The social media lies we tell

Tech blogger Robert Scoble has an interesting post today about the lies people tell on social networks. To be more precise, these are ‘lies by omission’ – that is, important things about ourselves that we choose not to share in order to maintain a certain identity online.

Scoble focuses on what he calls “the like economy”, powered by websites such as Yelp.com and Facebook, that allow people to display their liking for brands, shops, restaurants, products, etc.

While merrily ‘liking’ hip, high-end restaurants, Scoble noticed he wasn’t showing his liking some of his other favourite food stops.

“I like McDonalds and Subway. But I wasn’t clicking like on those. Why not? Because we want to present ourselves to other people the way we would like to have other people perceive us as. Translation: I’d rather be seen as someone who eats salad at Pasta Moon than someone who eats a Big Mac at McDonalds.”

Are there implications here for social media research and marketing? Is the data that advertisers are using – to profile users, identify potential customers and market to them – fundamentally flawed?

On the other hand, researchers have long known that what people say and what they actually do are often two entirely different things – making this a web 2.0 variant of a perenial problem. Can the same fixes used offline be applied online?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.