The Presence Builder Project - your user ID

Before I start this section I want to just remind everybody of this incredibly important fact. It is huge, mammoth, of tsunami like proportion and is something you should put on a sticky on your monitor where you can see it every day.

Alright enough already. What is it?

The internet never forgets.

Make a note of this. In big bold letters. What you post online stays there for all eternity. In some instances you might not be able to find it again, but it’s there for others to find.

If you remembered that, would that change what you put online or make you regret what you might have put online before? Good question isn’t it. Remember this point then. The internet does not forget.

Let’s get back to deciding on your user ID. This may be defined as simply a nickname or “handle” that you use to log into a computer system. Along with your password, it is used to authenticate your identity before allowing access to your personal profile or user account.

The critical word here is identity.

Quite frankly most of us recklessly determine our user ID at a whim. We decide on the most arbitrary nicknames and change them whenever we feel like it. After all there are many instances where we have to sign up in order to access the system of choice.

And yet when you go to work, out to a party, to a job interview or to the beach you will select your clothes and accessories with a fair amount of consideration. You wouldn’t take that beach ball to a job interview or the sand bucket with your lunch to work.

The internet is as serious a space in terms of appropriateness as the real world. In fact it is even more concentrated or focused. At least in a job interview you can sparkle with your new shoes, great hairstyle, warm smile and handshake and more to create a great first impression.

Online you have a few characters and a tiny picture to create an image. Not much to work with. So why take it lightly?

Lets have a look at some examples. On a dating site would you say a girl with the name “hot&steamy” will have a greater response rate to one using “smiley”? No brainer isn’t it.

With other words you need to determine what image you wish to portray and then put a name to reflect that. Of course deciding on that takes time, but it is absolutely worth it.

Your first impression counts. Hugely.

How do you determine what image you want to show? Now that is a very big question and one only you can answer. A word of advice is all I can offer here. Think conservative and then think even more conservative.

The reason for this bit of advice is that you never know how your online presence will develop and what you might wish to do in the future.

At this stage especially if you are young you might just want to frolic and have fun. But in a year’s time you might want to set up an online store selling serious photographic images.

At this stage I can hear the objections. You are thinking that you use those naughty, silly, funny names on sites that have closed memberships. Well yes. However, go back to my first post in this series.

Remember this one. Once you have posted your details online they no longer belong to you and the site where you have left your information may do what they like with it for as long as they want to.

What has been interesting to see has been the movement towards using ones full name on Twitter. Several articles have been posted online suggesting that one should use ones name rather than some kind of nickname.

As Twitter is one of the newer social media tools and increasingly popular it is interesting to see what trend is showing up.

Of course there is no reason not to have several user ID’s online. You can generate one for your new photographic image store rather than staying with your social ID that you set up a few years ago.

But sometimes it becomes very difficult to keep these identities totally separate. Somewhere Google might just make the connection between “hot&steamy” and “wildlifephotography”. And it might not be a good combination.

Be smart, be conservative, be forward looking when putting your ID online. Later in years you will be thankful you took that extra bit of time. For some good tips on what to do about your avatar or picture you show with your name read Seth Godin’s article on ‘The power of a tiny picture’.

If you have some good advice or personal experiences to add to this do leave a comment for others to learn from. And don’t forget to sign up to the RSS feed or e-mail newsletter to be the first one to get the next part to the Presence Builder Project.