Identity In A Digital World

I got up to ask a question here at OPA, and I introduced myself as Scott Karp of Atlantic Media and the Publishing 2.0 blog. After the session, someone who I had just introduced myself to earlier came up to me and essentially re-introduces himself, saying, “I didn’t make the connection that you’re THAT Scott Karp,” i.e. who writes Publishing 2.0.

This mis-identification was my fault because my name tag says “Atlantic Media,” which until a few minutes ago wasn’t disclosed on my About page — that lack of disclosure, honestly, was a holder over from my early days of blogging when it was less obvious to me how to manage my blogging relative to my work for Atlantic Media. What’s obvious to me now is that full transparency is always best (duh).

In any case, in addition to that re-introduction, I also noticed that somebody sitting in the room here had Googled me.

Looking around the room, wondering which of the laptop users was looking me up, I was struck by what an odd experience digital identity has become. Through the anonymity of RSS subscriptions, there are people I meet all the time who know me but who I don’t know. Rather than meeting me in person to find out more about me, when I’m here in the same room, someone can choose to Google me instead — of course, I’m jumping to the conclusion that I haven’t met the person who Googled me.

Jeff Jarvis had a related odd experience when a presenter here played a video of Jeff:

My video post for Comment is Free was shown at yesterday’s Guardian and my McCain PrezVid show on today’s presentation (see the post below). Gee, maybe I can stop going to conferences and attend virtually. But then, I wouldn’t have heard the laughs I got today. Gotta have an audience, eh?