Find your Name Match
Have you ever met somebody with the same name as you? Have you at least cyber-stalked them? I have. In fact I have been working to push them from the top rankings for my name. On an SEO note all I may have been doing is legitimizing their prescience. My name pressence isn’t the point of this post. One of the fascinating things for me living in New York is having the New York Times at my door every morning before I go to work.
Today I opened the paper to find an interesting article about "googling" your name and making contacts with people with your same name. This is snapshot of the article. To read the whole article: Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet.
Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet
From time to time Sam Blackman, a pediatric oncologist in Philadelphia, checks up on people other than patients. Namely, other Sam Blackmans.
No stethoscope is needed to take the pulse of his namesakes, though — just a Google search. And while he has never met the men he refers to as Sam 2.0 and Sam 3.0, when one of those other Sam Blackmans posted a photograph of his wife on the Internet, Dr. Blackman, 39, couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pleasure.
“I’m like ‘Oh! Sam Blackman got married,’ ” he said. “I felt like I should send a card or check his registry on Amazon.”
Now that the telephone book has been all but replaced by the minutiae-rich Web, searching out, even stalking, the people who share one’s name has become a common pastime. Bloggers muse about their multiple digital selves, known as Google twins or Googlegängers (a term that was the American Dialect Society’s “most creative” word last year).
In “Finding Angela Shelton,” a book published this month, a writer named Angela Shelton describes her meetings with 40 other Angela Sheltons. Keri Smith, an illustrator, has posted drawings of six of her Googlegängers on her blog. There are name-tally Web sites like SameNameAsMe, and Facebook coalitions including nearly 200 people named Ritz (their insignia is a cracker box logo) and a group aiming to break a world record by gathering together more than 1,224 Mohammed Hassans.
But while many people are familiar with Googlegängers, a fundamental question has gone unanswered: Why do so many feel a connection — be it kinship or competition — with utter strangers just because they share a name?
I have never met someone with my same name. I think it would be interestingly creepy. What if they were better than you? What if they were worse? What if they were a criminal? These are all good questions. For now I belive I am content just "cyber-stalking" their name.
Hey man – have you seen www.googlemethemovie.com from Jim Killeen yet? He did much the same thing as the doctor in this article you referenced – but he has made it into a movie. Interesting clips on the site.
Andy “Google Me” Greider
Andy, I hadn’t seen the movie yet or even heard about it. I watched it and thought it was great. Thanks for the great find. Watch the movie
[...] people to find. Sometimes it can be the right picture, or wrong one. Other times it is someone who shares your name. Beyond that, it could be “you from a former life” – oftentimes, people change. While [...]
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