How do you manage/monitor your online presence?

I just don’t do anything embarrassing or something that could come back to haunt me. Simple as that.

@dverhey It’s not something I worried about in the past. As I’m getting ready to make the transition from student to teacher in higher education doing research on technology and public policy/society, my online presence seems as though it could have an impact on my career goals, even if it isn’t something necessarily ‘embarrassing’ or haunt-worthy.

I have 6 internet identities. Only one of which is actually me.

If I do something stupid on one, I kill them off and move to another.

Why would I need to? It’s not important to me.

Only use usernames and not combine them with my real full name. Build a decent profile around my full name (still need to do this).

When it comes to career opportunities, just a little care will go a long way: if you don’t use your full name on the social networking site that’s most popular in your area, then potential employers can’t find you there, and I don’t think they’re looking much further than that.

I attempt to behave myself with a seriously ingrained and well honed habit of self-discipline.

I have never in my life used my real name online, except where required for things like online purchases. So my real name never gets put anywhere public. I have googled for it a few times and never found anything, even posted by someone else, that was actually about me.

Great question. I have a dual-sided approach since I work in overlapping ‘creative’ fields; I just recently created a central clearing house site to track my ‘business’-related postings (more about sharing information, building awareness, creating ‘buzz,’ etc.), my chronicle of the business I am in (‘entertainment’—which is not what people think) and my purely poetic writings, which are the fodder for my next collection, and probably more visceral than my more left-brain virtual publications.
these all have a common name/word to them for tracking (“imua” which means forward momentum in Hawaiian) but I ‘market’ them to different demos, if that makes sense.
Managing now thru a comprehensive google site that I think throws in some analytics, so I can see ‘what’s working’ in terms of hits…although my motivation is just to get my writing out there and not in my closet in a notebook.

@katwalk65 Thanks! That was really what I was looking for here. I love the use of the Hawaiian word here too okay, maybe I just love all things Hawaiian!

Do you attempt to restrict access to different parts of your online ‘self’ by those who have access to different parts? Like—do you want to make sure that your professional contacts can’t find your personal presence, etc?

I make it challenging so my worlds don’t collide-yet!

Ive tried different names but it gets terribly confusing for a simple mind like mine so I just use my actual name.
I dont tend to do anything incriminating online or even anything of much interest to other people for that matter even though I use most of the big sites (tumblr, Twitter, facebook.) I monitor anything I put out on the internet and also anything anyone else puts out of me.
Im not naiive though, I regularly change all my passwords, and am actually considering a main alternate alias for use online.