Digital Footprint - No Ego Surfing for me!

I’ve been mulling over this since the start of NET11, but the lecture and notes on Your Digital Shadow have finally crystallized for me what the Web Presence required for Assignment 4 is all about. It is Tama’s solution to the problem of managing your online reputation when faced with the reality that you can’t control what others may post about you, and whether its true or false. A Web Presence will certainly (eventually) appear high up in Google’s and other search engine’s rankings for any individual, and will help balance any misinformation or undesirable truths which are also there.

I find this a persuasive argument, but I’m still not quite buying it. Well, not for me anyhow. My reasoning lies in the answers to the questions that Gwyn has posed us on Ego Surfing …

This week Tama asked you to go 'ego surfing' using Google, Blindsearch and Spezify
- How did you go? Were you comfortable with the results, did you find information or images that surprised you?
- If you did not find much information on yourself, are you happy about this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having little or no digital shadow?

I have an unusual name, so by Tama’s logic, that should help search engines find me without too much other noise. However, my surname happens to be a noun in English and other languages that gets associated with businesses and functions. I also have not participated in online social networking, and my previous business life was professional but confidential, and has definitely not led an online trail. Accordingly, putting my name into Google produced pages and pages and pages of links nothing to do with me. In Tama-speak, I am an online nobody, I have no reputation! Similarly, Blindsearch and Spezify produced nothing on me.

When I deliberately helped Google by adding keywords for specific organizations that I work with that have web presences, at last the search engine found me successfully. I am now only nearly an online nobody.

Did this shatter my ego? No, au contraire, I am comfortable with this situation. I don’t operate in industries where your online persona is all there is of “you”. My reputation is with people I see and work with on a regular basis. I am not looking for a job. I don’t care that people can’t find me online. It’s possible that old buddies would like to contact me, but they are disappointed when they can’t find me on Facebook. Well, they could try the hard copy or online phone books! I don't deeply feel the need for a Personal Web Presence at this stage.

As an aside, while trying to stroke my ego, I came across www.intelius.com which admits that it only covers US residents. This site found 48 people with my name, told me where they lived, who their relatives were, what their criminal record was etc. Crikey!

It’s a legitimate question to ask why I am doing this Unit? I’m obviously an SNS virgin! That doesn’t make me disinterested, however. I’m a technophile doing a Computer Science degree for fun. I’m fascinated by all this twittering about Facebook, I’ve done all of Tama’s activities, and I have found the learnings to be interesting and entertaining. I can now astound my younger friends and family members with my knowledge of “their preserve”. I think it makes them a bit uncomfortable.

It occurs to me that those associated with running this Unit (no disrespect to anyone) believe that virtually “everyone” is engaged in online social networking, and are surprised to find examples or people who are not. The statistics such as we saw at http://pewinternet.org/Infographics/Growth-in-Adult-SNS-Use-20052009.aspx are stunning, but that same graph shows that there is a very sizable demographic not engaged in SNS. With my ego-surfing such a failure, I thought I would try an experiment. I tried vicarious ego-surfing on behalf of a cross-section of my friends. I deliberately looked for friends in each age decade. I only used Google, and I looked at the first 3 pages for each name. I was careful to spell their names correctly and did not use nicknames. I used only first and last names. The results are below, with only initials shown to preserve my friends’ privacy (but to remind me who they are), together with sex, age and hometown.

1. T.E-A (16,M, Sydney): Very unusual name, Google produced only 4 entries in total, none associated with my friend. He tells me he is an active online social networker, but it’s obviously under an assumed name. I cheated with this friend and also tried his preferred first name abbreviation. Another 4 entries, two false and two contained his City To Surf results.
2. A. McC (21,F, Sydney): Slightly unusual name. Found numerous genuine references to her on skiing websites on the first page of Google, all posted by others. Found Facebook and Twitter sites for others by the same name, but not my friend. I know (from past experience) this person used to have a MySpace page – maybe she disguises her name.
3. K.M (30, F, Sydney): Very unusual name. Google only had 26 links total on this name, all were references to my friend regarding her profession, none were posted by her. Her reputation is indeed forged online, and she could well be advised to get her own Web Presence.
4. C.B (39, F, Central Coast NSW): Reasonably unusual surname. Google had 130 links in total for this name. Many pertained to my friend, all posted by others, almost all relating to her career and profession. Found her father’s Facebook site, but not hers (even though I know she has one). Also a photograph of her.
5. M.M.(49, M, Sydney): Common name. Google had 325,000 entries. He’d be embarrassed to see images of some people with the same name. Could not find any correct link to my friend, even after adding “linkedin” to the keywords, because I know he’s listed there. Is this the curse or the benefit of a common name?
6. A.S. (55, M, Melbourne): Moderately common name. Google had 1970 link for this name. The top link was for someone else, but the second and later links were for his own website (I created this for him a year ago – I should be proud to get such a ranking.). A “linkedin” page for A.S. (that I was not aware of) was also on Google’s first page.
7. D.S (67,M, Braidwood): Extremely common name, but I tried this friend because he is very well known in his profession, but not a celebrity. Google found 390,000 results. I couldn’t find any referring to my friend.
8. A.B. (73, M, Florida USA): Moderately uncommon name, Google found 351 links, many relating to my friend arising from his past professional career. Easily found a lot about his genealogy.

The lessons for me from these anecdotal exercises are that:-
• It’s best not to live in the USA.
• My friends, even the young ones, don’t have much of a digital footprint.
• You’d have to work harder than just putting a name into Google to find information on people with common names.
• Adding extra keywords (but only if you know them) helps a search engine immeasurably.
• People with uncommon names (like Tama) are easily found.

So, to Gwyn’s other questions…
- How were the search engines different? How might the presentation of information alter its impact or meaning?
Blindsearch was as Tama described. The 3 search engines gave quite different results for me and others from my list above, but I couldn’t distinguish quality or relevance.
Spezify has an attractive and interesting graphical approach, came up with noting for me, but found items on my friends that I hadn’t noticed in the Google search (it used MSN search). I can’t deduce how Spezify decides what graphics or text to use, or how to rank pages, but the effect is stunning. I’m going to use Spezify more often, especially when I’m looking for something offkey. I keyed in my suburb name and Spezify displayed a number of random photos of mine located in a website with a similar name. How did it do this?

- Would you be comfortable with an employer or employee searching for you? What about your family members?

No, I wouldn’t be comfortable with that, but it just brings home the lessons that Tama has taught us. Mainly, don’t post anything you don’t want you boss, staff or family to see, because it’ll be there forever. And manage your online existence with your own personal website.