Definition of Online Identity

An online identity is a persona that a user can take on in an online social community. Individual identities are recognized by profile names which are pseudonyms that a user can create to reflect that persona. It may or may not contain information about a user’s real life identity. Some online identities also comprise of an avatar (an image) which the user can choose and alter. In instances of a 3-D environment, online identities come with customizable characters and other attributes. Online identities offer a large degree of personalization for a user. The attributes of an online identity (gender, age, etc…) don’t need to be the same as those of the user. One user can have different online identities in different online social communities. An online identity can reflect a user’s actual identity, or it may be different.

For OkCupid, an online identity consists of a user’s profile name, pictures, quiz answers, and all the other attributes that a person can reveal by filling out his or her profile. Unique aspects of a user’s identity are a user’s answers to the profile such as what are 3 adjectives that describe you? Other things to fill out on your profile include: A self summary, what you’re doing with your life, what you’re good at, what people first notice about you, your favorite books, movies, music and food, six things you can never do without, things you spend a lot of time thinking about, what you do on a typical Friday night, something private you’re willing to admit, and reasons for people to message you. Other profile details include where you live, how old you are, your relationship status (single, married, etc…), how often you drink, smoke or do drugs, languages you speak, pets, education, ethnicity, height, income and astrological sign. Although people are encouraged to give answers that correspond to their real life attributes, there don’t appear to be any features on the site that discourage lying. Users are judged on how they fill in their profile and what choices they make. Someone who doesn’t fill out a profile is less likely to be contacted and trusted. Another interesting aspect of a user’s online identity is the %match, friend and enemy that are displayed for a user to see. For any individual user, that user can see a match%, friend% and enemy%. The higher the percentage the better romantic match, friend match, or enemy match between two people. A user can only see his or her match with another user, and not any corresponding match, friend or enemy % between other users. This information is gathered by answering user generated questions on a rating system. Users who have similar tastes or values will have higher friend or match percentages. Users who have differing answers to issues that they deem important will probably have higher enemy percentages.

Online identity is also comprised of any additional information created by the user such as journal entries, and other online content. Links to other social networking sites like myspace, or even links to other sites that interest the user are examples of signals that other users can pick up on to identity a particular user’s online identity.

Donath in her article on signals in social supernets wrote that users represent themselves with a profile, a list of links to other users, and comments from other users. OkCupid doesn’t have much linking between profiles. For example BJ and I have profiles but I can’t list him as a friend like I could in CouchSurfing. There is no way to also record any sort of interaction while in couch surfing you can list if you had coffee with a person, etc… It is possible to respond to his comments in a forum I think and to have an actual interaction, but it takes some digging for people to know this. I believe this is because users don’t want to have a trail of friendship on a “dating” website. I think it’s possible to put links to other users in your profile but it’s rarely done. Other users can also suggest an edit to your profile, but it doesn’t mean that they’re your friends.

Information in an OkCupid profile is “easily faked” as Doan puts it, but there are some repercussions if your expectation is to meet in real life. If a user’s intention is to find potential dating partners, then lying on a profile is one way to lessen your chances of getting a second date. Doan’s analysis of information as signals fits in nicely with OkCupid. All of the information in the profile is basically a signal in which others can judge an individual. Although the intention of the site is to post truthful information, this is not necessarily true. I’ve seen user’s post pictures of celebrities in their profile (unless famous Japanese models have their own OkCupid profile and lie about living in Hawaii…). Since there aren’t many links to other users, these individual signals in the profile are what others users primarily rely on to judge a user.

Informal Scenarios

Joe Shmo is a 20 year old, heterosexual college student at UH Manoa that joins OkCupid in hopes of meeting some “cute” girls to date. He picks warriorfan69 as his username, creates a password and fills in an email address. He checks his email account and receives a confirmation email link from OkCupid. He clicks on that link to access his profile. He fills the information section of his profile as accurately as he can for the most part. He decides to list himself as 2 inches taller than in real life and also list that he makes $40,000 a year even though he only makes $10,000 at his part time job. He uploads three pictures of himself to the site. He then decides to answer some of OkCupid’s match questions. After answering 100 of them, he decides that he is ready to find a match. He goes to the search menu and looks for a woman aged 18-21 with a photo that is located within 20 miles of him. He wants the results displayed by match% so the women who are most compatible with him (according to OkCupid’s algorithm) get displayed first. He clicks on this first profile, sweetgurl4u. He decides not to message her because he doesn’t care for her photos (ie. he doesn’t think she’s pretty enough ). He skims through her profile and admires her taste in music. He realizes that he forgot to but a few bands in his favorite music section and goes back to edit his profile. He then looks at the next profile according to match, destiny90. He thinks the girl is cute from her pictures and her tastes are similar to his. He decides to message her to say that he’s also a fan of warrior football and ask if she has attended any games this past year. He skims though a few other profiles but decides that none of them suit his interest. He logs off.

An OkCupid tests says that you're a mathematical thinker

Pyneth Leou is a 26 year old who joined OkCupid last month because her awesome boyfriend told her that OkCupid has fun tests that she can take if she’s ever bored. She logs in with her username and password. She clicks on the second tab tests, skims through them, and clicks on the 4 variable IQ test. She takes the test and finds out that she’s Mathematical. Being bored, she clicks on the explore tab of OkCupid which brings up a list of other options including journal, forum and FAQ. She clicks on journal and sees some recent journal entries of various users. She reads a few of the entries. She logs off.

How are online identities shaped and expressed through online interactions in the OkCupid communities?

A sample match question

There are several types of indirect interactions on OkCupid that influence the way online identities are shaped. One example is a user creating a match question. A user can create a match question which may be accepted into OkCupid’s question bank. A user who wishes to find people who match him or her will answer random match questions created by other users. In this way one user who creates a question won’t know every user who answers that question and that user’s responses. The users who answer the question won’t interact with the creator of the question. However, both the creator of the question and the people who answer the question help to make OkCupid more efficient in terms of matching up users for dating or friendship. This shows up in your profile which is part of your online identity.

A journal entry on OkCupid

Another way of establishing an online identity is to display information about yourself. A user is given many opportunities to express his or her own individuality by filling out profile information about a user’s interests, hobbies, background, etc… There’s also a feature of writing an online journal. This provides a periodic account of a user’s writing samples, thoughts, ideas, etc… Other users can read a user’s information and learn about that user. This may encourage or discourage other users from contacting that person.

Other profiles can affect how you form your profile

A user will also shape his or her profile based on how other people write their profiles. In order to make a successful profile (if your interest is to get dates) one needs to craft one’s profile. Reading the profile’s of other people can help encourage this, and there are some features of other people’s profiles that one might use to make one’s profile more interesting. Joe Shmo altered his profile when he realized that he forgot to list a few of his favorite bands. He listed the first 10 that came to mind but then after reading another user’s profile he remembered some of the other bands that he liked.

Interaction via forum on OkCupid


Users can also interact directly through the forums on OkCupid. A user can start a thread or comment on another thread. These threads are organized by subject and date. The amount of user posts are also recorded in a user’s profile. The number of posts are a rough measure of a user’s activity within the community. Although based on my observations most people don’t use the forum or post many messages, I can see how forum activity helps to establish identity. Like Answerbag, responding to posts of other users helps to build a sense of trust and community between you and those users.