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Is My Digital Identity More Important Than My Physical Identity?

Posted by Anthony LaFauce on February 7th, 2008 1:10 PM

“I think I know you from twitter” “Really, what is your blog?” “I know him from Facebook”

I attended a breakfast this morning that focused on social media and these were just a few of the openings I heard in some conversations. Being a huge people watcher I was amazed by these openers and what signified.

I began to wonder about identity both psychical and digital. I manage my physical identity in everything I do; from the way I dress, part my hair, food I eat, to the way I speak, these are all identifying clues that I give to help people relate to me before we even speak.

But what about my digital identity and what it said about me? To be honest I began to worry. Am I managing my digital identity as close as I should? I was suddenly surrounded by a group of people I have never met physically but knew a great deal about me from what I have presented digitally. When I got back to my office I started reviewing my digital self.

I did what most people do when they are bored at work I googled myself. What I found was that my digital identity actually mirrored my physical identity fairly close. I was amazed how my social graph, my opinions, and my history actually extended into the digital world in an ad hoc manner.

To be honest there is some cleaning up I should do to my digital identity. This is because as social media begins to take off people will be consulting my digital identity more and more to figure out who I am. While the way I speak and dress is important, if your first impression is made by my digital identity I should take greater care to assure that is my best representation.

Finding ways to manage my online presence will be difficult. Everyday more and more information about me is being presented to the world. Soon if I am not careful people will have a finalized preconceived notion of who I am before they ever meet me. Where is the mystery in that?

Do any of you out there fear what your digital identity is saying about you? What steps do you take to assure that your digital identity is your best face. Do any of you have special tools you use to manage your online presence? Let me know.

Posted in Social Media
  

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 3 Comments

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    Anthony, if it's the first time you think about that your online identity is probably more important than yourself- i am happy for you, you live in a pacific word!

    the guys like myself who's social life online makes a very big part of the life in general, have no choice but to care about their Digital Identity. i use and highly recommend to you SPOCK.COM, as People Search Engine, Social Network and an easy to use tool to manage and CHANGE if needed, your web/ web 2.0 reputation.

    try it and you'll see there is no need to fear of what the web knows about you, if you control it!
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    It's a tough question. On one hand, I don't really feel as though I have anything to hide, but on the other hand, I don't know how other people (read: potential employers) would react to things that I think are pretty benign. The worst thing that my blog and Facebook page say about me are that I swear a lot and drink more than I should. No big deal to me, but it may be to someone else.

    For the most part, I tend to accept that it's just part of our new world. I think it may eventually make people a little more careful of what they do and say when someone has a camera out or what they put online, but I also think that, because of less privacy, we're becoming better able to shrug the personal choices that people make that don't affect us.
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    There's a problem with the fact that employers google people. It's very easy to post something that looks like it was from me, and many people share my name. I'm pretty happy with what you find on google when you search for me...

    ..all except for an article about a guy with my name who got into a drunken motorcycle accident. Can I be confident that people who spot that article will check and see that this guy is 6 years older than me? I doubt it. But my hands are tied.

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