Egosurfing

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Egosurfing (usually referred to as Googling yourself and sometimes called vanity searching, egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling, self-googling) is the practice of searching for one's own given name, surname, full name, pseudonym, or screen name on a popular search engine, to see what results appear.[1] It has become increasingly popular with the rise of popular search engines such as Google, as well as free blogging and web-hosting services. It is sometimes combined with third-party tools such as Googlefight when several people egosurf together, or with Pimp my search when people create their own Google-like search engine, or accessed by SMS through services such as 199QUERY (Australia) or AQA (UK) which people SMS their name to a number and an "egosearch" is performed on that name and returned (egotexting).

Similarly, an egosurfer is one who surfs the Internet for his own name, to see what, if any, articles appear about himself.

The term was allegedly coined by Sean Carton. [2][3]

Egosurfing can be used to find data spills, released information that is undesirable to have in the public eye.

[edit] See also

  • Kibozing - prior to the existence of search engines, a similar practice existed on Usenet, known as kibozing after James "Kibo" Parry, who was well known for replying in a surreal fashion to anyone who mentioned his/her name, on any newsgroup.[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "All Geek to Me". Ur magazine (Rogers). 
  2. ^ Citizen Scholar: Design & Responsibility » Blog Archive » Ego Surfing
  3. ^ Street Tech :: hardware beyond the hype
  4. ^ http://www.faqs.org/docs/jargon/K/kiboze.html
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