The challenge of preserving your reputation online

Stuart Corner
Monday, 29 October 2007 12:26

Opinion and Analysis

It was one of those fortuitous coincidences Shortly after I wrote a report this morning  on the US web site, PlayerBlock , where you can slag your latest date for all to read, so long as they have that person's mobile phone number, I received one of Ovum's regular comment pieces. This one on the new challenges we all face through the rapid emergence of social networking.

Ovum research director, Steve Hodgkinson, had lots of advice on What do you do when somebody puts up on the web something about you or your company that you don't like. However I'm not sure much of it would help anyone who had had the dirt dished on them on PlayerBlock or any other social networking website.

Hodgkinson starts by summarising the relevant characteristics of new media:

•    globally and instantly scalable - able to be seen, linked to, forwarded and rapidly referred around the world by the network effect;
•    persistent - stored forever in a highly distributed, globally accessible, information repository;
•    searchable - indexed by search engines and tagged by individuals for easy and virtually instant retrieval;
•.    'mashable' - able to be cut, pasted, edited and re-mixed with other media with minimal technical skill;
•    serendipitous - available to unknown audiences with unknown interests and motivations.

He concludes: "the reality is that content is now a hybrid of the original message intended by the author and the contributions and interactions of others who have an interest in it."

In this world the traditional reaction of an offended organisation, or individual with deep pockets: suing the perpetrator is no longer appropriate. Hodgkinson argues. "Initiating court action against the owner of a social networking site, [could] be seen as an unreasonable action by hundreds of vocal bloggers around the world - a threat to the freedom of digital speech. People who had no interest in the company or the supposed failings of its products [could] have a very big interest in its actions in attempting to use the courts to influence what can and cannot be said in the context of social networking. The interactive nature of the media [could] enable a rapid and effective backlash."