Taking Control of Your Online Persona
I am therefore surprised to see how many people are not in control of their online persona. The only information that google turns up is what others have written about them
David made the same point the other day, with his quote “The cat is out of the bag, and the only way to take back that control is to get out there and have a presence, have an identity that you feel represents you.” and I wholeheartedly agree.
For my first several years online, my google results were a real mixed bag: USENET posts from 1996 about trading band tapes, programming questions from mailing lists and forums, and miscellaneous other snippets that certainly reflected what I was doing at the time, but not who I was.
In 2003, however, I got caught up in an incident which immediately dominated the first couple pages of google results for my name. It’s still out there if you want to find it, but basically, my company did something bad, people attacked us personally, and I stood in the firing line trying to deflect the bullets. Admittedly, in the moment of passion, I didn’t handle things in the best way (and i certainly know better now), but it was very disheartening to think that this is what people would see when they looked me up online.
At that point, I became obsessed with the challenge of making sure that a single heated email exchange was not what people discovered when they googled me. I started writing a livejournal. I posted photos. I had my friends link to me. I left my name wherever I could.
But then I realized that this wasn’t about covering up something I did, this was about presenting myself the way I wanted to be seen. And from that point on, once I finally understood that, everything just fell into place. I joined conversations, made myself visible, and have made a lot of great friends in the process.
Now, a few years later, I completely own my online presence. And it’s not a game or a ruse, it’s who am I, and how I want you to know me.
