The True You?

Yesterday, you likely saw many lies floating around as your visited various online sites.  Personally, I noticed Twitter and Facebook were full of hoaxes and pranks as part of April Fool’s Day.  Did you know however that you are likely to see a host of lies today as well?  It’s true.  Intel’s ethnography group has conducted some research around the idea of when people keep secrets or tell lies in their online world versus their offline world.  Intel found that generally, people feel more comfortable lying or keeping a secret online where social norms are more relaxed than that in the ‘real world’.  Specifically, you may be surprised to know that nine out of 10 people lie in their online profiles.  Be honest now. Are you one of the nine?

As technology is developed, it’s important to understand people’s behaviors.  For example, if you know that people lie about their age online you might not include birthdays as part of a security question for an online log in.  Furthermore, as technology is developed around TV viewing preferences it’s important to understand if people are telling the truth about what they are watching – whether it’s Dancing with the Stars or Nova.

Don Clark of the WSJ wrote up a great piece about this very subject here.