THE MEANDERWALKER

I went to the Triangle Interactive Marketing Association meeting on social networking in Raleigh today. While, more often than not, I try to avoid venturing into the capital city, and my previous experiences with industry-oriented events like this (ahem.. sorry PRSA) have proven themselves to be not-worth-the-gas-to-get-there, this hour-long talk about social networking tools from the perspective of corporate marketing was not only engaging, but also THOUGHT PROVOKING.

And here I was, with over a decade’s worth of internet experience surfin’ and chatting and whatnot packed into my short 23 years of existence, thinking I had the internet tied around my little finger. Take a look at the bottom left of this blog — yep, it reads “im all over teh internetz” and I wrote it that way on purpose, to show people I know what I’m talking about. But maybe, just maybe, I haven’t thought it all through completely.

Peter Shankman — who writes PRdifferently.com and has been featured on Gawker.com with such infamous (re: life-destroying?) contributions as “How Not To Act On J-Date” among others — spoke at the meeting today and not only offered a lot of good examples for how to successfully implement these tools in consumer and B2B marketing, which was informative for my professional life, but it also made me reconsider my personal internet existence.

What is my brand? Whether I like it or not, I’m building one. But, like, what is the point?

Peter put it this way: “Your privacy is currency.” You pay a little bit of privacy to build relationships with other people and with companies. So how much privacy have I now spent building this Lauren Frohne brand and what has it gotten me?

Then it got me thinking about how five to ten years ago, people were terrified of the internet. It was all “screennames” and “chatrooms” and “badguys tracking kids down because they saw the kid’s photo on the internet.” No one used their real names, not even in their e-mail addresses (my first AOL screenname when I was 9 years old was ’strikelf’ — I used to rack up innumerable hours on AOL in Star Wars- or Grease-themed chatrooms and answer the question “A/S/L?” a lot), everything was anonymous. But now that everyone uses the internet, it’s somehow become less scary and it’s even become a trend to use your real, full name for everything. People put family photos on Flickr, details of their wedding on The Knot, their every move on Twitter. Which, in this Web 2.0 world, translates into less privacy, more currency for the internet (does that indicate privacy inflation?), and no more shroud of anonymity.

I suppose I made the conscious switch to non-anonymity about a year ago. Knowing that I would have to apply for jobs with a respectable e-mail address, I opted out of having something along the lines of eMoGrRl2984@whatever.com and took the plunge towards a unified “brand” so to speak. But even that is still loosely compiled at best — anything semi-serious uses my real name, everything else uses some variation of a moniker I came up with randomly about five years ago.

But what is my BRAND?

My myspace and facebook profiles say practically nothing about me. Searches on Google bring up results from my current job, a few things from my sporty past, and my former-affiliation with a comedy theater — although I am proud to say that 12 pages yield all me-related results. I’ve been described in a recent interview as “a writer from north carolina.” But is that what I am to the internet? Then add in the part where there is no division between “You” and “Professional You,” and I don’t even know where to start!

Obviously, I have a lot to think through. But at least I’m re-engaged by the internet because of it.

Because, to tell you the truth, I have this theory… and it’s just a theory… that it’s only a matter of time before the internet becomes “uncool.” It happens to everything the becomes mainstream eventually — especially once corporate America catches on and tries to be “cool” and “with it” — but signs of internet-lifestyle early-adopters becoming jaded by, and even more or less swearing off, the internet are already visible. What will we do when it becomes “cool” to delete your myspace page? Well, it’s already happening actually, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing — you know, people reconnecting with other people in the flesh. So it’s hard to determine exactly how much to invest in this particular brand-building.

Maybe it’s a healthy balance between both I should be aiming for. Which is another point that Sam Harrelson, another digital world expert who spoke at the meeting, made at the meeting: good networking comes from one-on-one offline relationships. Which is good to keep in mind both personally and professionally.