Sage advice. If you haven't done it yet you need to own something authoritative about yourself, e.g. yourname.com, or better yet yourname.tel, which is like a business card at the DNS layer (with a window from the web of course).
I also periodically delete my Facebook status updates and tweets, although I'm not yet sure whether Google/others will be archiving those indefinitely.
I bought andyking.eu when .eu names were first made available for just that reason, although I only use it for email and not for any web presence - I blog on a different domain.
Of course, having such a common name, very little about me appears on Google. In fact, on Google UK at present the first result for my name is a British strip-o-gram! There are also a former MP, a middling footballer and various British and American academics with my name.
I'm quite happy with the situation, to be honest. The less that can be found about me on Google, the more comfortable I feel. A friend has an uncommon name and every result on the search engine is for her; every fleeting newspaper mention, running club result and years-old web comment is hers. I'm glad I'm not the same.
Part of me finds this mentality horrifying, despite me having do it myself.
Simply put, I don't believe people, in general, should be obligated to participate in Facebook, Twitter, et al, in order to keep from being damaged in the public sphere. If a person isn't doing anything noteworthy, he/she should be allowed to keep to himself and not have to participate in these kinds of social networks in the first place. I really doubt most people out there would appreciate being made to use stuff like this in self-defence.
Couldn't agree more! We at NIXTY think this is particularly important for a person's future educational and occupational opportunities. A blog is great and a LinkedIn profile is great too; however, we think what is needed is a more robust ePortfolio - an online presence that has a cv/resume, recommendations feature, and work display. The work display is particularly important because it allows the person to post work (documents, videos, papers etc.) that illustrate their competence. Further, it allows those w/credibility (professor, supervisor) to comment on the work so that others can get a better way of assessing a person's competence.The url for the person's eportfolio is www.nixty.com/name.
People definitely need to be proactive about defining their presence online. This is just one small way that we are trying to help.
Yikes. Posted quickly w/out thinking about it, while eating. You are right. Would delete it if I could. Thanks for keeping me honest :). Will do better next time.
I also periodically delete my Facebook status updates and tweets, although I'm not yet sure whether Google/others will be archiving those indefinitely.