Soft Launch

2005-11-22T15:13:00.000-08:00

We've just launched Qraggle, "softly".

System Identifiers and Social Identifiers

2005-09-04T17:16:00.000-07:00

In social networking sites, perhaps more than anywhere else, there is a need to distinguish between system identifiers and social identifiers. The former is used by an application primarily to identify the owner of an account or set of resources. Therefore, it must be unique and usually tied with some authentication data(like a PIN or password).

Generally speaking, system identifiers are lexically constrained. Often this is due to a technical need of the system; if a user's account is tied, in some way, to a backing UNIX account, then it is often subsequently bound to the lexical constraints of a UNIX username(i.e. limited to 8 characters in length, etc.). At other times they are constrained by auxiliary business initiatives, like providing email accounts in addition to any other services (that is, letting all users like 'john' have an accessory email address like 'john@example.com'). At yet other times the system identifier is an email address itself and therefore limited by the global lexical constraints of email addresses.

Social identifiers come in many different varieties but, fundamentally, are a means of representing oneself to others. We might take the following to be social identifiers:

Formatted screen names

Given names (first names, surnames)

Avatars or buddy icons

URLs of profile pages

It has been the tendency of older web applications to merge these concepts together presumptively. For example, on Ebay, a seller's profile displays the same lexically constrained string which is used as the username for authentication. A seller with an established brand name like "Ed's Computers" is out of luck when attempting to convey this information on his profile. He must settle with something like "eds_computer" or "ed7960a".

This specific problem is corrected on a service like Flickr, which distinguishes between its authentication username (an email address) and what's displayed on user profiles (something it calls its 'screen name'). Additionally, the system defines a third, optional URL name, in which users create sensible URLs for their pages like 'http://www.flickr.com/photos/holysmokes'. Myspace has taken a similar approach, electing, however, to use a first name as the value presented on their profile pages.

An important question arises whether an email address is sufficient for all system identification needs and whether, furthermore, all other social identifiers should be customizable without limitation. In such a situation a username ultimately loses all system identification utility and serves only as an online moniker or social identifier. In some cases, one might think it becomes an unnecessary vestige.

In my view, discarding lexically-constrained and permanently-fixed usernames ultimately comes at the cost of certain ease-of-use features like fixed in-system message addresses and predictable or systematic URLs. Both of these might be commonly taken to solving the problem of resource location, whether it be a user or a page.

Since display names in Flickr do not follow the same lexical rules as URLs, one cannot enter http://flickr.com/photos/[screen name] and retrieve the corresponding page. The sharp lexical constraints of tags, however, allow us to use the following URL formula for predictably and consistently retrieving tag pages from del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/tag/[tag]. While intentionally creating such ease-of-use functionality is rather novel, we can expect its frequency to increase as users inevitably become more savvy.

A more serious conseqeunce of Flickr's design decision to discard usernames has been to the application messaging system. Since usernames are not fixed, typing a username into a recipient field (the option which maximizes ease-of-education, since it matches the nearly universal design choice for email UIs) would lead to unpredictable results. As a consequence, Flickr's messaging system has substituted a cumbersome drop-down of a user's contacts.

Admittedly, these may not be serious charges against Flickr, since messaging seems intended to occur only between contacts. Messages conveyed to other users, publically, must be written through comments on photos. Myspace, however, introduces no such limitation and therefore writing a message to another user involves navigating to their profile page and clicking on a link to send a message.

As with all applications, ease-of-use features often come at some cost, either by way of a restriction or increases in the ease-of-education. Permanent usernames which adhere to the lexical constraints of conventions like URIs may come at the cost of diallowing spaces and certain punctation, but none the less are better suited to solving problems of resource location.

Qraggle Blog

Soft Launch

System Identifiers and Social Identifiers