Lorena's Epiphany

Your Online Genes

December 4, 2009 at 11:53 am 3 comments

Have you googled yourself lately?

With the proliferation of the internet and social media networks, every person has an ever-evolving online profile. No, I’m not talking about the one you tween and tweak to perfection on Facebook. You’d actually be quite surprised by the random references to your name that pop-up. For example, the captions of photographs you were in, university student records and sometimes completely random blog posts (on other people’s).

I’m nearly positive most of you have googled yourself at one point. If not, do. Potential employers do as part of the screening process. It won’t hurt to know what’s out there about you. You know, in case it comes up.

For a more interesting approach, try Personas. Type in your complete name here and see what comes up. What Personas does is search your name across the internet and create a sort of DNA of your online identity. Pretty much what the internet views you as.

Here’s what came up when I typed my name:

[sorry, click on image to see more clearly]

Personas, developed at the MIT Media Labs, visualizes your online public data and then categories the results. Wa-la! It won’t have as many search results as Google, but dig through enough data to get the job done.

Try it out and let me know how yours came out.

Entry filed under: Floating. Tags: Google, internet, MIT, name, online public data, Personas, profile, search.