With the advent of personal sites, forums, blogs, podcasts and videocasts, we’re all exposed. What we write (so, eventually, what we think) remains. What we film and record, stays there. We are constantly leaving traces and thoughts behind us.
Almost every big company nowadays “googles” the name of the possible employee before an hire. Have you ever googled someone? I did.
There are people out there who lost their job because they “left something written online”. In 2002, Heather Armstrong ignited a fierce debate about privacy issues when she was fired from her job as a web designer and graphic artist because she had written satirical accounts of her experiences at a dot-com startup on her weblog, dooce.com.
We leave comments, forum threads, posts, videos. We leave entire pieces of ourselves online. Beware associating your name with what you leave behind you.
The Internet Archive is one of my favorite example: they store and entire site history (check out the Google 1998 page… terrific!).
Personally, I did not like the idea of having my site mirrored with all the old styles, information and layout of this domain. There have been times when I used flipthedolphin.com as a personal homepage with very poor layout and information inside. So I decided to block the internet archive from storing copies of it. It worked and now I’m pretty fine with it.
You should also be aware of what others write about you. Interestingly I have found two articles about Online Reputation.
It’s an interesting reading. If you have a blog or a website, check them out. And remember: never write something you would never say personally.