My online identity crisis

Jennifer Hollett

Globe and Mail Update

There's another Jennifer Hollett and she's stealing my friends. Or maybe my friends aren't happy with there being just one of me. I'm not sure any more. It's a Facebook identity crisis.

My friend Natalie messaged me out of concern. "I think someone on Facebook is posing as you. Before I found your profile, I found a Jennifer Hollett and added her as a friend. It just got confirmed and it's not you. Says she's from St. Catharines. I noticed a few of your other friends on there. I'm wondering if this person is legit?"

My buddy Wilson sent me a note as well. He was convinced it was a technical glitch and Facebook was mixing up our friends.

I type my name into Facebook and there she is. Same name. Same hometown. People think they've found me on Facebook, but they haven't. They've found the other Jennifer Hollett, a recording artist signed to Dirty South Records in Atlanta.

I know she's for real because we've talked on the phone. While I was working at MuchMusic as a VJ, she e-mailed me to introduce herself. I decided to give her a call. I remember saying, "Hi Jennifer Hollett, it's Jennifer Hollett!" It was a surreal moment. Jennifer is a popular name but Hollett isn't. And St. Catharines is a small city.

According to our social networking profiles, we have a few things in common. We both like intense conversations, chilling with our crews, and listening to Cyndi Lauper. But that's about it. I was born in 1975, she was born in 1985. My photo is very playful, hers is very… Playmate. I have 369 friends, she has 2,483. The friends we share appear to be mine.

So I had to Facebook her and ask: Are you stealing my friends?

No response.

Maybe she was mad at the accusation. "Stealing" is a bit harsh.

I was overanalyzing. She got back to me a couple of days later with a friendly message. "I have never had to steal Facebook friends/MySpace friends," she responded.

I guess my friends don't know the real me.

In the past, an online presence was reserved for the famous, the established, and the tech savvy. Today, anyone can make a name for himself or herself online. Social networking and quick and dirty blogs have made it easy. As the Internet connects the world closer together, we realize we're not alone.

With millions creating profiles at social networking sites, identity confusion is becoming commonplace. Just ask Adam Segal.

"Growing up I had known about other Adam Segals in the city, who were also my age," the Torontonian explains. "So I did a search on Facebook to see who these guys were, because I had always been mistaken for them throughout my life. So when doing the search, there were about 50 other Adam Segals world wide."

Segal says that he has been confused with other Adam Segals online, but assures me that he's the coolest. The 30-year-old construction project manager decided to start a Facebook group for all of the other Adam Segals out there. He thought it would be a fun idea to try and bring everyone together.

When I ask him about his Google ranking, he admits that he doesn't show up. "Guess I am not the coolest after all," he jokes.

Google Bill Sweetman and you'll discover an American aerospace expert and author, and a Canadian Internet marketing guru.

The two are often mistaken. The Internet specialist receives e-mails intended for the aerospace expert. To make matters worse, he was reassigned the other Sweetman's old AOL e-mail address. But the biggest mix-up was an interview request from The New York Times for a story about advances in technology. "It was several minutes into the interview before we both realized he was speaking to the wrong Bill Sweetman! Imagine if neither one of us had figured that out before he'd run his story."

Unlike the Adam Segals and Jennifer Holletts, The Sweetmans have never connected online. Sweetman has tried to contact Sweetman repeatedly, but Sweetman never replies.

While Facebooking with the other Jennifer Hollett, I ask her what it's like to share her name with me. "I am my own person and a name is just what it is — a name," she says. But she also mentions that she changed her artist name to Jennessa. Her mom suggested the idea to avoid confusion.

Jennessa, the artist formerly known as Jennifer Hollett.

This Jennifer Hollett is a Canadian broadcast journalist and freelance writer working in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

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