Reputation Management and Social Media

Madden, Mary, and Aaron Smith. Reputation Management and Social Media How People Monitor Their Identity and Search for Others Online. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, May 26, 2010. 
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Reputation-Management.aspx

In the realm of online reputation management, users want to have control over their information, but they often take the easier or faster route when managing their profiles and other content.  This generally means accepting the default privacy settings or skimming the “terms of service” agreement without much regard.  Why are users so quick to accept the default?  It is the assumption of “privacy through obscurity.”
 
So how much information is really out there?  Forty-four percent of employed Internet users say that details about their employer are posted online, 42% say that a photo of them is available, 33% say that their birthdate is available, 12% that their cell phone number is available, 10% that a video of them is available, and a large segment of the population was uncertain about what information was available about them online.  Yet seven in ten online adults have searched online for information about other people (34).

As online reputation management becomes more complex, it seems that Internet users are less worried about the amount of information available about them, but online reputation matters; 44% of online adults have searched for information about someone whose services or advice they seek in a professional capacity (36).  People are now more likely to work for an employer with policies about their online presentation while co-workers and business competitors can also monitor each other.

Twenty-seven percent of employed Internet users work for an employer that has policies about how they present themselves online (12).  This includes content they can post in blogs or other websites and what information they can share about themselves. 

Only 12% of Internet users post information about themselves as a marketing strategy for their job.  This is called “public personae” and the group is more active in monitoring search results connected to their names, receive a higher ranking in search results, are bigger users of social media, and are more likely to request the removal of content that others post about them (13). 

On a positive note, online reputation monitoring via search engines has increased.  Here’s a summary from this research:

57% of adult internet users now use search engines to find information about themselves online and…

• They take steps to limit the amount of personal information available
• They change privacy settings - 71% of social networking users ages 18-29 have changed the privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others online.
• They delete unwanted comments 
• They remove their name from photos

Social networking users are making changes too…

• 65% of adult social networking users have changed the privacy settings
• 56% have “unfriended” contacts in their network
• 52% have kept some people from seeing certain updates
• 36% have deleted comments that others have made on their profile
• 30% have removed their name from tagged photos 

Of greater concern to my own topic, it is now likely that your Facebook profile may get more traffic than your resume, professional accomplishments, or biography.  Could the development of an electronic portfolio compete for traffic and allow Internet users to create professional online reputations?