Online identity worth managing

It seems every college newspaper in the country, this one included, has written an editorial sternly warning students to mind their privacy and not put inappropriate pictures of themselves up on Facebook because employers are now using online sources to screen people.

The (undoubtedly few) students who listened to this sage advice probably changed some of their privacy settings and moved on with their lives. But I don't think they are really addressing the problem.

In my opinion, the rise of the all-knowing world wide web has dramatically shifted the concept of privacy. Social networks like Facebook, blogging services and other social websites are turning every person into a niche celebrity, with the niche made up of your friends and occasional random people.

A clever person with five minutes of time could learn quite a lot about me just by searching the net, including my home address and telephone number, some of the websites I visit frequently and other such 'private' information. I am not very stalk-worthy, so I am not too concerned. But for some people, this could be an issue. The problem is, once something is posted on the internet, removing it is virtually impossible-just ask the infamous Star Wars kid.

Essentially, I think that trying to maintain absolute privacy on the internet is an unwinnable battle, and one not worth fighting. More and more useful services require increasingly personal information to function, both about you and about your friends, and if you don't give up your information yourself one of your friends might (inadvertently) give it up for you. I'm sure many of us have gone through the "it's so inconvenient that you're not on Facebook, sign up" peer pressure.

This sounds like a pretty bleak assertion-are we now to assume that all of our private information is available for anyone to view at their discretion? I think the answer is yes, at least to some extent this is the brave new world we're living in. But on the whole, I see this recently acquired niche celebrity status as more of an opportunity than a threat.

Rather than trying to hide our information and protect our privacy at all costs by not using the various useful services that are springing up, I believe we should actively work to manage the identity we present to the world via the internet.

We already do a whole lot of this in "real life," by carefully selecting the things we own, the clothes we wear and the people we associate with (okay, perhaps some of us do this selecting more carefully than others). Managing your identity on the internet is not much different-sure, it's a slightly more permanent record, but ultimately it involves a similar series of choices.

The shape this takes could vary dramatically, from what you choose to put on your Facebook profile to creating a professional website for yourself and doing search engine optimization so it is the first match for your name. But that is less important than the underlying principle: the internet gives people the opportunity to create a personal brand for themselves, and this is a fairly dramatic change from the past. The loss of privacy is the tradeoff we are forced to make in order to transcend our previous associations-companies, organizations, etc.-and allow our own individual virtues to represent us.

This is a freedom that should not be underestimated, and, as illustrated by the many cases of inappropriate pole dancing pictures leading to revoked job offers, carries with it a certain amount of danger. It is certainly instructive to check the major search engines and see what matches they turn up for your name and any other easily-determined online identities you may have, as you never know what sort of interesting things lurk in Google's index.

Since we already know our online identities are increasingly being investigated by companies, I think instead of treating these tactics as a risk we should aim to take advantage of the opportunities they bring.

When a company looks at a resume, they no longer have to evaluate us just by our university or the companies we have worked for-certainly, this is still important, but a well-written, thoughtful blog that shows a deep understanding of an industry can seemingly compensate, at least in part, for a low GPA.

All this doesn't mean that I've run out and started a blog where I write long, insightful analysis pieces on current computing issues in an effort to get hired by Google. Besides, a blog written solely to promote the writer is rather unlikely to be worth reading.

But whenever I do start a blog, you can be sure I'll be keeping all of this in mind.