With the annoucement of Public Search Listings on Facebook, I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to turn off public access to my record (it’s on by default for everyone, so it’s opt-out, not opt-in). I certainly don’t mind being findable; heck, I work at it. The question is one of ownership…that is, do I want what is potentially one of the highest-ranking search links of my name to be something NOT on my site?

I’d say no…except for the fact that none of the highest-ranks links for that search point to my site right now, because they aren’t even to me! With a famous wrestler and a recently deceased computer science pioneer sharing my name (deliberately no links there…*grin*), I sometimes barely make it onto the front page of that search. I do much better with kenzoid; part of the reason I took (and defend) that as my online identity. So, in a sense, any Google juice that I personally get from the Facebook query is good, since my Facebook record points back to here; the center for all that is Ken!

So, I expect I’ll probably leave it public, for the reasons listed above. That being said, it may not matter much…Facebook is timing out so much right now that it may be they have to back away from this change while they work on scalability issues.