On Sunday morning, I Twittered that my aunt Nichole had passed away after a long battle with cancer.

Two days later, I received two notes — one by e-mail and another via text comment to the post on this blog where that Tweet also lives — from former friends and co-workers of my aunt’s. The details in both messages left no doubt that they had the right Nichole, and both commenters shared personal memories — which included a couple of photos of her from the mid-1980s — while expressing condolences.

I admit to being a bit spooked out by the messages first, though I probably shouldn’t have been. I had used my aunt’s full name in the Twitter post — and in retrospect, that might not have been the smartest thing to do, which is why I’m not doing so again here or linking to my original Tweet — and Googling it now brings up my Tweet in spots 2 (pointing to Chris Heuer’s Twitter page) and 5 (pointing to this blog) of the natural search results.

So what have I learned or rather, been reminded of?

  1. Google likes Twitter. The site is full of fresh content, and the domain name carries a stellar Google PageRank of 8.
  2. Think carefully before you post the name of family members or friends anywhere online — website, bulletin board, chat room, etc. As soon as you do, that content will be indexed (presumably) forever, and you have potentially compromised someone else’s privacy or safety.

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