Technology eats up your identity

Do you have that yourfirstnamelastname.com URL? Or maybe even yourlastname.com? Or if you were really early on yourfirstname.com??!?!?

If so, keep it! And use it! If used properly it is your real identity. Too many people hand out their identities to third party service providers without giving it any thoughts.

Seriously, when was the last time you received an email from anybody with their own domain and not just @gmail, @hotmail, @yahoo and alike? I guess over six months ago, if you are not subscribed to some neo-techno-punk-hippie mailinglists like the one from noisebridge.

When was the last time you were at an event in the city and you did not at least get a hand full of business cards with nothing but a phone number and something like @maex242 or @lemmk on them? Probably some time in 2007.

Do you have business cards that have a LinkedIn profil link on them? What about your MySpace profile? Flickr? I guess you see where I am going.

I just read a blog post at ReadWriteWeb about thinglabs and their "super secret new product". Well that sounds exciting. I honestly have nothing against anybody from thinglabs! Why would I? I never met these people. We (the royal one) like new and innovative and unique and glittery and shiny ideas. I just hope that the product is more innovative and unique than how they provide information about their team on the front-page of http://www.thinglabs.com.

Really; nowadays it has become so easy to register and use your own domain to represent you and your identity. Hell, every freaking house on our street that was for sale in the last months has it's own domain! Register it at a provider of your choice and use gmail to send and retrieve messages with your personal touch. Maybe set up a simple website! Even if it's only a picture of you or some links to the different online (or maps to the offline) places that you frequent. Heck, just create a forward from yourname.com to your twitter profile. At least then YOU have the power to change your identity whenever and to whatever you like! Don't want to be known by the twitter handle @douchebag3000 anymore? Tough luck when it's on all your business cards. Don't want to have all your pictures, videos and messages of the last vacation to Switzerland on Facebook anymore? Have fun getting everything completely erased from there.

Of course there is a reason why we use these services that allow us to 'manage our identities' and our 'digital lives' - it's easy and convenient. I am only saying that if you really want to own your identity, you have to put a little bit of effort into it. Just like the houses on our street.


By the way; hit me up at linkedin, twitter, facebook. Or just fucking bing me.