The New, New Identity Theft. Socially Speaking.
May 1st, 2008 | by Brad King |
Image via Wikipedia
When I first started surfing around on the Web professionally, I never thought about registering my name.
Back then, in fact, very few people used their actual name. We had avatars that weren’t our pictures. We had screen names. It was rare that you came across someone who had their actual identity laid out completely.
A few years back, all of that started to change.
Social networks popped up and it did no good to have “wiredbeat2000″ — my screen name — registered there because my friends in real life had no idea who wiredbeat2000 was. They only new Brad King.
For those of us early adopters, the shift meant it was time to migrate all of our pre-existing selfs into the modern networks, which can be a royal pain.
Which is why people are beginning to look at claiming the brand You.
The reason: if you are going to stake out a place online, you need to make sure that your reputation is yours. That your name is yours.
I imagine that as more Americans go online, we’ll begin to see a Hollywood actor’s guild situation arise where people suddenly become J. Brad King instead of Brad King since no two people can have the same name.
(For instance, Brad King is: the author of Fat Wars, a Utah representative, Florida state attorney and a porn star — along with being a college professor and writer.)
I’ve run into a few problems already, which is why I registered two domains that have nothing to do with my name (which I’m trying to remedy right now). The old BradKing.com led to the site of my namesake, the porn star. This was particularly bad since I had BradKing.org registered and I’d often give that site out.
After a few frantic emails post conference, I decided it best to not use that site when I taught college (because kids barely listen to you).
So get out there early, claim your name across the social networks and secure your digital reputation.
