When thinking about the topic “Creating a visual presence in your own ‘little’ places on the web,” one area of concern I thought about was creating an online identity. The question I want to consider is this: How much of myself do I want to put ‘out there’ on the web? As a way of limiting the topic, I’m restricting my response to blogging.

When I began building the blog for this course, I started out thinking that I should strictly limit any personal information or even personality in my blog. I built a Voki avatar to use instead of using a photo of myself. I avoided using my name in the URL. My original posts were short and, I thought, to the point; in other words, really boring. Then I began to read blogs, and about blogs.

First I read Will Richardson’s book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classroom Use. Richardson suggests that teachers create their own blogs and make them public.

Be a public blogger. Put your name on your work, but make sure you understand the ramifications of doing so. . . . Public writing demands discretion, especially in an educational setting. And remember too that what you write stays with you. Each post contributes to your online portfolio that may turn up in future Google searches (p. 45).

Hmm, yes – discretion. This reinforces that I should be careful what I put out there. The comment about “public writing” stayed with me. I came across that idea again in a blog entry by Doug Johnson titled How – the importance of conduct. Johnson blogs about Thomas Friedman’s review of Dov Seidman`s book How.

And Seidman’s book, Friedman writes, is about how one’s reputation in life is going “to get set in stone so much earlier.” It’s “a digital fingerprint that never gets erased” and that second chances will be harder to come by when your resume may play second fiddle to a Google search about you. That the only way to succeed is to get your how‘s right –  how you live your life and how you conduct your business. And do it early in life.

Obviously I know that I have to be discreet about what I write in each page and post, but this article made me look carefully at what else I had put on my blog.

I love quotes, and was excited when I discovered that I could add a quote widget. However, I got rid of the first one I used, a widget called Quotes4All because a couple of the quotes were a little more suggestive than I was comfortable with. While I found them funny, I wouldn`t have shared them in a professional context at school, so I decided not to share them on my blog.

Laurel Papworth, an Australian consultant and lecturer about the social web, talks about how one`s reputation influences trust. While the post Laurel Papworth -Social Networks: Twitter: Reputation Management in Social Networks discusses Twitter, I think her model applies to blogs too.

The quick and dirty version:
We create a Profile (My Account) on a site, we make friends and add applications and groups and events to define Identity. We interact over time, offering content and comments and ratings which gains us a Reputation. That Reputation is then turned into a Trust factor – we decide how trustworthy a social network member is by the way they fill out their profile, by the connections they make, and by the content they submit, all of which is over time, which is why Social Media is a long term engagement.

She has posted this diagram on Flickr. Note she mentions choice of widgets under Identity!

 
As I continued my exploration for information about to identify myself in the blogosphere, I searched for blogs to add to my Bloglines account. I saw not only how the “experts” were crafting their entries, but how their personalities and some personal information were revealed. Will Richardson mentions his son, Tucker. Joyce Valenza`s very funny post My condo for a paper clip: or the effect of Kindle freeze on one particular vacationer shares some insights about her family and her foibles. Doug Johnson`s Blue Skunk Blog is frequently funny and personally revealing, as when he describes his ill-fated Alaska adventure.

I also found two excellent postings by Stephen Downes about how to create effective blogs. Both discuss the importance of establishing a clear identity. In Seven Habits of Highly Connected People, the seventh habit is Be Yourself.

The idea behind “being yourself” is not that you have some sort of offline life (though you may). Rather, it’s a recognition that your online life encompasses the many different facets of your life, and that it is important that these facets are all represented and work together.

In another post, How To Be Heard, Downes discusses many strategies for getting your blog read and taken seriously. In the section, Your Blog Is Your Identity, he suggests several ideas, including using your name in your URL, adding your blog address wherever you put your name, putting your blog address on your business cards and as part of your email signature, and makes this final point:

And don’t forget: put your name on your blog. Blog posts that cannot be attributed are much less likely to be cited by anyone (and if they’re not cited, they’re not read).

I`m not ashamed to admit that I really knew nothing about establishing online identity in my blog. How have I changed it as a result of my reading and reflection?

• I`ve used my name in the URL.
• I`ve added some humour (hopefully).
• I used my own photo instead of an avatar.
• I added personal information (my love for Scotland), and used some photos I took there.
• I`ve worked on developing a distinct and personal voice in my blog entries.

I know I have a lot to learn about personal online identity on the web, but at least now I know that I didn`t know!