The internet has the potential to store lots of information about you, sometimes whether you like it or not. Signing up on social networking websites, submitting comments and ultimately writing a blog will allow readers to contact, interact and research unique things about you.
With a simple Google search, you are able to find mentions of your online username and sometimes bring up relevant results using your full name. A recent project from the MIT Media Lab; Personas, is a new tool that searches the internet for mentions of your name and collates it’s results in categories of where it thinks your online presence is most suited.
Using the tool is simple, it’s how it calculates the results that is clever. To start, all you need to do is enter your full name. Pressing enter will start the search and the impressive visual interface that will display the areas and keywords that it matches against as the tool searches.
Some examples of this can be found below:
Once the tool is finished, you will be shown a graph that charts the most relevant areas it has matched your name to. Part of the end result for my search can be found below:
Because I happen to have two first names, results for my searches will not be very unique. As the search was being performed, I could see snippets from my Twitter profile and blog, but many were passages from other sites where the names Matt and Brian were mentioned in the same sentence.
It’s an interesting premise and for some it can bring up some worrying results if the user shares too much of their life online. Give it a try and see just what the internet has on you.
