@Joel Nathan McCracken Your results are just not that good since it will find every instance where your name is mentioned. But t it could work with a middle name good idea.

For example,

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Joel+Nathan+McCracken%22

returns nothing. Although, presumably, it will return this post in the future.

I’ve often thought about this — I think that a globally “unique” personal name is likely to be important in the future. One does not want to be confused.

Alternatively, if someone has already laid claim to your name (e.g. they have the same name), you can invent a middle one for yourself, etc. You get the drift.

1) To notify the owner of the tag. Say, your friends wrote a comment on some website which you might never come across and wants to share it with you, then she/he just needs to add your tag there, instead of directly tell you.. Just like CC in Email or “@”replies on Twitter.

2) To Spam. I have very confidence that before the adoption grows to main stream, spammers will move very quickly to add popular personal tags to their spams. So the personal tag system you suggest seems rather weak to spammers here.

3) Keep the tag secret to fight spam? Will be a good idea. And I believe many user (if any) will adopt this strategy. But this strategy restrict the idea of personal tags from spreading. So, I expect low adoption rates of it.

Anyway, it is a good idea for personal use, not be ideal for sharing.

#ptohb4Duez

But the verification problem is in a way not a real problem. Who verifies comment authors at the moment? There are several comments where somebody has wrongly identified himself as “Florian Bailey” :-)