Have you ever Googled yourself? The results are often not quite what you are looking for depending upon your point of view. One thing is pretty certain however, as time goes by, you are more and more likely to start appearing in that voluminous resource of information.
Part of the challenge with that reference of information will be in the correction of mistakes, or improper in some regard (see my comments on that problem here).
Now that access to all of this "stuff" is so readily available, one of the challenges will be that of exposure. Everything you do is exposed, your web sites are out there, your public forum comments are out there, Opinion posts (fortunately I am not that opinionated), Blog comments are out there, photos (my Flickr account), videos, and sometimes some pretty personal stuff too. So for those with multiple identities (you know what I mean, one for business, one social, one historical etc.), how does your online bio stack up?
Now that everything is so widely published and especially with the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Networking (see former comment here), it is very easy to check up on people. You can see if they worked at blah blah inc. or you can see if they did win that silver medal for Ju Jitsu, if they really were under sniper fire in Tuzla or more importantly, you can see if they didn't. Authenticity is now a pre-requisite for everything and anything that you put out there, or it will come back to bite you in the backside.
Gary Vanerchuck produced this little social comment on the topic...
Remember...it is watching you!
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