Beyond The Barrio: You Are So Busted. More Americans Google Themselves Than Ever Before.
17 December 2007, 9:00 AM. By Daniel Mauser
A study done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project says the amount of Americans doing internet searches on themselves has more than doubled since 2002. Hawt! But that, apparently, is not enough for the Pew Internet and American Life Project:
“Yes it’s doubled, but it’s still the case that there’s a big chunk of Internet users who have never done this simple act of plugging their name with search engines,” [Pew senior research specialist Mary Madden] said “Certainly awareness has increased, but I don’t know it’s necessarily kept pace with the amount of content we post about ourselves or what others post about us.”
Who are these people who don’t Google themselves? We thought that was everyone’s late, Friday-night ritual right after the bottle of Dewar’s and an episode of “The Robyn Byrd Show.”
Something Americans do seem to be embracing more whole-heartedly, though, is the act of Googling others. While 47% of Americans have committed the act of self-Googling (hey-oh!), 53% of adult Internet users admit to looking up information about someone else, celebrities excluded. Which means that compulsively checking your co-worker’s relationship status on Facebook is totally normal. And that I am not a stalker, I mean, we are not a stalker. Heh. Er. Uh.
Study: More Americans Google themselves [Dallas Morning News]
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Unless I missed something in the article, they don’t say o what extent we google ourselves or others. Googling names doesn’t really do anything anymore unless you’re stupid enough to blast your information online, the way to find people now is to search for their screenname. Be it for chatting or for whatever websites they use.
isas is watching.
i once searched my name and some girl’s very explicit webpage came up …kinda creepy!
my girlfriend and i googled one of her professors last night… that sounds kinda raunchy. i wanted to see what she looked like and expected to find the standard professor-at-any-university page (which we did) but the second page that popped up was her friendster… oldskool right? we poked around a lil bit and by adding a middle initial to the search we stumbled across another university page, but also a myspace and flickr account.
i must admit… we completely stalked her, jumping from site to site trying to piece together her life. it was very entertaining… and from what my gf tells me she’s pretty chill, and likes to share stories about her personal life in class, but it’s kinda different sharing something about yourself, and having someone snoop around all up in your business.
verdict? googling vague acquaintances… definite guilty pleasure… you get to see things that you werent “meant” to see