In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Facebook’s pending redesign, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill’s desire for a universal Do-Not-Track tool, and much more.

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How To Flag YouTube Videos and Facebook Photos for Removal

CNET’s Dennis O’Reilly shares step-by-step advice on how individuals can remove YouTube videos or Facebook photos by flagging them as inappropriate content. While the technique isn’t foolproof, in some cases it could be useful in getting unwanted content taken down. A more successful method of dealing with negative online content is to displace it with positive content.

Facebook Testing Major Redesign

Facebook is testing a major redesign that would allow the company to sell more expensive and effective advertising. Quoting The Atlantic, “The new homepage tweak, if made public (and it probably will be), would keep the placement of advertisements and the menu navigation window static. As the user scrolls down the page, scanning their News Feed and checking in on friends, these elements would follow them. The navigation bar at the top of the screen and even the site’s footer would also remain static.” Because the ads will remain static, advertisers will likely see higher impression rates and higher click-through rates, meaning Facebook can charge more for the advertising space.

FTC Commissioner Advocates for Universal Do-Not-Track Mechanism

FTC Commissioner Julie Brill has continued to push for a universal do-not-track mechanism to protect Internet users from invasive advertising. During a speech at the Center for American Progres, Brill said Web-based companies are “harvesting and trading in information about where we are, what we do, who we meet and what we buy,” and that, “the amount of tracking of an individual’s behavior online — what sites she visits, what ads she clicks on, what she says when she chats and where she wanders through the day — is unprecedented.” Interestingly, the FTC’s CTO Ed Felten questioned the feasibility of an Internet delete button calling the development of such technology a “headscratcher.”

Point/Counterpoint on Internet IDs

Popular Science recently published a point/counterpoint on the subject of mandatory Internet IDs. The first article, which promotes the idea, says “the envisioned ‘identity ecosystem’ will provide Americans with a number of different options for ‘trusted credentials’ that will step up the protection of their online identities without sacrificing their privacy.” The counter argument argues that “as imperfect and piecemeal as our current safeguards can be, creating yet another online ID that hackers will inevitably exploit is not the way to boost privacy or make people feel better about online transactions.”

‘Erasing David’ Documentary Ponders Possibility of Anonymity in Digital Age

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reviews Erasing David, a new documentary film that explores the concept of privacy and anonymity in the new digital age. In the film, the filmmaker attempts to “disappear” for 30 days, and hires a well-respected private investigations firm to track him down. The result is a thought-provoking documentary on how much information we share online and whether we have control of our digital lives.

It’s something that most people rarely consider, but online impersonation is a threat to each and every one of us. In a gripping account for Salon.com, playwright and author Susan Arnout Smith shares her story of how she became the victim of a sustained online impersonation attack and how, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t get Facebook to do anything about it.

The article is so well-written that it merits a full read, but here’s the summary. At the behest of a PR person, Smith overcame her trepidations about Facebook and joined the popular social networking site. Within days, she was already seeing the benefit of the website, connecting with old friends, expanding her professional network, and more.

Then, out of the blue, she received an e-mail from her PR adviser asking about an unusual Facebook profile. It had Smith’s name, it had Smith’s picture, but it wasn’t Smith.

Filled with offensive language and claims that Smith was paying for sex, the fake Facebook profile was a vicious attack on Smith’s reputation. Worse yet, it had been online for eight months, well before she decided to use the site for yourself. In other words, for eight months, someone (or some people as Smith comes to learn) had been pretending to be her online, ruining her professional credibility and destroying her life without her even knowing it.

The rest of the article details Smith’s efforts to have the fake profile removed, explaining how Facebook offered little assistance and how she eventually had to take matters into her own hands to discover the individuals behind the account.

We often talk about the importance of online reputation management here at Reputation.com, but never has the need for proactive ORM been demonstrated more clearly than in this article. Perhaps if Smith were monitoring her name online, she could have spotted this fake profile sooner. Maybe if she’d invested in personal branding tools, she could have fought off the fake Facebook profile with positive online content.

Obviously, you can’t blame Susan Arnout Smith for what happened to her. She was a victim, pure and simple. And that’s the important takeaway from this story. We are all potential victims of cyberbullies and other online thugs. Accepting that fact may be difficult, but it is necessary in the new digital age.

Your reputation is only as good as your Google results. What are you doing to protect yours?

Check out the Reputation.com Resource Center for more information about California’s recently passed anti-impersonation law, and what you can do to protect yourself from online impersonation.

[Image Credit]

In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the future of Internet advertising, whether Facebook is going to build a search engine, and how a resourceful car wash owner tracked down a TV thief on Facebook.

