Monday, meme day, and another two-parter, with questions! I love question memes. Questions are the best! I can go on for hours. You’re all thrilled, I can tell. 
I’ll just skip the introductory commentary and get right to it.
Strawberry Singh asks us to Google our avatar name and see what comes up. She also links to a post on SLTimeWellWasted with a similar theme, comparing your digital footprint between your SL name and your RL name. I thought I’d do both of these, so I just sort of mashed it all up and did an SL/RL version for each question, hence the combo shot up top. (And also I hadn’t had a chance to get in world and take a fab picture today, so I was being sort of lazy.)
Here are the official instructions:
Meme instructions: Google your SL name and answer the following questions. Don’t forget to leave a comment with a link to your post (here) so we can all drop by, read and be nosy. Optional: click over to Emily’s blog and do her Google challenge as well. Don’t forget to leave a comment in her post if you end up doing it, so she can come stalk you guys too!
Part One: Questions from Strawberry Singh:
1. Google your Second Life name in “quotations” and share your results.
SL: 606 results. Although after page three it says “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 29 already displayed.” Eh.
RL: 440 results.
Of course I then had to Google every other name related to me online: Ravensong by itself returns 169,000 results, 99% probably have nothing to do with me whatsoever. My standard username returns 5760, and my Tumblr username/url returns 55,200.
2. What is the first link that comes up?
SL: my.secondlife.com
RL: LinkedIn
3. Which link were you surprised to see?
SL: They were pretty standard and expected.
RL: Nothing really surprised me, but it is interesting to see how many things pick up public profiles and consolidate listings. I particularly enjoyed finding a French language link site that listed my former job title, so in case anybody in a French speaking country wants to review my Linkedin profile they can go right to it. ‘Course I don’t’ speak French, so if they want to hire me that could be a drawback lol.
4. Click on the “Image” tab and tell us where the first 5 pictures listed are from.
SL: about.me profile pic, my blog, irez.me, google page profile banner pic, and irez.me again. The rest of the pics are mostly from my blog and flickr.
RL: The images are a combination of my various profile pics, album covers that I must have tagged when I looked over the new music oriented myspace a year or so ago, and some pinterest stuff.
5. Click on the “more” tab and then click “news” and share your results.
I’m not newsy under any identity lol.
Part two: Questions from SLTimeWellWasted:
1. How did the two digital footprints compare, and did that surprise you?
Well. There are more results for SL than RL, but I know from searches that a lot of results have nothing to do with my avatar name, so I suspect they might ultimately end up with about the same exposure. All of my social media is tied to my standard username (which ties to RL me in searches) so ultimately I probably have a bigger footprint as myself. A lot of the results under RL were noise, though, or links to the same sources.
2. Does anyone interesting share your name?
In RL: nope. Now and then I see somebody who spells their first name the same oddball way I do, but never in combination with the same last name as mine. My husband has three or four other guys who share his RL name that you might end up with after googling him, but I’ve never found any counterparts.
In SL: There are several avatars named Ravensong in SL, about half older and half younger. Apparently a few of them are content creators, because I occasionally get an IM asking me about a script or some product and I have to advise them to check the username of the creator, because I’m not the Ravensong they’re looking for.
RL folks with my SL name: Fairly recently, because for some reason I’d never really googled Ravensong until I started blogging, I discovered there is a musician by name of Merlin Ravensong. If you search my av name without quotes you will get his links. This is one of those things that makes me wish I could change my username to make it unique. Changing display names always seem pointless because people still go by your username anyway, so… Massive sigh.
3. Are you happy with the size of your digital footprint, or do you wish either one was larger/smaller?
I don’t think too much about it. Everything that’s out there (social media, profiles, etc) I put out there intentionally. I’ve not really worked hard to tie my av name to my blogging or SL photo taking, which maybe I should. You don’t get direct links to this blog by searching my av name, but you do get a link to various pages that link to the blog as well as Flickr so I’m content with that. I read articles about claiming authorship for a blog, but, eh, I don’t know. It just makes me regret that I didn’t use my standard goto username when I joined…
4. If you woke up/ logged in one morning to discover over night you had suddenly gained rock-star status, and everybody knew who you were and wanted to know what you were doing… what would you do?
Wait, you mean people don’t already feel this way about me?
(◕︵◕)
*cries*
No, I’m happy to be SL and RL invisible. I have to chuckle to myself whenever I am in a store or at an event and I recognize the name of a blogger I follow, and I think “Oh! How cool! A SLebrity sighting!” lol
