This is the second post of this series.
People ask why I use the name Stegzy Gnomepants. I usually say "Mind your own business". Sometimes, however, I'm not so rude about it; the reason I use the name Stegzy Gnomepants is because people know me by that name.

Tardis yourself forward in time to 1998 when I bought my first PC. It was a Pentium 266. It cost me £1000 or there abouts. Top of the range. Fast modem (56kpbs). A whopping lump of RAM (something like 16Mb). A cavernous hard drive (approx 512Mb). I connected to the internet and restarted my online life as Stegzy.
Internet fashions came and went. AOL IM, CompuServe, that weird virtual world that Demon Internet had for a few years, Usenet newsgroups - all using the name stegzy. The Gnomepants bit came shortly after, when, as more and more people began using the internet, names were getting quickly claimed by other users. Yes, another Stegzy started to appear. I had to distinguish. Someone I knew then affectionately used to call me Gnomepants, I adopted that name as my online personalities surname.


So lets look at this again....1986 I begin using the name Stegzy. Stegzy Gnomepants circa 1998. People I meet on line know me as Stegzy Gnomepants. I spend the majority of the period 1998-2004 online as....Stegzy Gnomepants. Then some bloke comes along and creates a website called Facebook which nobody had heard of.

2006ish. Good online friend Dan4th (Hi Dan if you still read!) tells me about some website where American kids hang out. Fascist books or Fuctbook or something. Oh yes...Facebook...I'll sign up. Stegzy Gnomepants.
Blogspot arose - Stegzy Gnomepants; Wordpress - Stegzy Gnomepants; Hell, I'm Stegzy Gnomepants on the BBC, Ebay, everywhere. Search google. You'll see me using that everywhere and I have been for a very very long time.
Once more lets step back and look -


Think that makes me win.

I teach Social Media for Business during the day. In my lessons I advise that to be successful online you need to remain consistent across all platforms. Use the same username where possible. The same avatar. The same contact details. Thats how people know who you are.
Mr Zuckerberg, if I'm to change my name just for your silly little empire, then my influence will have no weight. Businesses will not use me as an influencer. I cannot be a potential brand ambassador for your clients. I am the celebrity. I am the authority. I am the connector, the expert, the agitator. I am the journalist and the activist. I am the personal brand personified. That means my real identity is nothing to you or your customers, the people you sell our details to.
Yes I know you say I can create a PAGE but with a page I cannot interact with people as a person. Like things as a person. Interact, engage and amplify as a person online. Especially with products, services or similar which anyone can see me liking, make a judgement on my character. My beliefs. My choices. People that judge. People who I have no wish to share my identity with.
Someone said about my last post on this matter "If you don't want to adhere to the Facebook's terms and conditions don't use it". Something I am considering. Very hard. Perhaps over to Google+, who realised a very long time ago, forcing your "product" to use something in a way they don't want to leads to failure. Isn't that right Google Wave?
So when the call comes I will depart from Facebook. I will leave it never to return. You can continue to read my exploits here on Livejournal (though I'd prefer if you did it on Wordpress) or follow me on Twitter (@stegzy). Facebook postings will decline. I'm sorry if you, like Zuckerberg, no longer want, care or give a stuff about what I say, like or want to share with you. I'm sorry if you no longer want to fuel our social media narcissism together. But if that's the way you want to play, I'll let you take your ball home by yourself. Just mind you don't trip over those toys you claim I threw out of my pram.