Friday, April 11, 2008

done that

The recent New York Times article on Googlegängers seemed like it could inspire a good blog topic for me. Then I remembered I had already written about the same thing almost two years ago. Googlegängers are people with your same name who turn up when you Google your own.

Within the past couple of weeks, I have received emails intended for Frank Murphy the real estate agent and for Frank Murphy the factory owner. As always, I forwarded them along to the right Frank. The real estate emails often come with a PDF attachment about a home inspection or a sales contract. I almost deleted the last email for the factory. It came from Jakarta, Indonesia and was in broken English. Here's an excerpt:
Dear sir,
With your respectfull and consider please submit and advise our inquiry as your lowest price,delivery time and total estimated weight for material as follow:
The Frank Murphy who was in the NFL is now with the Toronto Argonauts. Tonight I learned that there's another Frank Murphy who plays rugby for the Leicester Tigers. I also discovered a Frank Murphy who is a watercolorist in Florida. He looks pensive in his self-portrait.

Self-Googling is a good idea for everybody, especially college students about to enter the work force. In a Wall Street Journal article, the co-founder of Naymz.com says to "clean your space and wash your face." By that he means remove anything untoward from your MySpace and Facebook pages. A former co-worker asked me to join Naymz and give him a reference. The site promises to help propel the real you to the top of the search engine results. The experts also suggest starting your own blog and maybe even getting your own web domain. Check and check.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Lance said...

There is a Lance Harwell who is:

- a litigation lawyer in New Orleans.

- a programmer for the Force, Inc. a "Total Life Cycle Management" company, that Nancy Reagan started.

- some random guy on facebook.

- the Chaplain for TKE fraternity at Texas Tech.

- along with his wife Rachel, adopted a basset hound in West TN.

4/12/2008  
Blogger Byron said...

Fortunately, I am one of a kind!

4/12/2008  

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