Obviously, Playstation has not advanced enough to make our cyber characters look identical to ourselves in creation. When I created myself on Playstation Home, I was only limited to a specific look. My character had long blonde hair, white skin, a big jacket, combat trousers with some huge shades; completely the opposite of my real self. This makes Playstation Home very dangerous because it creates a false image of myself in this case, and manipulates people and there interpretation of me.
Another danger of this cyber world is that, it is used by people from all wakes of life; for example - children. A conversation between two people on Playstation Home is public and every cyber character which is near other characters engaging in a conversation can see everything that is being said. This makes children very vulnerable to pedophiles and other criminals.
The first source of communication via the internet was E-Mails, which was quite formal. But this idea was developed, made easier and faster...
The first time I was introduced to the internet, chat rooms were massively popular. There was chat rooms for all audiences and purposes. This was the foundation of where the idea of cyber identities were created; an online society full of people talking to other people they had never seen before.
The first ever chat room I had joined was on AOL. The chat room was for kids and each chat room would have a host/moderator. If anyone swore, you would be kicked out of the chat room and suspended. The chat room was mainly about interests such as kids television shows and a place where kids could play games with the moderator, Scrabble was my favorite.
A year later, my age was upgraded on my AOL subscription and I was able to IM (Instant Message). I enjoyed this because it was very fast and easy. A private conversation between me and another person, rather than trying to get a word in a chat room full of loads of people was beneficial. I remember speaking to a girl and telling her that I was the son of a professional wrestler, not my proudest moment. The girl was from America and had started declaring her love for me, a cyber presence she barely knows! I would tell her I had things I never had and she would believe me because she had her own image of me in her head from what I had told her... Don't judge me though, I was only a kid!
I was later introduced to MSN messenger which is now known as Windows LIVE, owned by Microsoft. MSN was so much more cooler than AOL. You had your own display picture, the ability to talk via mic/cam and it even later developed so you could have a conversation with more than one person and play games!
The web was changing almost every day. We were then introduced to social networks such as Bebo and Facebook. These social networks kept advancing and implementing new ideas which revolutionised the online identity.
Online identity is becoming stronger each day and more ways to create these cyber egos are becoming accessible. Even accounts on twitter which are evidently fake and admit they are fake in their 'bio' have thousands of followers and hundreds of interactions each day.
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