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July 2, 2007
Refining image
Speaking of reputation management, today's Washington Post has a story as well -- Calling In Pros to Refine Your Google Image:
Google's ubiquity as a research tool has given rise to a new industry: online identity management. The proliferation of blogs and Web sites can allow angry clients, jealous lovers or ruthless competitors to define a person's identity. Whether true or not, their words can have far-reaching effects.
Charging anything from a few dollars to thousands of dollars a month, companies such as International Reputation Management, Naymz and ReputationDefender don't promise to erase the bad stuff on the Web. But they do assure their clients of better results on an Internet search, pushing the positive items up on the first page and burying the others deep.
I find this fascinating, and a little disturbing in a number of ways. The first is in how easily rumor can become fact. Everyone knows that a major benefit of the Internet is the massive available of information. The dark side, however, is that not all of the information is accurate. As I mentioned earlier, information flows are much faster now - both accurate and inaccurate. Sorting out what is true or not is difficult.
That problem is compounded by the need to sorting out what is important or not. Here is my second issue. Who gets to determine what is important? These types of services are paid to make information seeker believe that the good stuff is always the most important. But sometimes the bad stuff is both important and true. I would like to think that if the bad stuff is both important and true, no amount of image management would help.
But, I’m not sure.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at July 2, 2007 10:50 AM
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