No more mask! Separation of Personal and Business Online

I’m trying to remember my first email address….. yomagic@juno.com and then there was netplx.net . The dial up modem to connect to junos email server and download the mail, half of which was sponsored advertisements. I am thinking that was 1995, when I was starting high school.

Then there was everyone scared of putting their name on the internet, we all had “handles”. I would dial up a BBS network and sign in, my favorite was “diehard” when I logged into a network. Then there were the times we’d get on a BBS network and want to joke around, we’d make up a fake name and joke around on the chat or bulliten board, have the moderator (at their home network) kick us off.

And then everyone was afraid to reveal themselves online – i’m not sure the exact reason, but my friends and I feld we’d get hacked, or our privacy stolen, or someone finding out bad information about ourselves.

I started to separate myself and made my own domain in 2000, michaelmichelini.com when I was in university, and my brothers in the fraternity Delta Tau Delta for putting my name and face on the internet. I was working at Kozmo.com at the time and everyone was buying their name .com to hold it from others registering it….I had it hosted on my university server, attila.stevens.edu and you can check it out on the wayback machine and it was hosted on http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/~mmicheli

But then I didnt pay for hosting, or maybe the guys at my frat got me down enough to actually not renew the hosting, and I let the domain expire. few years later myspace.com and I registered it under my WEBSITE at the time, pimpguide.com! I never thought I would put my name online. That someone would find me and come after me, I don’t know the reasoning, but it seemed everyeon else was also as scared as me. It was not normal to put your face to your business they seemed like 2 different things). My myspace profile was made to promote my website, and i didnt connect my personal information to it (well not right away

But then I realized, what am I hiding? on myspace I started to put information about mmyself, what I do, the websites and business I have. I remember being up late on night in New York City maybe 2005 spring, adding my photos and my educational information.

I STARTED CONNECTING MY business and my personal. I would promote nightclubs in new york ctiy, I would push traffic to my site, I would put my name behind my business.

And then comes facebook, and friendster, and so many others. and posting your links, and promoting your causes, your politics, and SHARING YOUR PERSONAL VIEWS to everyone who cared to read.

Facebook, while it is slowly opening up, was a bit more closed. My friends felt more comfortable using this instead of myspace, because they could control who saw their profile, and felt it was within their own friend network. But now, it seems facebook, with the vanity urls, will become more open and more internet wide.

Again, it seems like people now cannot hide online and need to embrace it instead of resist it.