The Hot Iron

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Use A Personal Email Address In Your Social Media Profile

Welcome to the land of Misfit Profiles – a place where profiles for social media sites go to languish when somebody uses their work email as their only profile email address, and then leave that employer, never to regain that profile again!

The other day I was browsing my LinkedIn connections and found some odd profiles. There were some people who had 2 profiles – one only complete to a certain point, and another complete up to now. When I looked at one colleague’s incomplete profile, it had an email address on it from his previous employer. Where there is a way of combining 2 LinkedIn accounts my guess is for most people they just abandon the old account and start anew. When I looked at the more current profile for my colleague, it had the email address of his current employer.

Most social media sites use email addresses to authenticate a person. If you use a work address – or any email address that you give up at some point – you may lose access to your account. This is why I continue to advocate using your own domain name for your personal email. I take this a step forward by advocating using your own email address with your own domain name for social media sites. If you change jobs or Internet providers, you don’t have to go through hoops to regain your account. That is, if the social media site even has hoops for you to go through.

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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 08/05 at 04:00 AM
Technology • Domain Names • (3) Comments • Permalink •

Same goes for using an internet service provider’s domain for email. My parents are still sucked into AOL, because they don’t want to change their email address.

Comment by spudart
on 08/05/09 at 06:30 AM
 

@spudart - Well, at least the yare not paying for AOL these days!

It takes time to switch to a new address, and I recommend people start sooner than later.

mp/m

Comment by Mike Maddaloni
on 08/05/09 at 06:34 AM
 

Good starting point is buying a domain for you or your family.

Comment by Thejesh GN
on 08/05/09 at 07:26 AM
 

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