The Hazards of a Common Name, I Guess
Ever since I created my Gmail account as my name, I’ve gotten occasional emails that are not meant for me at all, but are meant for people with the same name. Now, I have no idea how other people are getting the impression that my name @ Gmail is this other person’s email address, but it’s been frequent enough to make me wonder.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve gotten flight confirmations from SFO, notes from an aunt, a copy of a HS kid’s resume, and lately group emails from a group of Sununu supporters rallying for his election.
Usually, I do send a reply letting them know they’ve got the wrong address. Do you?
Wonder what Google’s advertising within Gmail thinks of all that? 🙂
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I had an interview candidate the other week whose name was Michael Moore – it was impossible to google him to see if he had anything interesting out on the internet – another hazard for a common name.
Conversely another guy was very easy to find online. The weird thing is that noone else in the company had even thought about googling candidates.
I’ve got a fairly common name, and I’ve run into that myself. I’ve gotten several emails to my self named account that were not for me. I reply back saying “This isn’t the Bryan Price you’re looking for.”
They aren’t geek enough to get the reference.
I used to be #1 in Google for my name, but the Diamondback pitching coach stole that a couple of years back, and now the former pitcher from Rice has stolen #1 from the coach and slotted me down to #3.
And until I can get my hands on bytehead.com, I’ll always be #2 with my handle. It just changed hands recently, so I doubt that will happen soon.
I get a lot of emails for Kevin Donahue, the president of content at YouTube. Ugh.
I guess I’m lucky no one named George Black has ever done anything worthwhile. I don’t expect to break with trdition.