What is a more accurate image of your identity?  Is it one that you can create, to convey your ideal-self to the world?  Or is it your private self, the one who searches for an array of topics on the web under a cloak of privacy?  Facebook creates its identity of you through what you share and what you like.  If Facebook see’s you like The Terminator and The Predator, its image of you is one that likes action movies.  On the other hand, Google uses click signals to create an identity of its users.  These private interactions aggregate into a huge mass of data that Google can make inferences about your identity on.  This mass of data is much more accurate at capturing who you are, and there are many reasons why.

Eli Pariser writes, “Facebook’s share-based self is more aspirational: Facebook takes you more at your word, presenting you as you’d like to be seen by others.”  This is important for two reasons.  First, by using a share-based method of creating identity, a conscious user can avoid having a part of their true identity becoming part of their online identity by not Liking or Sharing it.  This method also has a drawback for Facebook.  Since the goal of creating an online identity is to receive personalized advertising, this ideal-self identity could prevent personalized ad’s from reaching you.  For example, if you’re a guy who doesn’t want his friends to know which television shows are his guilty pleasures, he simply does not have to like them on Facebook.  However, Facebook’s advertising clients lose out on a customer.

So how is Google’s, share–based method more accurate at creating an identity of its user?  With Google, the user does not have to Like or Share a topic to indicate interest in it.  What this means is that everything the user searches for get added into an enormous database of personal information.  Google users search for things that they don’t Like on Facebook all of the time.  This leads to another important reason Google’s identity creation is more effective, privacy.  Pariser writes, “These clicks often happen in an entirely private context.”  To use our previous example, Google would know that our male user was a fan of reality television, because privately, he could have searched for an episode recap or information on a character.  The world does not see every Google search a user makes, and that is what makes it a more powerful method for creating an identity.

The truth about Facebook and Google is that they are both relatively inefficient at creating identities of users.  Pariser writes about the “uncanny valley,” which is situation where something appears to be lifelike but is not.  This characterizes our online identities, and they creep us out.  Another error that Facebook and Google make is they believe in the “Fundamental Attribution Error,” or the fact that we only have one identity.  The truth is that humans are fluid, our identity changes from situation to situation (family dinner vs. out with friends), and over time as well.  That being said, Google is the better tool for creating identities of the users because they can search for anything without having to consider their ideal-self.