All the sites I visited really didn't surprise me at all when I looked at the various different sign up pages. The Hotmail and Yahoo signup pages were pretty similar and basic, and were also comparable to the Second Life questions (I found the avatars more interesting in displaying certain stereotypes of gendered identities..)
Clearly from these sign up pages, age and gender is extremely important in determining your personality and identity - even though cyberspace is virtually anonymous! Lavalife also proved to be similar, where searches are based on gender and age alone.
However, the searches on Lavalife proved to be quite interesting...although you start off with a basic search and the information given about each individual seems to be quite in depth(when you click on a profile), the thing that struck me most was the 'ethnicity' in regards to identity. "White" seems to be an all encompassing construct in which 90% of the individuals on the site seem to be...so in this sense ethnicity also seems very vague and generic when looking at how people judge others online. The information on individuals on Lavalife also reminded me of the info found on Myspace pages - questions such as smoke?,drink?,education?,children?,Body type etc. This reinforces our construction of identites through these various different categories people are placed in - signifying what is held as important when building an identity.
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