Blog

In 1995, I created a web site for Robelle, which was the 80,000th registered web site with CERN (there were 250,000 six months later). In 1996, I created a personal web site. Linkedin recently sent me an email congratulating me on being one of the first one million registered users of Linkedin (there are 100 million today). Facebook got me around 2007. I started twittering a year or two ago.

As an early adopter of online technologies and networks, these are some of the lessons I’ve learned:

1. You need to actively manage your online presence. You will have one, whether you realize it or not. Actively managing what you put online gives you more control of what people see and how you are perceived.
2. When done appropriately, you can make it personal. I love working with people. Whether it is my professional web site, blog, tweets, or the personal stories on my family web site, they all relate back to people.
3. It is surprising easy to stay connected. I am sometimes astonished when I meet a professional acquaintance at an event and they reflect back to me about what I have been doing. When I ask, I often hear “I read about in your status updates on Facebook or Linkedin”.
4. Twitter has been an even bigger surprise. When you take time to become part of the Twitter community, it is amazing the connections that you can make. Connecting with our fellow humans always takes work and Twitter is no exception. The difference is the reach and type of people that you can connect with.

How do you use your online presence to connect with people?