I’m on day 3 of 15-hour finals madness and loving every minute of it. I’m taking a break because I wanted to weigh in on the ongoing online identity debate and why it’s important to associate your identity with your ideas. While I was writing a research paper on Vodafone’s corporate governance, I stumbled upon a great blog article written by someone with no bio. I wanted to reference the ideas but first I had to verify the validity of the author’s claims. So I did the logical thing and Googled the author’s name. Absolutely nothing came up. There was no website, no linked in, no facebook, and no twitter. This person had popped up out of nowhere to give me a very useful tidbit of information regarding the tradeoffs of having a CFO sitting on the Board of Directors, but the author left no trace of personal credentials anywhere on the internet. This author lost all credibility because they didn’t maintain an adequate online persona. When people come across information or opinion on the internet, they naturally assign value based on the credibility of the source. If you want to get the most utility out of publishing your ideas on the internet, it’s incredibly important to associate your identity with your ideas. Otherwise, you’re just another troll.

I’m on day 3 of 15-hour finals madness and loving every minute of it. I’m taking a break because I wanted to weigh in on the ongoing online identity debate and why it’s important to associate your identity with your ideas.

While I was writing a research paper on Vodafone’s corporate governance, I stumbled upon a great blog article written by someone with no bio. I wanted to reference the ideas but first I had to verify the validity of the author’s claims. So I did the logical thing and Googled the author’s name. Absolutely nothing came up. There was no website, no linked in, no facebook, and no twitter. This person had popped up out of nowhere to give me a very useful tidbit of information regarding the tradeoffs of having a CFO sitting on the Board of Directors, but the author left no trace of personal credentials anywhere on the internet.

This author lost all credibility because they didn’t maintain an adequate online persona. When people come across information or opinion on the internet, they naturally assign value based on the credibility of the source. If you want to get the most utility out of publishing your ideas on the internet, it’s incredibly important to associate your identity with your ideas. Otherwise, you’re just another troll.

Oct13

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