Controlling Your Online Reputation

"Trying to control, or even manage, your online reputation is becoming increasingly difficult. And much like the fight by big labels against the illegal sharing of music, it will soon become pointless to even try."

- Mike Arrington

Reputation in the online community is becoming increasingly harder to manage. Through the use of the web, individuals can express themselves freely with very little accountability. What we do on the Internet is exposed to a large audience made up of bloggers, consumers, professionals and other types of individuals Consider social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace where pictures are often uploaded by others to portray an individual(s) in a bad light. If that same individual was looking for a job and the head of the company happened to come across tagged photos, the candidates chances would diminish significantly.In the up-incoming week, a startup is launching with which individuals can anonymously post their feelings on someone/something with minimal legal consequences. Imagine going to a site where you are being reviewed anonymously and see negative feedback from an outsider being exposed to the whole online community. This is not a good feeling, especially if trying to obtain a position or network. Aside from people, brand names can gain a negative reputation through bad customer feedback. But what are users doing to safeguard their reputation in the virtual community? Sites such as Reputationdefender.com allow individuals to manage their reputation to a certain degree in the premature stages; if someones name has been blackened through other publications such newspaper, television, etc, chances are its too late to fix.

Rather than try to reject any negative feedback that could blacken a reputation, individuals are starting to accept the theory that reputation is dead and indiscreet remarks should be accepted. Maybe if imperfections are virtually exposed, employers will be more lenient when hiring employees considering how many people are not perfect; one bad photo does not stand out in relation to hundreds of bad photos of different people. Society will start to accept that not everyone is going to have a 10/10 rating and the bar will be lowered. Individuals wont have to work so hard in masquing their daily activities for fear of someone in their network seeing them with their guard down.