Ego-surfing on the Rise, Pew Survey Suggests

The term is ego-surfing. Its about searching your own identity over the web. The Web has evolved over the years from being just a means of recreation or research to an indispensable component of our daily life. E-mail more than anything else has become an ubiquitous identity.

In a survey, the Pew Internet and American Life Project has deduced several trends in online ego-surfing. According to the results, 47% of users in the U.S. have looked for information about themselves via Google or other search engines.

As more and more people continue to go online contributing content, reviews and taking part in online initiatives, the online foot print of an individual is bound to widen.

This should be of particular importance for candidates looking out for future prospects. Its always better to give a second thought to content you post online. It might just be the first thing that pops up before a prospective employer looking up the profile of a candidate.

Personal content making it to a global level has its ramifications from a privacy perspective. With social networks opening up their platforms for more cross site interaction, the chances of user information getting more accessible are on the rise.

While privacy advocate galore, the fact is that one must take care to ensure that data considered private and sensitive does not make it to a web wide forum. This is especially addressed to the next generation that considers social networks and online identities an integral component to socialize.

Arun on December 18, 2007 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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4 Responses to “Ego-surfing on the Rise, Pew Survey Suggests”

Nathaniel on December 18th, 2007 6:26 pm

Heh, I must admit, I’ve ego-surfed several times. One of the reasons why I started participating in the online community was an effort to get in touch with old friends. So I’ve always felt that it was fairly important that my sites be ranked very high for my name. I’m not ranked #1, but my pages appear splattered all over the 1st and 2nd pages in a Google search.

As far as privacy goes. I prefer to think of it like this: I trust so few that I keep no secrets. If everyone has access to the same information, then no one can use it against me. I’m more of a “disclose everything without shame or regret” kind of guy. If something I’m about to do could possible cause me shame or regret, I probably won’t do it. If I’ve already done it, then I accept it and admit it.

Sure if a future employer does a Google search for my name and finds out that I sell offensive t-shirts online it might look bad for me. But I don’t care. I don’t want to work for a company that is that up tight anyhow.

For me the only information that I truly consider private are bank accounts, addresses, and passwords. I also don’t share things like favorite pet names, mother’s maiden name, etc… stuff that could be used as a security question. Even then, I don’t use those as my security questions anyhow.
Daniel on December 18th, 2007 7:24 pm

Yeah I am guilty here as well :).
Devindra on December 18th, 2007 7:28 pm

This is an interesting statistic, although I think it’s something all web users should become more familiar with and not something they should be ashamed of. You’re right to point out that we should be more wary of our online identity. Ego-surfing is one of the best ways to keep tabs on it, so I’m glad to see that it’s becoming more common.
Arun on January 21st, 2008 6:26 pm

@Nathaniel

The all open to all policy does makes things simple to manage but I am not sure all would do the same. Keeping a distance in offline and online identities does seem the norm. But I must agree that I would also prefer to not get into firms that minds an individual’s sense of expression.

@Devindra

Yes, netizens need to be more aware of this. Especially since blogging makes it so easy to express opinion online.