FIXZR

Sockington is a cat on Twitter (I know for many of you this may confirm some already strongly held views on Twitter users). Prejudices/sanity aside, Sockington has 1/2 million followers which is not bad for anyone. Sockington is clearly not really Tweeting himself (he must dictate his Tweets given the cruel lack of consideration to cats in modern keyboard design), so who is Sockington and what’s his credit score?

Sockington is not Jason Scott, his owner and I presume keyboard assistant. This statement is true in so far as Frasier is not Kelsey Grammar, and Carrie is not Stephen King. James Bond is also not Ian Flemming, in fact James Bond is not just a subset of Ian Fleming’s mind. James Bond is now happily continuing life after Ian died back in 1964. Who would you prefer to owe you money - James or Ian? Sockington or Jason?

Sockington has earning potential, and given his high profile, a need to protect his good name. Jason hopefully is earning a good wage himself, but perhaps has less need to keep his identity clean. He could go bankrupt, adandon his creditors, change his name by Deed Poll and all potentially without impacting his earning power. Sockington on the other hand lives and dies by his personal brand. So how important is it to link Sockington to a ‘real’ identity, when so much value is tied up in his ‘virtual’ ID? Do I need to know who Sockington is, or do I just need to know what Sockington earns?

Lending to Sockington without knowing the ‘real’ identity behind him, is in many ways no different to lending to a Limited company. In a limited company the creditors have no lien on the assets of the people behind the company, nor can the force the owners to work. They simply lend on the basis that the company has more interest in existing than not. I’d lend Sockington money, and if he didn’t get a ‘job’* to pay me back, I’d come after that cat with Marmaduke until he made good!

* a few Google Adwords perhaps.