Feb 28, 2008
Maintaining MY online identity (a teaser post) – random domain name purchases
I was recently having a little debate with Diana over at the Digital Natives blog about how best to manage online identities as a teenager, inspired by Lifehacker’s recent post about managing digital reputations. My main point of agreement was about ‘becoming the source’ for information about yourself, and how important it is to maintain a high-profile place for positive information control. I do that very well with this website–google ’sam jackson’ and you’ll see I’m the fourth result–but right before I saw Diana’s post, I had decided I wanted to cover some other bases.
It’s midterms time here at Yale, and while some people like to go out and shop or buy things to de-stress some, I opted for another route: buying a few domain names. I went to gratuitous lengths to try to acquire a few I’ve been negotiating over for ages, with continued failure. But I did go ahead and buy www.SamuelAJackson.com and www.SamuelABJackson.com. I remain bitter that I don’t have the funds to acquire samjackson.com, or samueljackson.com, etc.
I wish I had been a little older–or a lot wiser–when I was younger, because I would be a lot richer now for my domain purchases if that had been the case. But, in case anyone is ever searching for my full name, I now have some good insurance. These wouldn’t really rank, of course, and I will just have them redirect back here for now. Still–pays to try to cover as many angles as possible, and it’s really pretty cheap. Certainly a much lower down payment now than there will be later, if you have to try to buy a domain off someone or do damage control from high-ranking bad PR.
For a good place to start investigating how to control your public identity online, check out both that lifehacker post and danah boyd’s musings on the subject last fall.
I read Diana’s post and I tend agree with you Sam. Not using your real, full name from the start with Diana’s reasoning is like saying, “you’re definitely going to screw up real bad sometime in your teenage years, so we better prepare for that.” That’s not the right mentality. Parents, teachers, and more need to start integrating this type of education in at an early age. Your online reputation is equal to your real reputation. Kids and teenagers will understand that and protect their online identity as such. If teenagers can play countless videogames where their “street cred” is so important, then they can understand how to make (and protect) a name for themselves online. Don’t underestimate a generation that is closer to the internet than they are to their family, right?
Well, I see evidence for a LOT of kids and teens needing more education when it comes to dealing with reputation online–even if it’s just with Facebook. That’s because things can sometimes appear very blurry about what is private or what is not. People who don’t realize that joining the “Toronto” network exposes them to a million people. So, still needs to be a lot of education.
But yeah, better to educate than to scare away and let people fall through the cracks!
I have to agree with you, Sam. The spirit of Diana’s article is certainly correct, but I think a student of any age would benefit from their own named domain as early as possible. Now, what a student does with that domain is another matter entirely.
While Diana is correct that a student could get into trouble if they published their own personal blog connected to their real name and discussed matters they would prefer a future employer or college admissions officer not to see, there is absolutely no harm in creating a professional blogging entity early. Further, a student could simply put up a single, simple professional resume outlining his or her work experience, awards, involvement, etc. Not only could this never hurt someone, it would be incredibly useful should they be Google’d in the future.
Your anecdote in your comment at Diana’s blog, Sam, is very telling. And indeed, it is increasingly more common that teenagers are becoming more marketable just through having their own domain. I have heard of employers hiring young interns simply because of the favorable results that Google served.
Definitely. It may have been a minor liability when I was working in the Senate (I stopped blogging, followed the NDA I signed, and didn’t really mention it much) but since then, I have gotten my last two jobs through my blogging–the networking it has brought, the people I have met through it, have been really helpful. Hopefully this trend will only continue! I try to help my friends to make nice websites and give out domains as presents, but it is surprisingly hard to ‘infect’ people with the ‘blogging bug’ sometime. But as you say, a decently branded splash page for a low-hit name is pretty excellent as is.
Although, we shouldn’t all gang up on Diana–she did send me a nice note telling me that she did agree with me a lot, too, and wished she could have been a little clearer about what she said! But it does just go to show that even as it is tricky for an individual to navigate the fine line between self-publicizing and proper privacy, it’s hard to prescribe good courses of action, too–even with the best intentions.
Should Teens manage their reputation ?…
I’ve just finished to read this post of the blog digital natives.
This student think the reputation management should begin early and I share the same point of view. She gives 2 advices :
1)Avoid using your full name on the Internet at all costs…
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