My aliases online

 So I just joined Pinterest and I've been tweeking my Twitter page. I have a really lame Twitter accounted that's pretty much never been used other than to follow a couple of people/shops and I've never even tweeted once. I just haven't gotten into it, merely stood by the side when others have had fun. Kind of like at the amusement parks where I've always been too chicken to go with my friends on most of the rides. And so I join Pinterest, yet another facet of social media, without having a clue how to get started with it. I mean, it's not as I need another place to be social at (I'm not a social person and rubbish at socializing really) and spend more time at the computer to keep updated. But I did it. And I'm thinking of becoming more active on Flickr, which I've mostly used to publish pics to be hotlinked in forums or challenge entries (at the Art Bead Scene group mostly).

But that's not really what I wanted to post about. What prompted this post was that all this made me think about how to be recognized online as I started to join communities and websites before I began thinking about having one common online alias, one online persona. How can someone I "meet" on Flickr know that maneki-neko girl is the same person as Vildros on Etsy or kristina on UKBF? I like being somewhat anonymous and have used different aliases so separate the beader from the fantasy reader and so on, but at some point I feel I should tie some of my accounts together so people know that behind the different names is one person, Maneki (which pretty much is my online beading persona, I rarely use my real name online anymore).

Most of the time my alias nowadays is Maneki  --capital m or not, it varies -- but I still use some different names you might know me under. Here are a few sites where you can find me under different names. Links go to my profile page on each website.

Blogger: maneki

ColourLovers: maneki

Etsy: Vildros (no shop, just shopping)

Flickr: Maneki-neko girl  (Katten & Draken is my old account)

Pinterest: ManekiBeader

Twitter: ManekiBeader (used to be ManekisParlblog; haven't tweeted even once)

Uk Beaders Forum: kristina

On forums like Smyckestillverkning iFokus, Nätverket Inspira etc, I'm Maneki.

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Coming up with a good alias is hard, which I discovered when I joined Pärlplatsen, one of the first online communities I joined. I couldn't think of even one good name and in the end I gave up and wrote down Maneki-neko girl because it was something I'd come up with one day after fallen in love with the japanese maneki-neko lucky cats. Anyway, that stuck, but because it was so long many abbreviated it, calling me m-n or maneki. And nowadays Maneki is pretty much my beading alias -- eventhough the name makes no sense to anyone who understands japanese. One several other forums I joined as a newbie beader I didn't use that alias, though, but instead went with the thuroughly unimaginative kristina (most of the time not capitalizing my name).Not only is it my first name, but it's also a very common name in Sweden so it's easy to be confused with another Kristina or Christina.