So all of us have heard about carbon footprints and their effect on the environment, but how many of us have heard about the metrics of Online Footprints and Virtual Social Influence and their effect on our lives?
According to Wikipedia, “A digital footprint is the data trace or trail left by someone's activity in a digital environment. Digital footprints are the capture in an electronic fashion of memories and moments and are built from the interaction with TV, mobile phone, World Wide Web, Internet, mobile web and other digital devices and sensors”
So, your online footprint is a translation of all the digital content that you have ever produced. The thousands of e-mails that you have sent, all the pictures that you have uploaded in Web sites like Picassa and Flickr, the blogs you started or commented on and all the documents that you've uploaded online are all a part of this.
In addition to this, in this era of social networking, the thousands of wall posts, status updates, picture albums, videos uploaded/shared on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo! Updates, Google Buzz, YouTube, Google Talk, MSN, Twitter and MySpace all constitute your online footprint.
The need of checking your online footprint from time to time is great. This is because of the reason that you never know who else is checking your footprint with you being totally in the dark. If you want to be aware of your online footprint, try the easiest way - Google yourself!
Trust me, you will be surprised. Content, e-mails, pictures and videos you have no memory of have a danger of appearing on your screen. If you feel embarrassed looking at it, imagine the impact it has on the person who is performing this check on you.
To be more alert of your online footprint, you can subscribe to “Google Alerts” to notify you if any new information about you appears online. This is important as, if you have a good/decent online footprint, then you can be sure to impress a whole lot of people and gain a lot more opportunities than in a case where your online persona lets you down.
Virtual Social Influence is the impact that a person has on the others on the Internet, especially on social networking Web sites. This is determined by the number of visitors to your blog, rss feeds and comments on your blog, the size of your networks, the size of the groups/pages you subscribe to and how active you are on your network.
Klout is an interesting Web site that gives a rating of the most influential people on Twitter based on a variety of topics. The higher the influence of your networks and the more the information you share on Web sites like Facebook, Myspace etc. is shared, the higher your VSI is.
Online Footprints and VSI are independent of each other but it can also be said that a large footprint indicates a high VSI and vice-versa. The importance of these terms is going to increase significantly, primarily because we, as a generation, are leading most of our lives online through social media Web sites, hence our accessibility is going to be both a boon and bane for us.
Our lives can be read, understood and analyzed in ways never thought before, which makes it all the more important to have good metrics and a positive online presence.
