privacy

As I sit here on a hot, humid Friday night with my scotch and my laptop (21st century #fail), in a thoroughly air-conditioned room, I try to make myself useful. In this unbearable heat, only a desperate socialite would even think about going out. I, myself, much prefer pointlessly scrolling through the day's worth of tweets, catching up on the discussions about Google Street View and privacy. Not even sure how old this stuff is, I start to slowly type my thoughts on the subject.

Unless you've lived in a cave in a desert, for the past three years or so, you must have noticed the social revolution that took over the Internet. Some call it "blogging craze", yet others prefer to more fashionably number-version the Web into "2.0". Either way, the reality is that mass-services like MySpace and YouTube stormed into our lives and changed them forever, both online and offline. To further complicate the matters, Google made it possible for your boss to find the little MySpace profile you meant only for your boyfriend's amusement.

Personomies are digital manifestations of an individual. They combine identity (who you are), activity (what you do) and "sociality" (who you know) - Pierre-Guillaume Wielezynski.

Any reasonably web-literate hiring manager will Google your name before making the final decision. What does she find in the first three pages of the search results can determine your career. Have you "googled" yourself? Do you know what your personomy on Google looks like?