As many readers of this blog know, a big concern among market researchers is ensuring that we are speaking to the right people and that participants represent themselves accurately throughout a study.  While this is critical during the screening process, it is equally important when members in a market research online community build their profile page and start to share additional information about themselves over the course of time.  

Given this, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a recent press release on research into Facebook profiles.  To summarize the release, a team of researchers collected profiles from the US and Germany and found that members of online social networks like Facebook are using their profile pages to build accurate representations of their true personalities, rather than an idealized virtual identity. 

I'll be interested to read the full findings when they are published, but for now am excited by the promise this study shows.  I think this will help further set the stage for MROCs as more than just a "fad" (as a recent LinkedIN discussion questioned), and more of an accepted a research method.  Of course, a community for research is different than a conventional social network so there might be other dynamics in play (e.g., a bit of a Hawthorne effect could be introduced by virtue of the research setting), but it still helps to dispel some early criticisms of the approach...