BUT BE SMART ABOUT IT.

Right, now that I have your attention, let me make a semi controversial statement: If your real name – your identity -  is used by you online for the important things, it should be harder for someone to use your identity to impersonate you.

Let’s explore the idea a bit…

Owning Your Identity

In real life, who you are is hard to fake. If you have met me in real life, and got to know me, it would be harder for someone to walk up to you and say “Hi I’m Quintin” than if you have never met me.

That someone would now have to be able to replicate my look and persona exactly in order to fool you into thinking it was me.

I think that is the same with your online persona. If you went around Facebook, Twitter, your Blog and everywhere else online without using your real name somewhere it will be easier for me to fool people into thinking I was you.

Take Twitter. Lots of celebrities use it. Many of them use pseudonyms. If I were to go and pick a celebrity I would want to impersonate on Twitter I would choose one who did not use too much of their info in their Twitter Username, their Bio or anywhere else on their profile.

I could now go crazy with a well known name and it would be harder for users to figure out it was not the real McCoy.

If I chose to impersonate a celebrity who had their real name as their Twitter username, in their Bio and on their profile it would be significantly harder for me to do.

The Privacy Issue

Here we run into problems. And this is where the “be smart about it” part comes in.

If you use your real name online you better be careful what you associate with that real name. As we noted before – people who might want to employ you will take a look at your online shenanigans in the interview process.

Some employers feel that if you hide your online history there might be something dark lurking there.

I strongly believe that there should be a limit to what employers and future employers should be allowed to access in the case of online content. I believe they should only be allowed to see that which I put in the public domain.

In short – my Twitter Feed==OK, my Facebook Wall==NOT OKAY (if you are not added as a friend.)

I do make some faux pas in public – I sometimes swear in my Twitter feed. If you think people you might want to impress one day might frown on this you (and I) should refrain from doing so. Swear away on your private mails then. If that does not bother you, and you are okay with owning the “I swear and am okay with it” attitude, then swear away on the Internet’s public platforms like Twitter.

The Branding Issue

@chriscalitz has a very interesting piece over at the @SaBestMarketing blog regarding the personal brand. It is a good read, find it HERE.

I broadly agree with that entry. My opinion is that YOU are quickly becoming the most important product on the Internet that you would would ever own. Just like domain names are becoming hot commodity online, your personal brand is going to become a hot commodity to own online very soon.

I bought the domain for my first name as soon as it became available. I am waiting for my surname to become available too so that i can own the whole ME in that department.

It is not too far fetched to believe that just like there are domain parking businesses out there charging exorbitant amounts of cash for domain names now, there will be personal brand parking businesses one day.

Where a corporate identity is protected by some laws, personal identy ownership as far as branding is concerned is not as protected.

Someone can today open Facebook accounts for hundreds of name combinations and profiles and lock the people who those profiles represent into a “Buy your Facebook profile” situation.

You will have a harder time representing the real you online one day.

Someone can go and register @quintinvanrooyensouthafrica as a Twitter profile and just let it sit there until the day that I want it, and then I will have to pay them to get it.

In my opinion it is a VERY dodgy business practice. Domain parking should die for that reason too. As well as patent trolling, but that is an unrelated pet peeve of mine.

Summary

So, to summarize – while it is easy(er) to do it, own your name and personal brand online. Get a domain name in your name, even if you do not want to use it immediately. Get a Twitter account in your name, Facebook account in your name, gmail address with $yourname@gmail.com.

One day you might WANT to have a little blog sitting at your name, or you will NEED to have a gmail account that represents you – but someone else saw the gap and had it registered in your name.

Imagine Britney Spears does not own britneyspears.com and she wants to set up a personal blog or page there, to own what is associated with her name.

Guess what, she does – what if she didn’t?

Give it some thought…

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