{"id":1352,"date":"2009-09-14T15:50:23","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T19:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2011-09-06T23:23:20","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T03:23:20","slug":"why-i-am-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/why-i-am-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Am Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve made significant changes to my online identity lately in an effort to tighten my personal brand. I did this because it seems like the right thing to do at this point in my life. I’m currently searching for work as an attorney, and hope that anything a prospective employer finds online will strengthen my image, not hurt it.<\/p>\n

Managing one’s online brand is no easy task. The privacy settings on Facebook, alone, require a graduate degree in Gen X to decipher. Add to that Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Delicious, Flickr, and a dozen others and there is significant room for negative exposure.<\/p>\n

I’m taking three steps to ensuring I have the positive and respectable online brand I wish to have:<\/p>\n

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  1. Socialize with upstanding individuals – I read once that you’re only as good as your five closest friends. If they’re not going anywhere, it’s likely that you’re not either. This passes double for the internet. I friend true friends whom I know in person and I trust their level of maturity.<\/li>\n
  2. Vigilant use of privacy settings – When number one fails, it’s nice to be able to contain the damage. By setting the privacy settings such that only friends can see comments I don’t like, I can keep them from the public.<\/li>\n
  3. Abstinence if necessary – Sometimes it’s just not worth it to be on a certain service, either because of the people attracted to it, a lack of privacy settings, or another reason. In these cases, I would rather sign off permanently and not have to worry about it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Some people fear having an online presence, and I’ve always fought that. There are two main reasons I like sticking my neck out:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Having an online brand is a reality of today. It’s easy to connect and communicate online. I’ve kept up with far more friends – even on a digital level – than I otherwise would have.<\/li>\n
    2. Another positive specific to blogging is that I am able to establish myself on dozens\/hundreds of topics. No other medium would allow me flush out my thoughts or you to access them. I can take a stance, argue it, and create discourse – for better or worse. Whether my beliefs change or are strengthened by the process, only time will tell.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Blogging, twittering, and facebooking are worth it, to me, for those two reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I’ve made significant changes to my online identity lately in an effort to tighten my personal brand. I did this because it seems like the right thing to do at this point in my life. I’m currently searching for work as an attorney, and hope that anything a prospective employer finds online will strengthen my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2419,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/2419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}