GOOGLE= YOUR RESUME?
Google as your new resume has been a phrase floating around the net longer than I am sure, I have been aware of it. Have you ever googled your name? It’s okay, you can admit it. What does it say about you? Ever googled images of your name?
Ever heard of the term lifestreaming? It isn’t a new term, here in The Washington Post dated April 3, 1994, it is defined.
Your “lifestream” captures your whole life, in terms of chunks of information: letters, documents, bills, bank statements, video footage of your son’s first birthday party, a database, anything. Imagine a queue of documents laid out neatly on (say) the living room floor — only the queue might be tens of thousands of documents long, and it exists only as chunks floating in the void. —David Gelernter, “The cyber-road not taken,”
But what about today? With the on-line world being the home of those letters, bills, photo albums etc… heck I don’t even receive a paper bank statement anymore. Not to mention you cannot burn, shred or throw away ANYTHING on-line. Here are some modern definitions.
Word Spy-Lifestreaming is an online record of a person’s daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person’s online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos.
Wikipedia=It is the reconstitution of a disaggregated online persona.
So what does this mean? Why should you care?
Well…the world wide web functions as a diary of your life, ANYONE and EVERYONE HAS ACCESS TO IT! They even have access to add to your diary.
Every document you create, every photo or video you post and every comment you make is stored in your electronic lifestream. Have you ever considered that even your ebay reputation is available to anyone?
Here is a small snippet of my lifestream according to my del.ic.ious account. I think from this one area on the web that I participate in, you can get an idea of what is important to me and what my interests are, how I spend my time… Imagine you create an account of everything about me online, would it support who I say I am?
If you don’t consider online reputation managment important…THINK AGAIN!
Search is the most effective way to quickly research companies, products and people of interest.
People from all walks of life use search engines to research, and gather information so that they can make decisions based on this information. If the information they come across relating to you is adverse it may affect the decisions they make.
There are even reputation management sites/software coming into the picture. 1 in particular is called reputation defender, check it out here.
We have heard all the horror stories of reputations being destroyed by online content and those who have been fired for comments they posted online, also consider the flip side. It truly could be an investment.
