What Happens To My Social Networking Self When I Die?

Emo Moment Ahead
Another death of the old year and the birth of the new one Happy New Year 2009! And I started thinking morbid thoughts. It could've been because I just watched "The GodFather" for the first time. The Don dies so swiftly towards the end.

But I started really thinking about all my profiles: MySpace, Facebook, SodaHead, my blog here; every website I've commented on, logged in, filled out information on. Though I'm still young, vibrant even, I wonder what will happen to my information when I die. Can I will that all those sites delete my accounts? And how would I go about that anyway? Am I permanently etched on the Internet, immortal in my young pictures? Are my friends with their dating profiles on Date.com or eHarmony, forever etched as whomever they were when they signed up? What if I forgot all the places I put my information? Or all those profiles that we made that weren't really "us." Or how would I will a profile that doesn't have my Real Name to shut down my profile for JadedTLC?

The only sure thing that I know, is that my web 1.0 sites will die without my credit cards. But Google or the Wayback Machine will hold a cache of them for some amount of time. It's a preponderance I hadn't really considered before. But as I age, it's something I may think about closing down. However, I can't know exactly when I'll die, so this does present some complications.

So the new year begins. Resolutions, so often broken as they're spoken, are there to be made. I don't know what mine are this year. I don't like to resolve to do things that I know will never happen, or be quickly dropped for new priorities. I just feel that growth sometimes happens so quickly that today, the who I want to be, will change six months from now. I wonder if that happens for anyone else.

In any event, I hope that the wayward reader who finds this post got something other than a wasted 120 seconds. I may resolve to write every day in this blog for the year. We'll see if I can keep my word.

Are We Web 2.0?

Ok, welcome back. I know. Something so pivotal, simple and apparently hadn't quite made it to viral status of Numa Numa Dance, but however it has been rather enthralling to watch. I endeavor to say, I was tickled pink, that the paradigm shift is in full swing; I have been a part of its evolution and for that I am proud.



I graduated from Pepperdine University in 1999 with a degree in English. Most folks with English degrees either go to law school, become teachers, or a few entered the rat race of the publishing world. The year I graduated a small little startup was born, you may have heard of it - Google? The industry I've become an advanced member of, Search Engine Marketing/Optimization, hadn't even been invented on my graduation day. Looking back, I know that I can relate to the concept. How reading on a screen is so different from a book. And those beloved pages I was rue to let go of, are indeed falling to the wayside. I hadn't predicted this.

I say this with sadness and frustration, but I'm starting to lose focus on reading something "linear." I have four books I'm in the middle of and I just can't finish one of them. Instead, I meander through each storyline, not unlike the Attention Deficit Disorderly ways that hypertext lets me bounce from reading about Obama-Rama and then in a split second, I'm browsing some blogger's reaction to the housing market, 2 seconds of skimming, I see that bright blue underline and click - I'm checking my Yahoo! stocks. Then, I'm just bored, and maybe I've installed stumbleupon on my browser toolbar so I can literally click and bounce from random selection to random selection and "grade" sites based on my preferences. But that's not including the tab with my SodaHead profile open where I'm in a hot discussion on whether George W. Bush is a not quite fully evolved human being, or voting on whether I think Zac Efron or the Jonas Bros. are hotter.

It's not all bad though. I'm not yet finished.