How & Why Do You Choose Your Social Networking Profile Picture?

Like it or not, in order to be a member of the Internet community you need to have a profile. This may be an actual profile on multiple social networkspacked full of personal information, or it could just be the persona you adopt and nurture in an online setting. Either way you’ll probably have a profilepicture.

Inspired by Mark’s recent infographic showing what people’s personal profile picture says about them, I thought it would be good to hear how and why you chose the image that sums you up in just a few hundred pixels. That’s the subject of this week’s ‘We Ask [You] Tell Us’ column, your chance to inform us rather than the other way around.

There are an infinite number of choices open to you when choosing your social networking profile picture. You can use one of yourself, posed just for the occasion, captured off-guard, or drunk and pulling a funny face. You can use one of a celebrity, perhaps your favorite personality of the moment or one that suits your mood. You can use a graphic, a logo, a product, etc. Ad infinitum.
We already know the damaging effect of choosing unwisely, or even not choosing at all by just keeping that silhouetted Invisible Man-style non-picture on your page. But how did you come to the decision to use the picture you have staring out at the world and the Web right now?
I usually use a friendly picture of myself looking natural, but in advance of this column I switched to Burt Reynolds for a few days on Facebook. Why? Because 1970′s Burt Reynolds was the man, and I wanted to see what reaction he got. None, is the sad answer. Hopefully you’ll have better reasons for How? and Why? than I do.
We Ask You… now You Tell Us. All comments will be digested to form conclusions in a follow-up post next week.