To help my readers find subjects of interest a blog index is provide in the top-menu. The index is one of my – almost desperate – attempts to beat the blog’s timeline. I use it as a way to navigate the repository of information myself regularly even though it is not visited by others very frequently.

Profiling and identification of individuals has been subject of this blog numerous times in one way or an other. The commercial internet is pretty much based on profiling. And often articles I have flipped at my Flipboard magazine or linked to here at RPD are indicating that not much information is needed to establish your personal identity, your social identity or your legal identity. The latest article I linked to was about establishing somebodies legal identity just by analyzing a handful of credit card purchases. NB I often update older posts with external links or other contributions in stead of starting a new post altogether.

The other day I was wondering if it is possible to create an adequate profile of my own personal identity on the basis of my Blog Index?

The type of index generator I use is based on the tags I deliberately attache per post. As a consequence not everything, every company or everybody I write about or mention makes the blog Index.

I see 3 categories of index items: (1) persons, (2) companies/products and (3) subjects:

  1. I have mentioned Google’s Schmidt, Amit Singha, Larry Page and Apple’s Steve Jobs but only the latter has made the index. People are only “indexed” if they are amongst the truly great or the ones I personally find remarkable. The people that make the list have all impacted my personal world view. there are many more of coarse that I would like to list, but as they have not as yet figured in one of the posts they are absent.
  2. It is the same with companies and products; amongst others IBM, Samsung are mentioned regularly while not indexed. Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Paypal and eBay made the cut with flying colors. This has to do with the underlying narrative of the RPD blog posts I guess. The narrative is something that is showing who I am as a person the most, I guess.
  3. As RPD is not covering all subjects – my particular political views, any possible comments on daily affairs and breaking news are pretty much absent – while some subjects like payments are covered also for professional purposes. As the blog is personal but pretty much tight to my company’s website I tend to refrain from strong language and opinions. Even though I find that I am not very confrontational in the eye of some others I have written about payments industry topics (especially on clearing and settlement) for instance that were regarded controversial at the least. In this sense the blog is a skewed and does not show the full width of my personality and believes (I believe).

So rapping up: people knowing me will undoubtedly be able to recognize they way they perceive me from the Blog Index while only covering a part of what and who I am in a curated environment not exposing relevant parts of my personal identity. I happily live under the illusion that my personal identity is much wider and richer then revealed here at Red Planet Dust.