A final necessary component of self-branding was brand monitoring. Some people set up Google Alerts that e-mailed them whenever their name popped up online, or used Twitter and third-party software like TweetDeck to track how often they were @replied or re-tweeted. Others spent hours on Facebook, Flickr, or Google tracking search results for their name. Glenda Bautista, then head of product for video at AOL, describes this process: “Your personal brand is being affected by—your online identity is being developed by people around you. And again like it kind of touches on the point where I say, you know, ‘it’s not really within your control.’ You constantly have to police yourself. You constantly have to police other people, police your friends. Like nag them to take photos down. It’s exhausting.” This brand monitoring becomes a form of labor that can be both emotional and taxing. It requires continually imagining oneself through the eyes of others, creating a “dual gaze” of internalized surveillance.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 491