Who are you on the net?

Two of my friends have recently touched on the subject, I have been thinking about it more or less ever since I started to blog (or taking random notes, whichever you´d like to call it). And in todays net climate where social networking is no longer the next thing, it is THE thing, it is more on my mind than ever. I mean, who am I when I am logged on, or more important, who do I seem like to those who read about me but do not really know me? Rickard Wolrath is talking about it at his blogspace.

For me, the Internet is both business and pleasure. I have worked on net related technology and content since 1996, more than ten years, and even a couple of years before that, I surfed the net on a daily basis. I think I created my first private web page in March 1996, and I can tell you, that was no masterpiece, even if I used the cutting edge HTML 3.2 markup for the spanking new Netscape 2 browser. Today I am managing a server park of about 25 web servers, three database servers and are troubleshooting all our service partners, all running WebServices (or similar web based servers) for a living, and a couple of days ago after having interviewed a possible new employee, I immediately googled that person. After being satisfied with what I have found, I wondered what a recruiter would think of the information about me that is available. Scary. Really.

Ronnestam, a former collegue of mine from the dotcom years, are writing a lot of interesting stuff about bleeding edge digital communication and his latest post is regarding Twitter. What really caught me was his notion about having several web personas, one private and one professional (well, that was maybe not his main point, but that was what I took from it). I have a need to be able to be “professional”, writing about web technology and web culture, what I would like people who I meet in the work environment to know about. And I have a need to be silly, posting stupid youtube movies, talking about what happened at 03:14 last Saturday night. Stuff that is intended for my friends. The problem of course is keeping the second one secret from the prying eyes I don´t want tobe able to read about it, but still accessible enough for my friends to find it. I also have quite of few social media accounts, Google, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, tumblr, delicious, this blog and more. Do I keep two accounts of each?

I don´t have the answer. What happens is, I don´t use them much. In this current version of my so called blog, I always think twice before posting. More often than not, I delete what I just have written, and the same is true for my other channels, which means that I am self-censoring myself in one form or another, I don´t use all these accounts much. I assume others are thinking in the similar ways and that kind of makes the web a sadder, more boring place. Sad. Really.