Average age discrepancy of social networking profile photos?

19Feb/100

I had a funny conversation with a prospective client this week, whom I'd contacted via the professional networking site, LinkedIn.com. It emerged that we had both used a relatively old photo of ourselves as our social networking profile photo. The question was then posed, "I wonder what the average age of photos are?" and the "what's the average age difference compared to users now?".

It seems to me that most people, and I'm talking about my social media contacts who have profiles on different sites, commonly use the same photo. Now whether that's the abstract one that people wouldn't recognise you from or a media headshot in soft focus or black and white, they tend to become your web identity in its own right.

When it comes to image management of yourself, have you ever searched your name in Google Images? You can easily waste an hour searching for yourself, friends, family and colleagues, usually with an entertaining outcome. Try it now and see how you fair.

People might be concerned about high up the search results their own website is, but you need to do some SEIO, Search Engine Image Optimisation to get your good looking self up the rankings and the embarassing images down the pages.

Actually, Google Image Search for SEIO and you can keep abreast of all the action, and SEIO Agencies could be the next big thing if you are interested in not making a right tit of yourself online. Hope you like my made up acronym, you read it here first.

Anyway, I'm sure people search for other people before meeting them, interviewing them or even dating them. I've done it many times, even for a colleague who I was meeting once on a crowded place.

I once saw a t-shirt being sold, and guess they are all over the place now, with "you looked prettier on your MySpace [replace with social network site] page". How true! We're not going to put a fugly picture up now, are we.

Most tend to be (from my limited research) from; weddings, Xmas parties, birthday parties, holidays, social gatherings with friends or professional photos taken as a result of work related activities. Notice how many have that awkwardly placed face to the edge if the photo where the ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife once was, and has been cropped as harshly as the breakup. Lots are of toned or tanned photos of ourselves in exotic locations and on holiday, parading our beauty in a peacock fashion. As for those media headshots that are touched up and make people look as glamorous or as important as any CEO of a company, well, sign me up for one please. Haha.

When discussing this question with a colleague thus week, they mentioned a hillarious story of a co-worker. This employee had over a couple of years taken the 1st photo that was shot for their security pass and photoshoped their heads to be 15% larger. Over the years as people renewed their passes, people had grown bobbleheads without them even realising.

Now getting back on track abd the point of this blog post. My stock photo is of one from a holiday in Thailand, looking fresh faced, slightly tanned and a cheeky smile. Nothing wrong with that, but occasionally I get people say I look younger than I am. I best not ask the 'Guess your age to the nearest 5 years' man on Bournemouth beach to try his luck.

Challenge

So here's my challange to you, dear reader of this blog post.

Go to the About page on this site and take a look at the photo.
Now come back to this post and submit a comment of how many (whole) years difference you think there is between that photo and a recent one on this site.

Tip, the photo was taken in the month of December, so take a look at blog posts from last November 2009.

Good luck. I'm bit going to expose my true age, so your answer may offend or flatter me. Either way, let me know what your social media profile photo age discrepancy is... and leave a comment below.