Internet Persona

We live in a world where everyone is constantly obsessed with how they are viewed (if you are one of those people who says they don't, your a liar. You care. Even if it is just a little.) This is especially important to note when it comes to the internet (hello social media). We create endless profiles for each sector of our life in order to create something like the window shop display to our personal store, a glance of what we have on the inside meant to draw outsiders in. Like a store, usually this is all for some sort of benefit to us whether it is networking, socializing, selling something, etc. With each of these sites, there is a format that inherently dictates the framework (the window, if you will) for what we want to put out there. With sites like LinkedIn, the frame is professional, while Twitter is informal and friendly. People use this aspect to their advantage in a effort to control their display. But what becomes of all this effort? How do people see me via the internet?

Well (in classic, cheesy infomercial tone) there is hope! ... Sort of. Aaron Zinman of MIT has created a program called Personas that upon entering your name will spit out not only an evaluation of your "display" but in doing so will give you a display of pretty colors and information on where you stand out on the internet.

While I see the intrigue and was myself compulsed to try it out, I definitely have questions and critique on the whole thing. I'll start with the questions:
1) What happens to those who have very common names? What is the accuracy? Can it even be calculated?
2) How were the categories decided? Why are religion and religious two seperate categories?
3) How is the order of the categories arranged? Is it arbitrary? By importance?
4) Where are the sources pulled from?
5) How many categories are there?

Now for some critique on my own persona search. My name is Katelyn MacLachlan, but I have always gone by Kate or Katie. When I searched for my full name I got the message "No Digital Traces Found". hmm. Ok so next I tried Katie. This worked better...in the sense that I got a result. There were 10 sources, some of which were definitely me, and some which I think were about some woman in a legal battle with my same name.

Ok, so how about Kate?



KATE MACLACHLAN IS A PRECAMBRIAN PROJECT GEOLOGIST WITH SASKATCHEWAN MINISTRY OF ENERGY AND RESOURCES
^this popped up as the one and only source.

As you can see, the accuracy might not be quite there (good luck all you John Smiths), but it still is kind of fun to see what comes up and I can see it being used as a sort of google analytics/web optimization tool. Couldn't hurt right?

If you want to try it yourself, check it out here.