This Person on Facebook

This Person as Time Traveler

What date was this person born?  This question begins my Facebook Timeline, or, from my vantage point, is the bottom of my page, which I never see. Who cares? Why is my own Facebook page referring to me as This Person?

Gail Kent Studio 
is a professional page, An Artist's Page.
There are no BFF's convos, no Grandma pix, no family or private life postings, or family photos on my artist's page.

This Person In Past Life

Unfortunately, This Person, is some marketing guru's perfect TARGET, and is potentially worth a lot more revenue to Facebook if Timeline begins at the moment of birth. Google hasn't asked my best buddies to provide my birthdate. Yet. They'll simply pull it by mining my searches. Oops! I don't want to post my birth photo--Target might "target" me. Target's targeting   This story was all the NPR and Blog buzz recently. If you've shopped in the last decade or two, you're profiled online.

Clouds of Uncertainty

In the war of the Personal Data Miners, I need only art visibility, not junk mail and junk ads they're creating to build empire on my face(book). I'm multifaceted.

It may be time for private search engines that require subscription, as many news sites are becoming and research sites have long been. Bummer.
  

My art sites were setup to favor Google searches as other search engines may put me in not very good company. But, frustrating glitches in my Plus account have reduced visibility for my blog. And, I don't remember the last time anything surfaced from Facebook in my Google searches. No visibility! I may get a pro on it.

Having purchased a P+S camera last week, I'm currently bombarded by ads for every site I visited in researching cameras on most sites I'm visiting now. I don't want to erase all my cookies every day, but may have to. I visit a lot of sites and, This Person now finds these targeted ads very annoying. The ads are no longer appropriate if I've already purchased. The Miners are working on perfecting that, too.

I hesitate to setup yet another social site, though I'm interested in Pinterest. Why not another site? How much is enough? Although it would be very helpful to have a shared board to post watercolor studies of series I'm working on, I'd give access to thought process in pre-creative imagery, which I find a little spooky. My paintings would be out there before I paint them.


For several decades I've been setting up online accounts on my personal computers. (I installed my first commercial computer in (more than 2 decades ago.) I've used assorted versions of my name, assorted birthdays, but never where or when I was born or where I am at the moment in all my setups.


I'm the last person to transition to mobile computing on my phone, though I use an ipad and ipod. Reason: don't want to share my location and friends and family locations, phone numbers, and personal data. It's too much. My old phone is dying, have to find a workaround for my data sharing phobia so I can mobile shop and sell, and to have app GPS for travel.


We need to think long and hard about our social network identities and all the setup data we provide. I know people who deleted their Facebook accounts, just as I was the absolute last person to join. Look, Facebook posted the joined date just after asking everyone for my birthdate!


Enough is Enough.


Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios