Personas

A Persona is a public-facing aspect of an Account. An Account can have an unlimited number of Personas, but a Persona can only be assocated with one Account. The use of Personas allows underlying Account information to remain private, making it possible to have a public and anonymous Persona on the same Account and appearing to be two completely different sources.

Use Cases for a Single Persona

When a person first creates an Account, they have a single Persona that can be associated with anything they publish. People who wish to publish everything under the same name will only need a single Persona.

Use Cases for Multiple Personas

People who wish to separate the types of content they publish can do so not only by having multiple Sites, but multiple Personas. This can be useful for people who wish to have professional postings appear under their given name while having social posts separated and appearing distinct from the professional objects.

For example, Sandra has four Personas:

1. @sandra - a "fun" persona that is used for social posts and items shared on her photo blog
2. @WooComix - a professional persona that is used for her artwork
3. @grr - an anonymous persona that allows her to complain vaguely about her professors at university
4. @my_xkcd - a "syndication" persona that reads the XKCD RSS feed and posts updates to her social stream

With this level of separation, Sandra is afforded some freedom and flexibility to be herself and others can choose to follow or otherwise ignore the Personas that do not interest them.