Google CEO Eric Schmidt was recently reported as saying that because of the increasing amount of information we are sharing online, he predicts that one day people will have to change their names and reinvent themselves if they want to escape their digital pasts, should they want to. Is this an extreme point of view or already an online reality?

I’m sure most of us have Googled our names at some point to see what results are thrown up. You’d be silly not to in this day and age. Even if you don’t spend very much time online, it’s increasingly likely that your name will be referenced in relation to something yo’ve been involved with.

The degree to which your name can easily be found online can of course depend on how popular your name is, what name you actually use online, and how much online activity you have engaged in thus far.

Take my name for instance: John Johnston. Believe it or not, that’s not a very unique name in the world. However, partly for this reason, I mostly use my online identifier (okay, personal brand if you like), jjprojects. I don’t attempt to hide my real name, it’s just more beneficial in most cases for me to use jjprojects. However, because I engage in a lot of activity online, and because I do also use my “real” name in relation to jjprojects, my name still appears on the first page of Google results when searched for. I have no problem with what is found there.

I know quite a few people who engage in a lot of social media activity but have several different names, usually to attempt to separate their work life from their personal and political views, when they feel they want or need to do that. Needless to say, I’m not going to ask you to comment and say if you are one of those people :)

Many of these people are probably a little more online savvy than your average web user, so there are many people who use Facebook and Twitter (for instance) who mix personal and professional without a second thought to the consequences. It’s getting increasingly difficult to not mix personal with professional when it comes to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Do you ignore that friend request from that work colleague on Facebook you’d really rather not let have access to those personal pictures and comments you’ve already posted? Are many people even aware of what their privacy settings are set to on Facebook?

Even if you are aware of who could search for and read your online comments, and see the photos you’ve uploaded, it’s easy to forget. Then there’s the emerging location-based digital culture, in which more people will be leaving searchable traces of where they’ve been and at what time, without a second thought. Foursquare is verging on going mainstream and Facebook Places has just launched.

It has to be said that there is this emerging school of thought saying that we’ll eventually get over caring so much about people’s embarrassing moments and irrational emotional rants online, increasingly played out in real-time on the likes of Twitter and Facebook. The thinking there is that we are all human and we all make mistakes and do things we regret later. Let’s be prepared to forgive people their mistakes, let humans be human, and accept we are going to have more and more of our lives played out online. Let’s get over it and move on. Easier said than done.

It’s often said that common sense should lead when it comes to sharing online, but it may be a little more complicated than that. We are human after all. Humans are fallible. Who hasn’t done something they regret, especially when we were younger? If you are growing up in an culture that spends a lot of time online, those situations are no doubt going to be played out online. We all make makes, and sometimes it’s difficult (or impossible) to delete those mistakes.

What are your thoughts on this? By the way, if jjprojects suddenly stops all communication one day, you’ll know one of two things may have happened ;)

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When I followed a link to When Did You Join Twitter? (tweeted by @moldor) the other day, I discovered that I’d been on Twitter for exactly 3 years to the day! What’s more, I had posted almost exactly 40,000 tweets! That’s an average of 36.46 tweets a day, for those playing along at home. Wow, time flies when you’re having fun I guess!

Being on Twitter for the last 3 years has indeed been a lot of fun, and contrary to popular belief, very productive. I’ve been able to meet a lot of great people,  both online and off, and my career has moved solidly and positively into the realm of social media itself.

I’d like to take a moment to thank everybody who follows my daily thoughts (36.46 of them apparently), and especially those who communicate with me on a regular basis via Twitter. You’re the ones who make it into a valuable community for me. There are too many to list here, you know who you are :)

Hey, maybe I should also take a moment to thank the (now let’s face it, pretty famous) guys who started Twitter, @jack, @ev and @biz. Congratulations are also in order, as the 22nd of March appears to be Twitter’s 4th Birthday, which means I was almost a full year behind the times when I began. I started using Twitter about the time of South by Southwest (SXSW) 2007. That’s when it really started to take off of course.

According to @jack, the tweet below is one of the very early tweets, and this is the very first human-written tweet.

If you’re interested in that, you might also be interested in this original “twttr sketch”. Ha, it all started with an idea put down on a piece of people with a pen. Funny that.

