Web personality

Just to clarify before we proceed, the title of the post can explain:

• Personality ‘on’ the web
• Personality ‘of’ web

I am going to talk about the second one, i.e. personality ‘of’ the web.

We all use some or the other social networking sites. In fact we now use multiple social networking sites to connect to each other. Let’s take examples:

• LinkedIn: <Professional>: As we all know, LinkedIn was always meant to be a professional networking portal. If you are caught browsing LinkedIn at your workplace? Ah, everyone will look with due respect. It is so professional.
• Facebook: <Decent and Sober>: Well, I am not sure if Facebook had a pre-determined character, but to me it has always given an impression of a decently designed portal. It looks neat and to some extent, professional. If you are caught browsing Facebook at your workplace? Well you may not get the same respect as LinkedIn, but no regrets. It’ll still be acceptable.
• Orkut:<Kiddish and Sidey>: While Orkut is more popular in India, I’ve always found it sidey and kiddish. So what if you are caught browsing Orkut at your workplace? Ah, I can bet, it is embarrassing. You tend either close it or switch to a different window/application. Don’t you?

So 3 different applications built on the same concept have radically different personalities. While some were deliberately made with such personalities, some got their personalities from usage over the years.

We can similarly look at portals targetting other stuff. For example, I find Cleartrip a very clean travel portal, whereas, MakeMyTrip looks so cluttered and clumsy.

What about Twitter? What personality would you associate with it? Hmmmm… Whatever it is, it is impressive. It has already made a big impact.