A common question from folks who connect with me online: Mykl, why do you have so many different profiles and identities? There are several reasons.
I find it helpful to separate my personal and professional presence online. “Professional“ Mykl tries to be more outgoing, sometimes a little “loose” about networking with people. (I need the work.) “Personal” Mykl is a little quieter, and dislikes knocking on virtual doors selling something. (But my professional services are for rent, make no mistake. Email me.) I don’t presume that all my “real life” friends want to hear about my work or latest geeky discovery; and I sure don’t want to presume upon lifelong friendships for short-term profit. Nor do I imagine that all my clients and colleagues want to hear about my hobbies, daily life or weird friends. So I compartmentalize my public life. But I do it in plain sight, here on the Internet, leaving you free to connect with either or both sides of me, as suits you.
As some of you know, I have additional profiles or avatars beyond Mykl.biz and MYKLiAM. These other personaes i use as my virtual crash test dummies, to try out new web services and experiment with different techniques, before I recommend the best services to clients and friends. (For every web service that I won’t shut-up about, there are dozens more I’ve checked out and found useless or just bad.) In particular, to truly understand social networking services and how they operate, I need to see that network from more than one perspective, which is why I have more than one presence on these networks.
As long as I’m doing all this, I try to have fun with it, and am always looking for ways to get more out of it than just futzing around, usually trying to kill two or three birds with every minute I spend online. I mean, the whole point of experimenting with new technologies is to find the tools that make us more productive — or toys that entertain us more — than the old ones. A few of these experiments have taken on a life of their own, growing gradually from a lighthearted alter-ego into their own new media project. But that’s a toy story for another post.
Because I have more than one presence online, some of you may see this same post in more than one place. I apologize. I usually tweak my chosen web tools to limit such redundant posting, but in this case, it seems to make my point.