So how long have you been on Twitter for? Just started, or were you one of the early adopters who stuck with it through its rise to global domination and rise(?) to the status of tv talk show material? Do you find it just a useful as I do, or is it just a distraction for you?

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So I haven’t blogged here for about 2 months, (except for the previous posterous crosspost). I didn’t mean it to work out like that, it just did. Why?

As some of you may know, in late August I flew to New York on a work trip, which amongst other things included attending the Mashable Social Good Conference.

Anyway, it was a good trip but during the long-haul flight back I developed deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, not fun!

I didn’t manage to find the time to blog while I was traveling. I did manage to find the time to tweet fairly often though, it could be said. It was much easier to tweet from my iPhone on the run than to sit down and write blog posts. I was going to blog about the trip as soon as I got back, but when I found out I had developed DVT, my immediate plans changed somewhat.

I seem to have spent the last two months working, but also visiting doctors, getting regular blood tests, taking warfarin, not drinking much alcohol and generally trying to stay healthy. As some of you may also know, we (my partner May and I) are soon to have our second child, so we’ve also been busy making preparations for the new arrival whenever possible.

Funny how a potentially life threatening condition can make you reassess your life and what’s really important. I am planning to blog more regularly here again now though. It feels right to get back into it again, now that my health feels like it’s getting back on track.

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Today I reached a bit of a Twitter milestone. The community of followers I’ve been building up on Twitter since early last year reached the 1,000 mark. Firstly, I want to say a big thanks to everyone who follows my tweets.

Those of you who do follow me on Twitter will know that I tweet a lot, I’ve become known for it it seems. I see people talking about it on Twitter, and it’s come up in the odd blog post and podcast lately. I make no apologies for it, as many of my tweets are part of conversations with people, not one way micro-blogging. I follow a lot of people, so there is a lot of conversation.

Twitter is really about conversation for me. People don’t have to follow me if they don’t like the way I use Twitter, that’s fine. I like to think I bring value to the conversation, but if people think I don’t, they can hit that ‘Remove’ button. That’s the good thing about Twitter, you have a lot of control.

I’m often asked how I can follow so many people and not get overwhelmed by the amount of tweets coming in. Well, as my network has grown, I’ve come to rely on the ‘Replies” page quite a lot. It’s easy to keep up with conversations when the replies to you are separated off into their own timeline.

I also use Terraminds to search for my username, as the replies page doesn’t catch the @jjprojects replies that aren’t the first word in the tweet. I feel it’s important to at least read all the replies to me, if people have gone to the effort of replying.

I like starting conversations. I’ll also dive into existing conversations when the mood strikes and time allows. If I think I’ve missed something interesting or important, I’ll simply ask my community about it.

People use Twitter in different ways. Some people can’t stand the thought of following as many people as I do, some follow many more. Some people don’t make conversation, it’s not what they want out of it.

If you use Twitter, how or why do you use it? I’d be interested to know. If you don’t use it yet, why not give it a go?

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Well it’s been a bit of an odd week on the interwebs for me this week so far. On Monday Cam Riley (see previous post) unexpectedly posted this funny post about me on his G’Day World blog and linked to it on Twitter, where he knew I would see it.

I have absolutely no problem with people I know and like making fun of me like this. After all, I’ve been known to throw the odd joke or three about Cam into online conversations from time to time, heh : )

This is a different matter, however. Bronwen Clune pointed out this new @notjjprojects Twitter profile to me this morning. I’m not sure what to make of it really. Some anonymous person doesn’t like me very much it seems. I’m not sure whether to feel flattered or offended that someone feels I’m worthy of this kind of attention.

I did have to alert people in my Twitter list that the profile has nothing to do with me, as the person seems to be adding people I’m having regular conversations with. For the moment, I’ll choose to be flattered by it.

Here are some of the replies I’ve had about it on twitter today:

@darkgracie: wow even i feel violated. LOL. Wow man what did you do to get that kind of Twitter Account *launghing*.
@xerocomputing: Cool, you’re famous enough to have impersonators – like Elvis :)
@yonderboy: i guess some people have a lot of time on their hands. must be cool having a nemseis though. i want one too!
@wow, you gots a hat’ah/ stalker! Very cool…(well, sort of).

All I can say is not everyone is going to like everyone else, that’s fine. The world doesn’t work like that. I choose to put myself out there in quite a visible way, so this kind of thing is bound to happen. Twittering on…

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