internet connections keep getting faster, and storage keeps getting cheaper, websites that relied on just small avatars are opening their doors to full size photos.  It is now easy and painless to browse a full album on Flickr or Facebook, for most internet users, and the users clearly have a preference for getting to know the real person behind the account they are looking at…right down to their favorite TV shows or color preferences.

Ari had a great phrase describing the change,

Goodbye mystery, goodbye intrigue, goodbye transformation.

Is this a good change, in your mind? or a bad one?

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