Come on….I am sure most of you guys have done it – you go to google and pop in your name and see what comes up, right? I can only imagine this will continue to increase – you want to make sure that when you go for a job interview, apply for a home loan, even go on a dating website – people will check your name. I have seen this over and over in various situations. I remember in NYC at a bar with friends, summer interns screening was done and the workers were checking their myspace accounts (this was back in 2005 when Myspace was the facebook of today) – and they were joking about a girl’s profile and pictures. It was pretty funny looking on the laptop..and it totally affected the job selection process. I know this is ILLEGAL for a company to do (In USA at least), but come on….this can only increase and how can the government or job seeker really know or prove this happened.

57% Of Americans Have Googled Themselves: Pew Study

May 26, 2010 at 7:47pm ET by Matt McGee

The Pew Research Center has released a deep study today that paints an interesting picture of how U.S. adults use the Internet — search engines, in particular — to track their online reputations. One of the primary takeaways that contradicts previous research is that more than half of adult Internet users have “Googled” themselves. The study doesn’t actually use that terminology, but you get the point.

Or doing business….so many people check the name before hand. In various formats, keywords – by location, industry profession, etc. In google, I see so many people searching by name coming to my website, of course by my own name – but many times on my friends names.

I have even had friends from years back contact me to update information I have on this site! Its pretty funny, sometimes its like “hey man, long time, I was googling my name, and saw your site comes up – and you said blah blah – can you update it”. Its a great way for me to stay connected to people.

I remember I bought this domain michaelmichelini.com back when I was working in kozmo.com (now bankrupt) as an database programmer in New york City. Everyone there was IT and Techy, and buying their name domains before someone else did. It was the first domain I bought, and then at my university, my fraternity brothers kept cracking jokes at me for having my own name as a website.

At that point, in 2000, people were HIDING their personal information from the internet. But as time passes, more and more people BECOMING SOCIAL – and realizing its not about companies and websites online, its about PERSONAL people being online – I am noticing so many people buying their own name website.

Anyway, we’ll see how this develops, but this article was a good read and got my mind thinking, supporting the idea of the revolution of PEOPLE coming online, not just businesses.