Who are you? Or better yet, are you who the public thinks you are?

Feedback’s Dean Browell offers a short study of sorts on U.K. social media site The Wall into we go about crafting our online identities for various audiences. He writes the following on Facebook’s new and slightly freaky Timeline feature:

Facebook’s Timeline changes things a bit. The 7-day grace period Facebook gave users to trim, prune and add to their Timeline speaks volumes to the impact it has on us as a representation of our online identities. For many, it was a complete shock to see Facebook had bothered to keep all of the data they have been posting for years and neatly displayed it as a scrolling scrapbook for them.

The sins of several years ago lined up with the very thing you posted yesterday, the errant ex appearing again for the first time since the breakup. As Facebook accurately described it, it was truly a digital scrapbook of our limited lives as they pertain to Facebook. It combines the realtime and the oldtime. It makes us a sum of our parts. Of course we can shift and delete and highlight to create a carefully crafted identity on Timeline as well, but it made us stop and consider.

Read more of Dean’s high points on how we are perceived on different social networks over at The Wall.