One of the consequences of increasingly visible, interlinked and readily available networks of knowledge is that knowledge networkers – the people in the network – also become a key part of the overall networking process. To make sense of how knowledge and knowledgeable people all combine to form the ‘network’, we can use the concept of web presence. Web presence, put simply, is the total ‘presence’ that an individual has across all places and processes of the World Wide Web. It is both a presence in the sense of being there, online, and also a presentation of the self in the sense of performing one’s identity (or one of a person’s identities) in the context of the interlinking of activities and content which are identified with that person. Web presence emerges, in one way, through knowledge networking activities (with a very broad definition of knowledge, admittedly), but also, knowledge networking depends on that presence, for presentation of who one is and does builds the capacity to become part of knowledgeable networks. I should also add that, for some people, web presence is the online component of the lives they lead – the living out of certain aspects of their everyday experiences via computer mediated environments.
There are three main elements to a ‘web presence’ that someone might maintain and develop: core, extended and linked. All three add up to a totality of web presence. Such a presence does not necessarily align completely or exactly with all aspects of a person’s identity, but does represent a significant component of ‘who they are’ and ‘what they do’ online. I will describe these in personal terms, since it is essential to maintain awareness of the link between presence and identity.
Core Web Presence (CWP)
My core web presence is the single place at which I put most of the important material that forms my presence on the web. It is my site, controlled by me, and mainly authored by me, though some people’s CWP will include the ability for others to comment and add. It is probably best thought of as being a new way to describe the idea of having a ‘home page’ – a home on the Internet – which so dominated 1990s web discourse. It is not essential that this page be hosted on my own infrastructure and, indeed, most will be hosted on others. However it will be aligned with the identity of ‘me’, at least so far as I establish an identity for that presence. This site is, by definition, singular. While my presence may be distributed over many sites, in many ways, to have a ‘web presence’ demands this keystone site. The site which serves as my core is the central reference point in the ‘web’ of pages, links, comments, activities etc, which forms the totality of my web presence. Whatever else the core site does, this place defines the ‘self’ I am presenting on and through the web.
Extended Web Presence (EWP)
My extended web presence is formed by all of the places and sites that I also have significant control over and which contain material largely generated by my own activities, or activities with which I am closely associated. For individuals, the extended web presence may be quite small; for organisational identities, it is likely the extended web presence could be much larger. Crucial to this group of sites is capacity I have to control and manage the content of them. Anything which passes from me into another’s control when web published does not belong in this component of web presence (it is linked). Self-evidently, the whole purpose of thinking about ‘core’ and ‘extended’ presence is that there are significant hypertextual linkages between the two. Whether some activity or communication I make is part of the core or extended web presence generally can be determined by the degree to which ‘I’ would still exist in web space if it was deleted. If all of my extended presence were, for some reason, to disappear, but it was still clear who I was, what I did, and how I contributed to the Internet, then we can see a core web presence, not an extended presence. These other sites may include quite a bit of ‘identifying’ information but would not of themselves clearly identify and present ‘me’ without the links back to a core presence.
Linked Web Presence (LWP)
Linked web presence consists in all of my contributions and activities at all the places where, though not controlled by me, there is some element of my online presence. These are ‘linked’ in the conceptual sense that these sites are actually part of someone else’s core or extended web presence, not mine; they are also linked in the more technical sense that a good core web presence should link outwards to most of them.8
Example: an individual academic
An individual academic might build up the following web presence:
Core Web Presence (their own website)
- Academic’s home site, including CV, information about their activities and institutional location;
- small collection of key articles;
- blog reporting on their current research projects.
Extended Web Presence (websites they have significant control over)
- Collaborative site supporting their research where they are identified as one of the key authors and to which they can write directly;
- E-space repository on their university’s library server of all their publications;
- information, activities publicised via their professional association’s website, of which they are president.
Linked Web Presence (all other websites)
- Article they wrote for an online journal
- comments they make on a colleague’s research blog
- listing of their membership of editorial board on a journal website
- Amazon.com entry of their latest book
Ultimately, the purpose of thinking about what we do online as a ‘web presence’ is to distinguish all of what I do, across several – perhaps many – knowledge networks such that it is all about me, as a knowledge networker. A web presence links – through its owner – all of those knowledge networks. A single knowledge network will contain links to many different web presences, large or small, of all those loosely or closely connected to that network.
