Tuesday evening the Electronic Frontier Foundation hosted a panel discussion on the legal issues surrounding blogs and also produced a "Legal Guide for Bloggers."

I caught the tail end of it, but Blake Barbera over at the Wetfeet PR blog, caught most of it, and he discusses an interesting issue. Are blog posts really forever? Suppose someone posted in their youth on a topic that is embarrassing in later life? The search engines will keep churning up that older post.

Take a look at Blake's post here:

A blog post’s shelf life; when will search engines let it go?

Coincidentally, this an issue I've been thinking about lately and the answer is increased use of pseudonyms. In fact, we older people should take our clues from the younger generation where made up nicknames are used all the time online.

It is similar to Burningman, where the participants generally have a "playa" name. The goal is not to hide identity, but to portray persona. By which I mean personas come and go :-).

My 16 year old persona was not the same as the one I had when I was 26, or 36. Personas represented by nicknames are one way to avoid the problems of your past coming back to bite you.

And, increasingly, there will be a less public world of the internet visible/searchable.