Have You Googled™ Yourself? … Sunday Musings
When did “to google” become a verb? I google, you google, she googles…I would imagine that Google™ has mixed feelings about this, just as Kleenex™ and Xerox™ do. on the one hand, it’s good to be a household name, on the other hand, common use renders the brand less effective.
Nevertheless, since yesterday was my birthday, I decided to google my name. I’ve done it before, but a cool link was sent to me that got me going again. The link was “How many of me are there?” I found out there are 67 Beth Terry’s in the United States. If we expand that to Elizabeth Terry, there are 570. Try your own name. One friend only has two with his name; another had over 10,000.
I’d done this search before on Zabasearch. Now that’s an interesting and slightly scary site. Most of us don’t really think about how much is out there about us until we do a little vanity surfing.
I’ve run into a couple of me before. One teenager in the south wrote to me and complained “it was creepy to have her name attached to my face.” Never was quite sure what her remedy for that was…Another was a lovely woman from an ivy league college in the northeast.
I’ve also followed the career of Beth Terry of perfume fame. She’s a Brit who has quite a prolific career in creating scents. I’ve not seen her perfume in the states, but it would be fun to meet her.
More recently, I’ve been following the blog of one Beth Terry who writes on a topic near and dear to my heart: environmental awareness. I love the name of her blog: Fake Plastic Fish. Her tag line: “They’re cute, and if we don’t solve our plastic problem, they could be the only kind we have left.”
I had just found a very cool article on plastics in the Discover Magazine, and decided it was time to connect. So I emailed her offline and introduced myself.
Why not? I was pretty sure she knew about me. After all, I own all the bethterry domain names. (Ok, I wasn’t being greedy, just wanted to protect a brand. Professional Speakers were some of the first to jump on the name domain bandwagon. Our life is 80% marketing and 20% speaking. I’ve owned the bethterry domains since 1997, when I had to pay $99 per year for each.)
Anyway, back to environmental Beth. She wrote back right away, and we’re having a wonderful conversation. I signed her petition, and I’m adding her to my blogroll. Check her site out and sign the petition, too. She’s got some compelling information that will make you stop and think. She’s taking great care of the name. Thanks, Beth!
We were ruminating about having a Beth Terry conference. Get us all together and see what the other Beth’s are doing with our name. It could be really interesting and fun, or very confusing and strange. I can see the hotel front desk, “Er, I just checked in Beth Terry. Don’t you already have your room?” “No that was a different Beth.” A real twilight zone plot…
67 Beth Terry’s isn’t so bad. We could fit our meeting into a medium sized conference room. The John Smith convention would have to be in a stadium. There are more than 50,000 of them in the US.
If we decide to have one, we’ll all blog from there and really mess with your minds. “Hi, this is Beth Terry reporting from the convention…” Write to me and tell me how your searches came out!
Have a great rest of the weekend,
over and out,
Speaker Beth Terry
Beth Terry, CSP, is a Professional Speaker, Author, and Corporate Trainer who presents programs in six countries on Managing Change, Handling Stress, and Dealing with Difficult People.
© 2008 Beth Terry Seminars, Inc. All US and International Rights reserved.
