Forking my Personal Brand: Identity, Pseudonymity, and Expression: an Intro Post for Nik Revot

I first got inspired by the possibilities of the Internet when someone loaned me a copy of Wired 1.02 - their second issue published - in 1993.

The lead story was about Crypto Rebels by Steven Levy. Needless to say, I was inspired.

The Internet before the WWW

While I had been going on BBSes for years, some with FidoNet connections that enabled world-wide message forums and email, what The Internet promised was so much more. I soon found myself immersed in the command line world of gopher, ftp, pine, and MUDs.

It wasn't long before lynx came along and the www opened up to me. I could go from being a consumer of information to a publisher. I had done software development in Applesoft BASIC and an object-oriented MUD world, but I eventually found myself writing apps, for fun and profit, in languages like VB3 and what is now "Classic" ASP.

In 1998 I created a site that was a very efficient market for a niche that didn't have an efficient market. In retrospect, I should have doubled down and built a business around it, but I didn't have the wisdom at the time to understand the potential of what I created.

Sell out with me

Fast forward a decade, and I had a successful web consulting business doing database marketing for clients all over the country. I was then invited to join a startup and parlay my skills for a number of Fortune 500 companies. I was deep into Twitter and Facebook marketing at that time, with quite a presence for myself on social media and the national speaking circuit. I'd gone from old-school hacker to new-school social media marketer. The money was irresistible. I had build a "personal brand". To this day, that personal brand still exists, and to it I owe much of my continued success in business.

Reboot, Re-engage

But where does that leave me when I want to reignite the fire that was first stoked when I fired up PGP and carefully routed emails around the world before the birth of the World Wide Web? Some talk of blockchain technologies is okay in the circles I travel in, but getting too deep into full-on crypto-currency economies will not jive with the overall message and value proposition built up around my existing personal brand.

That's what intrigues me about Steem - here's a real opportunity to fork my personal brand. To accomplish this, I've setup a new Twitter, GitHub, Email ([email protected]), Coinbase, Reddit, and a number of other accounts, including Keybase.io to enable encrypted communications as needed. I don't expect to be fully anonymous - anyone motivated enough to dox, to the people I'm doing IRL/offline transaction with, can likely discover my true identity. However, I'm pseudonymous - my goal being that any public Google searches of Nik Revot will not coincide with results for Myself - the personal brand I've built up online over the last 20 years.

With Steem (and Bitcoin, bullion, and ...) I have the opportunity to participate in an economy that is legitimate, revolutionary, and in a context that I am in more control of.

More specifically, what are my intentions for this platform?

• Writing: There are a number of things in this intro post that I'm just scratching the surface on - things that I plan to go deeper on as I evolve my posts here.

• Developing: Both direct API integrations and indirect text & social network analysis are on my roadmap.

• Mining: I've been running a miner on my Mac laptop (OSX), as well as an Ubuntu server. Still learning the ropes here, haven't gotten any PoW's but I'm optimistic. But, at least I'm getting it compiled and going.

• Going Long: I have zero desire nor need to make any short-term gains from Steem. All actions in my life are currently aligned to a 10-year plan, and that includes building equity in this platform at a pareto-ratio -- establishing 80% long, 20% short positions within the next 90 days and beyond.

• Being Social: This is a social network, right? That means making connections that go beyond just posts & comments. If your interests align with mine, I want to know, and I want to know what ideas for collaboration you have!

V/r,
Nik Revot