Not News: There’s no such thing as privacy on the web. (Google and Bing are ‘officially’ searching Twitter and Facebook, now.)

Google and Bing have been searching Facebook and Twitter for a long time, in case you hadn’t discovered this by doing routine vanity searches for yourself on Google, Bing, and 123People, etc..

But the search engines this week are announcing new deals and technology that make these searches easier. For more details on that, follow FHK’s Web 2.0 Reader.

Bottom Line

• If you’re using the social networks primarily to keep in touch with friends and family, and want to continue believing that you have some privacy on the web, stay off of Twitter, and use the “just friends” settings on Facebook. According to Facebook, it’s default settings are not supposed to be searchable…yet…I would recommend choosing your own settings.
• However, if you’re using the social networks primarily for online profile management, and WANT your posts, etc., to be viewed in the search engines, you’re in luck. This is happening automatically on Twitter, and on Facebook, you just need to adjust your settings to “everyone” under the privacy features.

 

WebWarrior: Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs

Last week, we asked for members of our FHK Facebook Group to nominate “WebWarriors,” who are politically conservative and effectively using Web 2.0. The first response we received was from Dan Schmucker, who nominated Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs, saying:

“She takes needed and courageous stands consistently against national governments lacking insight and the spineless media’s complicity in Islamofacism.”

Indeed.

Pamela is in the top 2,000 blogs on Technorati (under atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com), and has a Google Page Rank of 6/10 (under atlasshrugs.com), demonstrating that she is effectively using outgoing and internal links and categories effectively, and that her content is fresh and original, so that she’s had nearly 10,000 links to her site in the last six month, from over 1,100 blogs and websites.

Creative use of RSS feeds (via FeedBlitz) lets Pamela’s readers keep updated daily through e-mail, VOIP, IM or Twitter.

A quick Google search under “Pamela Geller” also reveals that Pamela has used effective online profile management through social networking and her contacts in the mainstream media.

Thank you, to Pamela Geller, for being our WebWarrior of the Week, and to Dan Schmucker (visit Dan on Facebook) for nominating her. As Pamela says:

“Western civilization hangs in the balance. This blog is part of the solution. Get your heads out of the sand and fight the Great Fight. The Jew may be the canary in the coal mine, but you my friends will be next. Changing the World one Word at a time…Citizen Journalist, Citizen Soldier” – Pamela Geller

If you’d like to nominate a “WebWarrior” (a conservative using Web 2.0 effectively) e-mail Jenn.

 

Why You Need to Google Yourself

Daniel J. Solove, of Concurring Opinions, has been following and commenting on an interaction between a law professor and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about internet privacy laws.

Basically Scalia is against furthering the government’s role in regulating the free exchange of ideas online. So, to challenge that idea, the law professor, Professor Joel Reidenberg of Fordham University, decided to challenge that by making Justice Scalia this semester’s object lesson in his course on Information Privacy Law. Their assignment was to dig up every bit of personal information they could locate online about Scalia (and his family) online, and then show Justice Scalia what they had found, to see how the Supreme Court Justice would respond when he saw all of the details of his and his family’s life together in one dossier that is online, (but not yet public).

Scalia responded by explaining to the professor and his class that just because something is legal to do doesn’t make it a good idea (paraphrase). To read the details of this interaction, visit Concurring Opinions, and follow the links provided there.

This brings us to an important question, however. What if someone wanted to just see what information they could dig up about you online…What would they find? Do you know? You might be surprised. For the most part, everything that you’ve ever done on the internet is public knowledge, and most of it probably isn’t interesting to anyone but yourself – or is it?

A good way to find out is to Google yourself. (Just go to Google.com, and search for your current name, any previous names, and any user ID’s or profile names that you have used. It might be a good idea to check on your family members, as well. Be sure to check using the “web,” “images,” and “videos” tabs at the top of your browser.) Also, check other search engines, especially 123People.com, and Dogpile.com.

What if you don’t like what you’re seeing?

• In some cases, you can request the site owners to take down the material. They may or may not comply, since they are not obligated to do so under the law, if the information is true. If it is not true, you may be able to get legal help in having it removed, particularly if the site the information is on is a for-profit site.
• Remember that most of the search engines other than Google order their search results with the most recent information appearing first in the results. So, you can proactively use social networking and other internet activity such as blogging and book reviews to help push that older, undesirable information to the “back” of the search engine results.

