blogs connect people! they reunite long lost friends!
my recent post about finding out that javi wrote for lost resulted in him finding my site, and allowing us to get in contact for the first time in over ten years. when i asked him if he had found it during his daily self-google, he replied, “but of course!”
joking aside, this put into my head: how googleable are you?
taking precious time away from my fruitless studying, i performed and impromptu little science experiment, googling several of my friends.
xz: easy. first link leads to his blog.
danger: easy. pictures of the fishlab crew, waiting for fish.
rlv: easy. lots of links, including her .mac homepage with ro pix.
roo: nothing, although lots of links to an unrelated ebay fabric store.
cf: not much, but there’s a link to where she was quoted on a anti-wal-mart book.
w: lots of dance performance related hits, and some work and alumni related hits. the interesting thing is that there are only two pages, and pretty much all of the listings are actually her.
hmc: all false positives, except for the imdb listing.
what have we found? while it definitely helps to have an online presence, it seems that it’s more important to have unique uncommon names. you’re going to find more about yourself if your name is, say, javier grillo-marxuach than if your name is david smith. again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. it keeps you from getting found, but it also keeps you from getting fired.
the other question, of course, is: how googleable do you want to be? i take great care in making sure that it’s almost impossible to get any results for me. i’ve removed my last name, my company, and enough information that searching those items on google produces absolutely nothing. it does help that my last name is pretty common for a taiwanese name, and my first name is a handy abbreviation for ‘editor’. the one legitimate hit is my amazon wishlist. it’s probably the only place where i publicly use my real full name, and it’s only for relatives on hmc’s side of the family to look and buy stuff. which i don’t know if they’ve actually ever done.
once i did get a gift out of the blue from it, but it was actually because someone was trying to send a present to someone else who also had my name. go figure.
all in all, if you want more publicity, consider changing your name to flaubert winterbottom-smythe.
Posted at January 27, 2005 2:29 PMi’m doomed. let the bastards find me. at least if my old high school buddy who’s now a big time producer googles me they’ll know where to send the swag.
they can’t dooce me. i quit.
Posted by: xz at January 28, 2005 9:56 AMi can’t tell what i should be more appalled at: that you used dooce as a verb, or that you’re sucking up to dooce readers by using dooce as a verb.
Posted by: e at January 28, 2005 10:57 AMhaving a very unique name has it’s downsides. for example, should i ever do anything really stupid, i can’t blame it on the other m—- c——‘s out there. and people remember me because of my name. because of this, i’m wary about how public i am. you’ll notice that all nine google hits are actually me; i don’t think there’s another person out there with my combination of names. however, when it comes to science, having a certain amount of public reknown is helpful. i guess i don’t mind being known as a graduate student or a researcher but beyond that, i get a little squirmy.
my question is: why do you and i feel like we need privacy? is it concern about identity theft? or is it more than that?
Posted by: mac at January 28, 2005 1:30 PMnot so much identity theft, but certainly a concern over things like getting, as xz unfortunately puts it, “dooced”.
you certainly don’t want people from work reading about how you hate work or how you’re bored by your job or how you wish you could watch strippers all day long. and you probably don’t want relatives to know that, too, although they could just figure it out if they ever plugged your domain name into a browser. doh!
aside from that, i don’t know. do you feel that the anonymity allows you to be freer with things one blogs about? you’re allowed to talk about things, knowing that perhaps they won’t get back to whomever. that being said, there are things i never blog about, just because i have rules about not talking badly about certain people. ever.
Posted by: e at January 28, 2005 1:51 PMdooce is a verb. and you write a blog, which is also a new word. i believe farked is a word. as is leet. this ain’t france. the language changes.
i will also point out that this post is called “googly moogly.” google is definitely a word.
mac: good news. your name is changing soon.
Posted by: xz at January 28, 2005 1:52 PMthanks for the reminder, xz. that’s so cool! i can now do all of those stoopid things i’ve been saving up to do. woohoo!
Posted by: mac at January 28, 2005 5:12 PMComments are now closed for this entry. Thank you for playing.