Multiple accounts of SNS(Social Networking Service), how do you think?

 

 "How many Social Networking Service accounts are you using?"

 

  It can be said that almost every single person who can get access to the internet is using Social Networking Service which is so-called SNS. As more and more people are using SNS, new kinds of SNS are showing up. 

  Since each SNS is a bit different from one another, people use many other kinds of SNS with many other purposes. For example, people use Facebook usually to connect with their "already-known" friends such as family members, schoolmates or co-workers. Facebook users usually show how they are, what they did and what they are doing right now, and friends can catch up with one another by checking their posts.

  For Twitter users, they also connect with already-known friends, but I think they usually connect with randomly new people. Because of that, Twitter users don't really care about people with whom they connect, so they tweet what they think without any deep consideration. In addition, those who see other people's tweets don't take them that serious and don't really care seriously.

  For bloggers, there is a tendency for bloggers to try to look more professional than when they are on other kinds of SNS, so they deeply consider what they are going to write down, which sometimes takes quite a long time. For blog subscribers, they can get quality information from bloggers' posts.

  Other than those three, there are many other kinds of SNS and I am also using various kinds of it including the three above. The interesting thing that I want to think about is, the characterstics of people change based on which SNS they are on, and more interestingly, I found that people use multiple accounts of one kind of SNS. That is, people have two or three Twitter accounts or multiple Facebook accounts. For me, I don't have more than one account of certain SNS, but I wanted to think about why people would do that.

  I think there are pros and cons of having multiple accounts. For pros, I believe, they can manage their social network more easily. When I leaf through my friends list on Facebook or Twitter, there are hundreds of friends, which sometimes makes me think that is "too much." This could be handled by having multiple accounts, each of which has different groups of friends. Since each account has different groups of people, what users see on news feed would differ, and they could post considering the group of friends. 
  When it comes to twitter, since users connect with mostly random people, they can manage friends more easily by having multiple accounts. Plus, when users would like to start tweeting and friendship again on twitter, they can just make a new account and start again.
  I think one of the reasons why people have multiple accounts is that it is not that complicated to make a new account. people can easily make a new account only with an e-mail address. Because of that, people just don't hesitate to do it.

  It seems that using multiple accounts is a really good thing, but I would like to cast this question. "Can I show 'completely real me' on SNS if I have many other accounts of SNS?" I would say no. It is surely great that people can manage their friends easily by having multiple accounts, but in reality, relationship is not that a simple thing. In everyday's life, we interact with many kinds of groups of people, and based on who we meet, our identity could differ. With multiple accounts, however, people can manipulate what they want to meet on the internet, and they would avoid situations in which they have to show what they don't want to show to other people. In the end, everyone on Social Networking Service would only show their edited characteristics, and friendship would become such a light thing. When something complicated happens, they can just delete everything, make a new account, and start again, which is never possible in reality. 

  In the past, this "managing people" stuff was usually the problem of public figures. Since they are being shown to people publicly all the time, they had to consider which is to show and not to show, and they had to manipulate their images. These days, however, it seems that everybody on the internet is becoming public figures. People are aware of the audience, and they show their edited characteristics and manage their images. Wow. I think this is so interesting.

  In my opinion, I don't think it is a great idea to have multiple accounts and divide my egos based on my accounts, but I also think that could be useful "only if" people wisely use the multiple accounts. Why do we bother to split your characteristics? Well, that is entirely "my personal" opinion. 
  
  So, How do you think?