Anyone can read an AOL Journal. But you need an AOL login to add a comment.

So, no anonymous / pseudonymous comments.

This also means I have exactly one public identity on all journal guestbooks and comment systems. I must maintain one universal persona, one identity to go along with my one ID for the entire AOL Journiverse.

This is a different social construct. I can't separately shield my family on a medical blog, be caustic on a political blog, speak for my company to a disgruntled consumer, or talk romance in another. One AOL ID, plain to see (and search), everywhere.

This feels less free to me. Is this an OK sensibility in the AOL world?

Will people sign up with AOL or get an AIM account just to post comments? Maybe. Or will they shun the AOLjourniverse? Either way, AOL should experiment with other choices.

Every U.S. government agency has a "careers" or "jobs" page. Under new orders, you won't find jobs there. Or be able to apply for them. For that, go to a portal run by the Office of Personnel Management.

Benefits:

• Faster security clearance and background checks.
• Able to mine more résumés.
• Able to browse more jobs.
• Chance to simplify the application process.

Concerns:

• Privacy. Or lack thereof. Could be a Total Information Awareness branding snafu.
• Bland Branding. Forcing everyone to recruit with the same forms, the same tools, makes it harder for job seekers to tell employers apart, to choose the right jobs.
• Choked Innovation. This makes the Fed's recruiting ecosystem homogenous, succeptible to advances in computing. Also means fewer internal innovations.
• Single Point of Failure. Technically, organizationally, and fiscally.
• Raiding the Private Sector. If the economy starts generating jobs, the Feds may make the war for talent even stronger.

Suggestions:

• Federate, don't centralize. Reaffirm your investment in department career sites.
• Open the jobs database to public programmers. Follow the lead of Amazon, eBay, and Google.

Martin Roell asks:

Why don't HR-departments use the blogosphere in a systematic way?

Maybe there is a business opportunity for a "Blog-Headhunting"-Agency here: An agency that searches through the blogosphere to find the right bloggers for a vacancy.

"Need an expert? Ask the Blog-Headhunters."

In this economy, most staffing pros aren't pursuing innovation. Nevertheless, I can see them using Technorati to find professional clusters. 

I wrote about this last year in The Staffing Value of Klogs. Worth a read, even if I say so myself.

• There is more of you in your posts than in a resume. Fresher too.
• It improves search.
• More of the right people show up in the short list.
• Klogs, and tools that help you mine them, improve your marketability (as employer or worker) over those who only use résumés.