Why I am everywhere online and you should be, too

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Understand, I take relish in few things as much as I do in being an old head, knowing little about technology, what is new and fresh.

The trouble is that I am modestly pursuing a career in media. I graduate from Temple University in less than three months, with no job, little direction, and few goals. My chances for success just got smaller.

So, it was in early December 2007, with my fears and worries just beginning to rumble, that I launched this Web site. It was, as I first described it, a modest foot print in what, I assumed, would someday require a great deal more structure. The world’s dependent on the Internet is not lessening. This is the best, most effective way to market oneself.

I wasn’t going to blog. I promised myself I wasn’t going to blog. But then, there wasn’t much chance I could keep steady readership to develop a community (hello!) but also to increase my searchability on Google, (currently tops for “christopher wink” and second for “chris wink“) -It doesn’t help that someone of quasi-fame shares my name, as Chris Wink is the founder of the Blue Man Group.


Then, to develop my site and promote the visual medium in which I also involve myself, I was all but required to get a YouTube account. Then, I wanted easy picture slideshows, compatible with WordPress, there came my Slide account.

At that point, I realized that, as the Internet becomes a rapidly more condensed place, competition for one’s own identity will become increasingly difficult. I am not bright enough to truly foresee where development is going, but, as I felt with this site, I know I should stake my claim now.

So, as I search to develop the largest professional network so that I might be able to catch a career I truly want, I hopped onto the LinkedIn bandwagon, which should be the most useful networking site on the Internet. (I will leave the question of whether it is or not, to my friend Sean Blanda).

In the (perhaps) increasingly competitive media market, I need to show a diversity of talent. I enjoy photography and have some background in it, so a Flickr account, home to internet photographers (and those posing as photographers) everywhere, seemed necessary. Though I have yet to use it as a home, it only seems sensible.

I am young. It is therefore a requirement that I enter the professional ranks as well-versed in all new forms of media as possible. It only makes sense to learn as much as I can now. It also seems readily plausible that the interconnectivity of all these homes online drives up my presence online, a place that no one argues employers (and even friends and intimates) are going, with steady frequency, to learn more about who you are.

Update below

I still have my standards. I like to think I only choose online presences that benefit me. I have never had a Facebook or MySpace account. They don’t seem to hold the same professional moxie, but, I will admit, I have thought seriously of establishing accounts for the sole purpose of driving viewership and connectivity to the presences I have already established. Indeed, I think likely I already would have, if I don’t seem to garner so much attention for being one of a small number of 20-somethings without them.

I think it likely I will soon break down, certainly after I graduate (if only so I can tell my grandchildren that I never had Facebook or MySpace during their craze in the 2000s), and sign up.

(Update: I did cave, but made it past my college graduation. I joined Facebook and then MySpace and then opened up to joining any other that ever came my way.)

Of course the worry is that the more online homes you have, the more time you spend with each. A fear indeed, but I think it instead offers a chance to drive all searchers to whatever you want to be your primary address online. It is the difference, I would say, between an aggressive and passive online presence.

Indeed, I am late going in this development compared to many, but there are great number of others holding on for other reasons. So, join me friends. Link to me, connect to me, friend me, whatever the hell it is. Because the future seems to hold that, without radical change, the Internet is going to be a whole lot more crowded soon.

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