For more resources on Ft. Hard Knox, see:

• Online Profile Management, and “TMI”
• What Links Rank Highest on my Online Profile?
• Guide for Bloggers and Non-Profit Organizations About Writing With Libel in Mind
• Why Page Rank is Important
• Stop Big Brother from Snooping on You, Online

(Hat-Tip: TechDirt)

www.Wednesday: Online Profile Management, and “TMI”

More and more folks are searching for employment online these days, and posting their résumés online. As we have discussed previously, it is important to have a well-managed online profile, so that when potential employers and clients search for information about you online, you will like what they see.

However, is it possible to give too much information?

Yes, says, Job-Hunt.org’s Susan P. Joyce, who recommends that for a “cyber-safe” online résumé, you need to give “minimal contact information [which] makes it harder for your identity to be stolen or for your employer to discover your job search…[and a] modified employment history, particularly for the current job, minimiz[ing] potential risk to existing employment.” This includes deleting your name, address, phone number, and the name of your employer. For more information, see Your CyberSafe Résumé.

For more information about online job hunting, see The Riley Guide: Prepare Your Resume for Email and Online Posting

Also, here are some great resources available online for those who may have either been recently downsized, who may be graduating and looking for career-related work, or who may be wanting to change careers:

• Roll Call Jobs – Jobs in the D.C. Area
• ConservativesJobs.com – Run by the Leadership Institute (Also on Twitter, @TheRightJobs)
• Republicans Helping Republicans – A listing of private sector and government jobs as well as training, internship, and volunteer opportunities

 

SEO Spot-Check: What Links Rank Highest on my Online Profile?

As promised last week, we’ve completed our study of news, indexes, and social networking sites rank highest on an individual’s Google profile.

A person’s “Google Profile” is the list of links on the “SERPs” (search engine results pages) resulting from “query,” or “search,” on Google for a person’s name. In online profile building, it is preferable that the first couple of pages worth of links (the first 20 links) provide accurate, positive information about that person. To build our profiles, therefore, it is helpful to know which links are likely to show up on those first couple of pages of a Google search.

To evaluate this, we chose thirty-six names of individuals, from various industries and various levels of name recognition, and tallied the types of websites that showed up on the first two pages of Google under their names. All of the people chosen are known by the public in some way – either as artists, entertainers, writers, educators, bloggers, politicians, etc.. To prevent the possibility of anyone trying to manipulate their profiles as a result of their names showing on this published study, we have chosen not to print the names we used. If a name received multiple links from the same category, that category was counted only once.

Following is the list of the top 12 link categories, and the number of times websites in the category appeared on the first two pages of each of the thirty-six Google profiles, expressed as a percentage of XX/36. For example, if the links from the category appeared on 34 of 36, or 34/36 individuals’ SERPs, the category on the table below would show a 94% SERPs rating. Note that all of the profiles had links in numerous categories, so the percentages added up vertically will not equal 100%.

Link Category	Amount of time this category was utilized on the 36 sample profiles
Niche/Industry Media*	94%
Own Website, Blog, Domain	94%
Mentions on Others’ Blogs, Forums, and Websites	86%
YouTube, GoogleVideo, VodPod, other video	72%
Wikipedia, Niche Wikis, Info Directories: Answers, Infoplease, About, Woopidoo, BrainyQuotes	72%
Amazon, IMBD Google Books&Movies, Reviews, MetaCafe	56%
Social Networks: Facebook, Linked-IN, MySpace, Twitter, Newsvine, Digg	53%
MSM: Alphabet Media, Newspapers, TV, Radio websites	50%
iRadio, Podcasting Sites: BTR, Music, AOL, Last.fm, MTV, Rhapsody, Vh1, mp	39%
Registries, Indexes, and Feeds: FriendFeed, feedage, NNDB, 123People, Zoominfo, BusinessCard2, Naymz, Plaxo, Technorati, Blog Catalog, Daylife, Classmates, Adoption Reg, Geneology, Meetup	28%
Photos: Google Images, Wikimedia, flikr	25%
Blogger, Wordpress, Wix, Yahoo, Geocities, MSN, Google	25%

 

*Niche/Industry publications specialize in the profilee’s own line of work etc..
Examples of niche/industry sites are CMT.com, in country music, and
Townhall.com in political news and commentary.

Clearly, in this spot-check, the links most valuable to the thirty-six Google profiles studied were links from niche and industry blogs, and the profilee’s own domain, website and blog(s). Also valueable were links from other blogs, forums and websites, from video sites, and from wikis and other information directories.