Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch, argues in the article linked below that online reputation is dead. He says the issue has passed because we are not in control of our online reputations and everyone knows that online reputations are over-inflated.

I not only disagree, I vehemently disagree. When a story breaks in the mainstream media that is bad for someone’s reputation (see: Mel Gibson or Lindsay Lohan), that story takes on new life online. It hits the Internet within seconds and becomes a firestorm of criticism. From anonymous blogs and low-perched twitter handles, commenters lob reputation bombs at their targets and they often succeed in further injuring the individual’s reputation.

Arrington says that everyone realizes online reputation is overblown and at the whim of anonymous Internet users–and that is why it is “dead”. However, if the average person wakes up and sees “Bill X is an idiot” scrolling across Twitter’s most talked about subjects, he will not be of the same mind. He will be rightfully concerned about how this online reputation will affect his actual reputation. This is the key as to why online reputation is not dead–because real life reputations aren’t dead. One is simply a digital abstraction of the other.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/reputation-is-dead-its-time-to-overlook-our-indiscretions/

Yelp! is an online social networking website that allows consumers to review businesses and their products online, without ever having to make a mean face, give a bad tone, or say a mean thing in person. It is all of the damage of a complaint without any of the negative drawbacks that keep consumers from doing it constantly.

Janet Rothstein didn’t know she had an unhappy customer until she read it on the Internet.

Her Beverly Hills, Calif., store, J. Rothstein & Co., had received all thumbs up on the “city guide” Yelp.com. But then last year a shopper used the website to complain about an engraving. Rothstein was mystified—and a little unnerved—considering the woman had never contacted her. Then she figured out who the writer was and gave her a call. Says Rothstein, “I dealt with her on a personal level” by hearing her out. Then she found a new engraver who delivered the “unique” look her customer was hoping for.

After addressing the issue, Rothstein, who would have recommissioned the job even if she hadn’t been publicly badmouthed, asked if the woman would change her review and she agreed. (It’s worth noting that the adjusted version is hardly a rave. It begins: “After a somewhat shaky start and a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings, I was able to get exactly what I had wanted from Rothstein’s.”) And while the jeweler got exactly what she wanted—a far less negative write-up—she is slightly chagrined that such a small problem could become so public and potentially damaging to her business.

Some retailers have even been forced to rely on online reputation management services in order to repair the damage done to their brands by Yelp! and other online review systems like it.

http://www.jckonline.com/2010/07/19/help-i-ve-been-yelped

Geo-tagging is one of those terms that sounds like it should make sense but it’s difficult to really pinpoint its definition unless you’ve been using the phenomenon that is FourSquare on your mobile phone or other mobile device. That’s because FourSquare is basically the daddy of all geo-tagging and when the numerous copies hoping to piggy back off the success of FourSquare crop up the term will become known even to mobile silver surfers.

The principle is that mobile phone owners can visit a location such as a pub, bar, or café, and upon doing so they log into their FourSquare account and tag the location as having been visited. They are then rewarded with points and other rewards, and many businesses are offering their own incentives to attract geo-taggers from around the country to enter their doors.

If you own a mobile phone and you get a decent mobile Internet allowance then you should really check it out because all the kids are doing it – OK, so that’s not always a good reason to check something out, but in this case it really is. Look for local businesses and major organisations that are listed.

If you have a business of your own then you can list it and offer incentive to consumers to come and visit. If you have a social themed establishment like a bar or a café then this is an especially good idea – just ask Domino’s Pizza who attributed a lot of their recent bumper results to their FourSquare initiative and other social networking programs.

Have you geo-tagged any local businesses yet?

One of the largest concerns about social media for businesses and individuals is opening themselves up to criticism. If information about you or your business is available online, it might provide ample opportunity for others to say negative things about you or your business.

Often this is the case. Businesses often go to online reputation management services providers in search of social media monitoring tools–but those tools are available elsewhere.

If you are  businessman hoping to monitor what people are saying about a particular product, or a person who wants to make sure you aren’t being defamed, simply look to tools like Twitscoop, Monitter, Yahoo Alerts, Google Alerts, trackur, or radian6. These tools can help businesses to know where and why they are being talked about.

