“What is a blog? Why do we blog? We blog to…exist.” stated protagonist Dylan in the opening of Quarterlife. While many would –if uncomfortably- embrace this statement (Technorati indexes 112 million blogs, with 120 thousand new ones appearing each day) just as many would, and do, feel confused by it. Issues of online identity are far and wide, and becoming more pressing.

From SNL skits on MySpace identity, to the constantly changing notion and netiquette of “friend” and the “friend request” (see below) on social networking and microblogging sites (Account Planner extraordinaire Russell Davies today privatized his Tweets to people he actually knows, while on the other hand Digg founder Kevin Rose’s followers have recently exceeded 60,000) the public/private arena has become a confusing and sometimes frightening space.

And, while some leading thinkers in this space happily straddle the divide between offline and online personas – Charlene Li and Noah Brier are two that immediately spring to mind, many struggle to conflate the two comfortably.

My aim with this series, The Being Series, is to interview a number of people who have built and maintained personas online and to look at how they have done this, why, and what problems they may have encountered.

Why? For filmmakers, or indeed anyone creative, this is an important area. Without an identity online you are essentially invisible, and the need for a simple website or MySpace in order to be findable has been replaced by a need to be everywhere all the time. If you are not on the same social platform/s or utilizing the same online tools as your contacts – be it facebook, linked in, twitter, delicious, friend feed, etc – you are not part of the conversation.

In this regard the online space has moved from being a place for filmmakers to simply provide information about their film/s to a place where -theoretically- all the tools now exist to finance, crew, market, publish and monetize their product. But to do this you have to be visible. And that means putting yourself out there. While filmmakers necessarily shake any stage fright they may have in order to stand in front of a large crew and lead a shoot, the vast majority have not yet taken this leap in terms of having their voice heard in the virtual space.

But this doesn’t mean shouting, or plastering you face everywhere. It means taking control: being savvy about guiding and responding (or not) to any digital press you may have, where you appear online or not and how often, how you are perceived, what social media you use, what material -or thinking- you choose to make public and how you interact directly with your fans or detractors.

It means being cognizant that, due to the immediacy these tools allow, public interest has moved from the product to embrace the personality also (some may argue more so). Audiences want to feel close to the creator of the material they consume, and interact with them, and the closer you are to your audience, and the more you build it, the more power you weld both as a creative, and within a business and marketing environment. Love it or loathe it, the cult of the personality is on us.

But creating a personality online can take many different forms. For instance, while Arin Crumley has created a brand for himself by documenting himself, most notably through his Four Eyed Monsters podcasts with Susan Buice, and also about his own day-to-day on his own site, Lance Weiler has chosen to make the process of creation his content, and his way of reaching out to the community, through the Workbook Project and other online endeavors. And these are just two takes on digital identity formation.

Personally, I am late to the table in some respects. While I hold and update accounts on many platforms, am an avid reader of blogs and certainly pride myself on staying on top of both online and offline trends, up until now- with Motive & my new project, Me & Them – I have never publically blogged (we used an internal blog at Deep Focus), maintained a website or otherwise put myself out there online.

Why? Two reasons: Firstly, the blogosphere has become an intensely cluttered space. While there is certainly a lot of useful and interesting content out there (particularly original diaries by creatives, and essayist insight or contrary spin on stories by those I trust and admire) a lot of it is meme creation: regurgitation of that day’s industry news and links repeated again and again until they reach critical mass. Of course I understand this is the way the publicity machine works, but have never aspired to add to it myself.

And secondly – if I’m honest – an innate fear of judgment and will for perfectionism: what goes online stays online, and the concept of undeletable opinion (or creative output) raised rashly has always inspired over-caution. We do not all have the will of steel that allows us to create a hater’s song a la Arin. And the reason I mention this? Because I know I’m not alone in this thinking, and not the only one that has to overcome it: this is something Sally Potter and I discussed at length three years ago as she moved her identity online, and something many of you have mentioned to me in person also. My hope is that this series of interviews will go some way to comfort and assure the dissenters and encourage them to make the leap, while providing insight into different identity experiences for the veterans.

My first interview will be with so-called “sociopathic narcissist” Ruth Fowler, a blogger, journalist, screenwriter and novelist who’s had to grapple with the notion of maintaining multiple created/perceived public personalities simultaneously. I’ll be talking to her about what it’s like to be her: how she juggles professional, personal and fictional identities online, and why.

Please do email me with any suggestions or questions you may have and… enjoy.

Alex Johnson is a NYC based Digital Strategist / Consultant. She started her career within the commercial & music video world (including Radical Media, Partizan, RHB) in London before moving on to head up online outreach & New Media initiatives at Sally Potter’s production company, Adventure Pictures. Alongside devising tactics for low budget feature film promotion & cross-media project development for Endemol, Channel 4 & the ENO, she conceived The Sp-ark Project, a social learning/creative archive platform, currently being used at the University of London. She then joined interactive marketing agency Deep Focus in LA as an Experience Planner (clients included New Line, Universal, HBO, Random House, Vitamin Water, Havaianas, Sundance Channel & The N) guiding thinking on audience insight, branding & strategic approach across Creative, Publicity & Media departments. Most recently she worked with Seize The Media on Myspace/Hammer project Beyond The Rave, an online film release/social game; is consulting for the IFP, guiding the organization’s rebrand & interactive re-launch, and is working with Lance Weiler to expand the open source Workbook Project. Speaking engagements include Open Knowledge Conference, Internet Week NYC, DIY Days LA, Filmmaker Forum & Power to the Pixel. Alex is also a filmmaker, co-founder of interactive theatre collective Me & Them http://ilovemeandthem.com and writes a brand, behavior & trends blog called Motive. More info at: alexjohnsononline.com