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October 22, 2007
Meet Another Jeff Pulver: One of My Digital Twins…
I first wrote about ”The Other Jeff Pulver(s)” back in May, 2004. So far, I have run across three people named Jeff Pulver: One from my home town, another from New Jersey and a third living in California.
Amongst my 3,000+ friends on Facebook, I guess it was just a matter of time before another Jeff Pulver joined Facebook. And another Jeff Pulver is now on Facebook, and we are now friends.
While I thought it was cute to see the Facebook status message: “Jeff and Jeff Pulver are now friends” what I started thinking about was my own social identity. I am wondering what people who share the same name can do to contribute to the building of their own personal brand without affecting the branding of other people with the same name whom are active in the same social space.
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Readers of my blog are invited to join me on both twitter and Facebook.
Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on October 22, 2007 07:47 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
Ha! Eventually, this happens to everyone online. I ran into my David Murrow twin online a few years ago, as I had started getting emails for a book my 'twin' had written that had started taking off in Christian circles. See it here: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Hate-Going-Church/dp/0785260382
Being paired with a preacher is a good thing, right? :-)
Posted by: David Murrow at October 23, 2007 11:03 AM
I started the "Butz Group" for people whose last name is "Butz." As far as family names go, it's a fairly "common-uncommon" name, especially in the mid-west USA.
I started the group because I figured there was some solidarity in the name. So far, no one joined despite my first round of invitations. I might have to change the marketing plan and rename the group to.. "My last name is Butz Group" and see how it goes.
Posted by: John Butz at October 22, 2007 11:40 AM
With a name as common as mine, it's a topic I wonder about also. I started a Facebook group called "My Name is Mark Smith" a while ago for a laugh, forgot about it and when I checked a few months later there were all these people with my name who had signed up. Weird.
I guess there's always names, pictures, where you are from, and in a sense your identity is defined by who you know also.
Posted by: Mark Smith at October 22, 2007 09:36 AM
I love Facebook but I think this is one of the great weaknesses. If I have extended email exchange with a new contact, decide I want to take it to the next level with them, and search for them in Facebook, my ability to find them is directly proportional to the uniqueness of their name. If your name were "Jeff Smith" it would be a lot more difficult for those of us who know you by reputation to find you on Facebook. In most cases all you're given are the current city and a thumbnail picture (which isn't even necessarily a picture of the person).
I'd like to Facebook improve on the ability to find people you've met in the real world on their site, particularly those with common names.
Posted by: Bill Palmer at October 22, 2007 09:29 AM
Jeff, Yes, this "name collision" is definitely a challenge in a shared namespace. "Dan York" is pretty generic name in the English language and there are a *lot* of other Dan York's out there. Thankfully none are (yet) directly in the same online space as me, although with my recent employment changes I did receive a couple of compliments from people who googled "Dan York" and thought I was now heading up AT&T/SBC's video content strategy! (They missed the fact that that Dan York was appointed to the SBC position in 2004.) I've also received an angry email from someone who didn't like what a radio talk show host in Rhode Island (who is actually "Dan Yorke", it seems) was saying. We now have a *global* namespace for our names and I don't think we understand the full ramifications of that. In my case, I've taken out most of the danyork.* domains and with the amount of writing I do online the majority of the initial search results on my name wind up pointing to me. Which leads to the other issue... when one of those other Dan Yorks wants to move into this space - or even just build their own online brand in any way, they'll have to figure out how to emerge out of all the links/content I have generated. It is indeed a tough question. Dan
Posted by: Dan York at October 22, 2007 09:29 AM