This article at one of the Washington Post’s blogs is a brilliant summation of why people should take care of their online reputations. The title of the blog post sums it up — Manage your own online reputation, before someone else does.

Purchasing your domain name is incredibly important to protecting your online reputation. For example, if your name is Amy Bellatrix, you should probably purchase AmyBellatrix.com. This will prevent people from buying that website and putting up nasty comments about you that are untrue or posting information about you that you would not want publicly available. Developing a blog and connecting to your name to it works the same way–you need to develop links which are connected to you, rather than letting Google or Yahoo Search do it for you.

Mostly important, watch out for your online reputation. Google reputation management is effective, but it is not something you want to have to resort to if you can avoid it.

Twitter is by far the most popular and most populous of all micro-blogging platforms, of which there are an increasingly large number. It enables registered users to post messages of up to 140 characters in length and it is used by everybody from angst ridden teens to musicians, politicians, and international businesses. It can be integrated into other websites and social networking sites like Facebook and Tumblr or it can be used as a standalone method to improve your online reputationand direct traffic to your website.

For video editors and producers there’s a site called 12seconds.tv. As the name suggests  it is an extreme video blogging site that affords its users 12 seconds of video footage with every single post. Anybody that’s even tried to condense useful information down to a couple of minutes will know how potentially difficult this can turn out to be but it has produced some very interesting results. The video posts can also be integrated into othersocial networking sites and websites making it a great way to add unique media footage.

The website dailybooth.com is another media based microblogging platform this time aimed at photo blogging rather than video or text blogging. The site actively encourages registered users to post a new photo every single day. Realistically,as you can onlyadd photos, this makes the uses of dailybooth.com severely limited except for niche use. However, it is kind of a fun website and if you’re regular photographer then it could provie some benefit to you.

June is National Internet Safety month, apparently. The National PTA and Facebook, amongst many others, have partnered together to host this. Events are being held all across the country that teach parents how to shield their children from the occasional harmful effects of the Internet. One of the major themes at these events is online reputation management.

Why would someone’s online reputation effect Internet safety? Well, if kids have their addresses, phone numbers, and pictures posted on facebook and a predator can search for, and find that information via Google, then there is a real safety problem. Internet predators are a major problem, especially on social networking sites which–all too often–get indexed into search results and used by those who have less-than-honorable intentions.

Social networks come in many shapes and sizes. While sites like Facebook offer virtually every type of social networking tool from business fan pages to simple status updates, there are sites that are much more specific in their service offerings. Similarly, different social networks tend to attract a different crowd of people. For these reasons it is important to set your social networking goals before you start. Determine whether you want to generate new business, stay in contact with existing customers, or manage your online reputation.

Communication is key to the long term survival of any business. Twitter is one of the busiest social networks around, enabling individuals and businesses to connect with others and to deliver brief stats updates. It is quick and simple and it’s virtually guaranteed that at least some of your customers are already using it. The nature of social networks means that many of those customers will be willing to follow you if they enjoyed a positive experience with you and your business.

Internet reputation management means controlling search results and social network results. When a potential client searches for your business name, do you know what they will see? You should and, what’s more, you should have some control over what appears. Create profiles with a number of networks and blogging services and make sure your profile is a positive one. Engage others and build on existing relationships in order to truly leverage the viral nature of web 2.0.

Facebook has faced serious backlash over their lack of privacy after the latest round of changes to the platform. The concern that facebook users have is that the default settings are now set to reveal quite a bit of information, to search engines and other sources. There have been concerns about how this lack of privacy could effect a users’ online reputation.

The recent firestorm over Facebook’s approach to securing the privacy of its more than 450 million users continues to reverberate around the globe this week as thousands of news outlets cover the unfolding drama with almost breathless zeitgeist. And while traditional outlets are grappling with what it all means for the future of Facebook, online denizens have trumpeted their angst about the company’s most recent changes with more than 25 million blog posts.

25 million blog posts is nothing to shake a stick at–it represents widespread discontent.