I just read a great post over at Daniela Barbosa’s blog (hat tip to Jack Lail) about what Daniela is doing online to get ready for her new baby, including reserving the baby’s name as a URL, checking Facebook for other people with the same name, and setting up a Skype account for grandparents to see the new arrival from afar.

This was a good reminder to me to do what I am always advising students to do when I speak to journalism and PR classes, which is “own your own name.” So I just asked Jon to take care of buying “GeorgiaLastname.com” for the baby’s future use, and to add URLs for the other kids’ names as well. They each need to own their own identities online, even if they aren’t ready to claim them yet.

The primary reason I’ve moved from using my kids’ full names when I blog or write essays for publication to my current practice of instead using their first initials is so the kids can own their own identities online. I have no illusions that people don’t already know my kids’ names – after all, I wrote about them using their real names for years before making the switch – so that change wasn’t about privacy, per se. No, I just think that when my kids get old enough to have their own, grown-up accomplishments and interests and careers, and someone Googles them (or whatever it is we are doing at that point to retrieve digital content), the info that comes up front and center should be stuff they themselves have created or written rather than years and years of my blogging about them. So yes, I stopped using their whole names to make them less Google-able, but not for the reasons some folks might think.

But back to my current digital nesting for baby Georgia. I am definitely reserving her name-branded URL, and probably setting up a Google alert with her name (because it would be good to know if some other Georgia LastName has just committed mass murder in the Ukraine or something), but I don’t think I will bother with claiming Facebook, Flickr or Twitter real estate for her, since the odds are low that those specific online brands will still be relevant platforms by the time she is ready to use them.

What about you? Have you done any online nesting before or soon after your baby(ies) have arrived? Or do you think I am a complete nutjob? Tell me in the comments below.

(Cross posted over at AckermannDigital)