Facebook, Google Wave and now Google Buzz have me at a bit of a crossroads with where I am most likely to “engage” online.  While I love the idea of having one homebase where I can catch up with the goings-on of friends, family, and acquaintances and also post updates about mine, I simply don't feel that would be a wise decision.  My rationale and conundrum goes like this:

For me, blogging started as a sort of personal journal, with a dash of naïveté and a pinch of exhibitionism.  I'm glad for the honesty that allowed me.  I have no regrets, I have no desire or need  to go and make public posts private or start censoring myself.  Had I not created a separate email address or chosen a goofy name to post under – I would have over-thought everything to silence.  I didn't start podcasting or blogging thinking of it as an interactive channel, nor did I imagine how many personal connections I'd make.  But, I did.  I don't care about follower numbers or web traffic, it's selfish and social – plain and simple – and I enjoy it and treasure the friendships I made alone the way.

Why I've continued to post as MissSomething and register to certain sites with a secondary email address:

• I haven't met every single person I'll ever meet.   As anyone swimming in the dating pool does, one of the first things I do is “google” someone I am getting to know.  I search their name, I search their email address, and I search the letters that come before the @___com.  I am not secretive, nor would I ever hide anything I've posted online from anyone I'm befriending or becoming intimate with…however, I am thankful for that initial control having met my fair share of overbearing (ie: stalkerish) suitors, romantic or otherwise.

• I want to remain in the job market, continue to play online and not worry about every word I've ever posted.  There's no erasing the past with the Wayback Machine and Google archive; I've sat beside my former CEO as he googled our co-workers.  I am constantly aware, espcially while currently looking for employment, that future employees, clients, and co-workers will do this.  Again, I have nothing to hide, but call me old-fashioned, I keep work at work and home at home.  No one I work with or for needs to find photos of my cat, accompany me on a walk around my neighborhood, or know my friends (or any of my self-indulgent behaviour) with a casual search.  If it is appropriate, it will very likely come up in conversation.

• I have a huge family.  I've lost count of how many cousins I have, ranging in age from in-utero to older than me.  While I am not ashamed nor hiding the way in which I speak (I throw the occasional F-bomb around online and off) or the things I share, I'm certainly going to speak differently around a 5 year old then I would a 12 year old than I would with a 25 year old.  While I realize anyone of any age can come across anything I've posted online, I'm not about to lock up my site or put an age verification up, this isn't porn, any kid on the hunt for bad words would be bored here.  What I worry about is a supervised child-relative being encouraged to seek out family members, and while many members of my family blog specifically to stay in touch with family, I stick to email and other places when it comes to my family. 

I don't feel as though I've split off my personality to two.  I blog, twitter, etc as me, I've just made myself a slight bit harder to find…and I think it's the right thing for me to do.  My Facebook account is a mishmash of family, people I haven't seen since elementary school, co-workers, as well as friends I engage with in places like Twitter.  I find I don't have much to say there.  Now, with Google Wave and Buzz – I'm thinking forward.  I have one primary email account I've used for over 5 years, again the one I give to family, co-workers, old friends, new friends, potential mates, etc.  Should I remain engaged mostly via Twitter and connect the two, I'd lose that (at least initial) buffer.  Sure, there are privacy settings I could go through and block people, but that doesn't change inevitable searchability.

The email address I tie to my social meanderings online is forwarded to my primary one and have it set that I can respond from there as well.  But, I'm never actually signed into that gmail address.  This has all worked fine, til now…

I know Twitter won't be around forever, I don't know if I'll keep this site up for eternity, and I actually like the shift to centralize things and make them a bit less anonymous.  But having set up things as I have, this makes these changes particularly complicated and always leave me soul-searching and struggling to keep (albeit a vague sort of) personal anonymity.  I've tried the multiple account approach and one always dies off.  With Google entering the social sandbox (rather some I'd like to play in), I have to choose to switch between two accounts or hope perhaps in the future they'll allow a user to be logged on to more than one account at a time…but that doesn't make much sense for Google and I get that.  I don't know what the fix is, or which wires I may rig to which to keep them running from a virtual splitter, but I know I'm not alone.  Perhaps if I gave sites more time to develop before I tried to work them out,  maybe this very rant wouldn't have brewed and spilleth over.  Some of my favorite bloggers, micro and otherwise, post the sort of impulsive things they might want to keep separate from a web search of their name or primary email address.  Whatever the necessity, rationale, or desire to do this, I'm sort of at a loss at how it will all work…

In: Rumination [babble] | tags: buzz, email, facebook, google, twitter, wave. | #