Author - Yuriy Serov, Master of Science

Because of my scientific researches, I am interested in the people's behavior in the World Wide Web, particularly in the variety of Web communities and social networks. Actually, not only in behavior, but in impressive difference in behavior.
To start with, I recommend to draw attention to the people's behavior at the forums, particularly at our ("Forum Ridnogo Mista").
Most of people use nick-names. Our Forum is a small exception, which confirms the rule. But even there, not all members use their names and surnames. Registration statistics of new members shows that most of them use nick-names (sometimes several times), despite the advice of rules about the format name of the forum participants.
At other forums also not very large number of people use their real names for registration. These are mainly politicians or journalists who have to write real names because of their profession.
However, having looked through such networks as "Odnoklasniki" and "Vkontakte", I noticed that people don't care about any privacy (but of course not all). Almost all of them indicate their real names and surnames (which is quite logical for "Odnoklasniki", but not necessarily for "Vkontakte")
They indicate the days and places of birth, educational institutions, dates of holiday trips abroad, many people give their phone and ICQ numbers, and many others completely confidential data.
Thus, you can see completely different or opposite types of behavior. At the forums - only nicknames, and Vkontakte - all as a confession.
So, it can be assumed that: People are afraid of the responsibility for their words.
"Odnoklasniki" and "Vkontakte" cannot provide easy communication. To communicate with the help of e-mails or ICQ is better. To keep your blogs there is not very comfortable, and very small number of people will read them, because they are not indexed to search systems. Even friends may not notice them, not talking about other people.
Returning to the claim about the fear of public expression, I have also doubts. Maybe, the cause of openness in "Vkontakte" is the fact that people do not communicate there? But maybe not, they do. Uncomfortably, but communicate.

Even when you are writing under the nickname you can easily be found with the help of admin's, hosters, and providers logs. An example of the Russian blogger, who was tried, only confirms this.
To cover under nickname makes sense only if we discuss any details of life, including very intimate ones.
Or in cases when the public and well known person do not want to be noticed (You can come across such examples even at our forum).
Another possible case: when content for adults' or pirated software is published. In other cases I do not understand the peoples phobia to register at the forums under real names, which is particularly seen in Forum Ridnogo Mista (Lviv Forum) for a long time.