Who are you…at this moment?

The past few weeks I've seen a few web tools out there that will take your real name or twitter name and perform a scan and apply some set of algorithims to the results and bring back the results.

Here are my results from a few of these sites.

1.  Persona

2. Twanalysis

Your Twitter personality

Personality: likeable sociable cautious
Style: chatty academic
PARROT

3. Yahoo Mojo

4. Twitalyzer

All of these "tests" are fun to do, and I'm sure that I will keep participating in these and any new ones that pop up.  But I think that all of them expose both a weakness and a strength of social media and the web in general.  For the most part, you can be whatever type of person you want to be.  The only requirement to participating online is a computer and an internet connection.  For there, it's up to you how you want the world to perceive you.  Are you going to hide behind a fake online name so you can be a jerk?  Are you going to use an alias everywhere you login for fear of people finding out who you are?  Are you going to stroll right out in the middle of things with your real name and not try and pretend to be something you're not?

More and more companies are using google, twitter, facebook and the likes to screen candidates.  What type of information are you leaving for them to find?  The way I look at it, you have a few choices:

1. Stuck in college: Your online history is littered with wild party photos and tales of debauchery that you really don't won't most people to see (even if you are posting in on myspace and facebook)

2. Invisible:  This might be worse that posting embarrassing things.  If I was looking to hire someone in an internet related field and could not find any trace of them out there, not even sites like LinkedIn, I would be concerned.

3. Honest:  You have not tried to hide your identity online.   You actively participate in user groups, forums, and other online discussions about professional items.  You embrace the technologies for personal use as well, even though you might be more guarded with more personal/family aspects.

Not hard to see where I stand on this issue.

Where do you stand?

-Rudi

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