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AdKeeper Raises $35 Million Round of Funding

As debate rages on in Washington D.C. over the legality of Internet tracking and behavioral advertising, one company has received lots of attention for its innovative take on Web ads. AdKeeper, which recently raised a $35 million second round of funding, gives Internet surfers the chance to skip advertisements by clicking an icon and “keeping” interesting web ads to browse later. The company already has a large group of advertisers on board, and will likely release its first public product this year.

Wall Street Journal: What Your Facebook Page May Tell ID Thieves

With the sheer mass of information available about each one of us online, it’s no wonder identity theft is such a big problem. This article in the Wall Street Journal explains how information shared on one’s Facebook page can become perfect fodder for identity thieves. Even the most seemingly inconsequential piece of data can help an ID thief, because, as the article states, “thieves steal identities in pieces and layer them on each other for a clearer picture.” That’s why maintaining control over your Facebook profile, and your personal data elsewhere on the Web, is so important.

ZDNet: Definitive Facebook Lockdown Guide

To help people get started on their Internet privacy resolutions for the New Year, ZDNet has compiled a four part guide to locking down a Facebook account. The multi-step guide offers insight into every part of the Facebook experience, including some of the lesser known features that allow backdoor entrances into user profiles.

Search Engine Land: Is Facebook Search Inevitable?

In an interesting article for Search Engine Land, Greg Sterling wonders what Facebook has planned for its recently announced $500 million round of funding. After discussing possible tweaks to Internet advertising, Sterling writes that the next possible step for the company would be a proper move into search either through the acquisition of a social search company like Blekko or some further development with current investor Microsoft (and its search engine Bing).

Car Wash Owner Tracks Down (and Friends) Thief Via Facebook

The tech and gadget website Gearlog recounts the unusual story of how one man found justice after a thief stole a TV from his car wash. After learning that a TV was stolen from his business’ bathroom, the car wash owner looked over security tape and saw that the thief had previously paid for his service with a credit card. Using the name on the Credit Card receipt, the owner looked up the robber on Facebook and friended him. The thief, who apparently accepts friend requests from anyone, accepted the request, giving the owner access to the young man’s pictures. Once the owner determined that the thief was indeed the same young man, he offered him one chance to return the TV without police involvement. After the thief deleted the owner as a friend, the owner informed the police who promptly arrested the robber.

ClickZ: What to Expect From Online Privacy in 2011

In an article for the marketing news website ClickZ.com, Kate Kaye breaks down some of the big privacy events of 2010 and analyzes what they might mean for the issue of Internet privacy in 2011. Specifically, Kaye discusses Internet advertising and the likely introduction of stricter privacy laws and regulations, such as the FTC’s “Do Not Track” rule, in the new year.]

Woman Sues Four Companies Over “History Sniffing”

In an article for Forbes, privacy blogger Kashmir Hill writes that a New York woman has filed a federal lawsuit against McDonald’s, CBS, Mazda, and Microsoft for using the advertising agency Interclick to track her online behavior. An Interclick spokesperson said the case has no merit, but similar lawsuits have settled out of court in the past, proving that there may be good money for law firms interested in suing over privacy issues.

In today’s semi-shortened Quick Hits, we talk about California’s new law banning online impersonation, whether or not 2010 was the year that privacy bit the bullet, and a U.S. District Court ruling on copyright that clarifies image use for Twitter users.

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California Law Banning E-Personation Goes Into Effect Saturday

A new California law written, by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), banning online impersonation goes into effect this Saturday. The new law makes the offense a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. The law was written in response to growing concern over online impersonation and cyberbullying. The law is not perfect, however, as social media is constantly evolving and the law is not precise in defining criminal online impersonation, a fact that Simitian’s office acknowledges in this article form the San Jose Mercury News. Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik talked about the online impersonation law in a special segment with the BBC in September.

Was 2010 the Year Privacy Died?

In an article for the BBC, Jane Wakefield looks back on 2010 and considers whether mistakes by companies like Facebook and Google indicate the year that personal privacy died, or rather awakened Internet users to the importance of personal privacy for the first time. The article also touches on the subjects of net neutrality and online piracy.

Court Ruling States Users Retain Control of Pictures Shared on Twitter

In a recent court ruling, U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley ruled that images shared on Twitter may not be used by third parties unaffiliated with the website without permission from the individual who took the picture. The case, which affirms standing copyright laws, revolved around a Twitter user’s attempts to sue news agencies that had used his images of the Haiti earthquake in their stories without proper attribution or permission. The news agencies argued that they didn’t require his permission, because the image was shared freely on a social networking website.

Check out the BBC segment below. Click here for the accompanying print article to the video piece.

In our ongoing efforts to help our customers protect their privacy and gain control over their identities both online and offline, Reputation.com is excited to announce a partnership with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). The partnership will allow Reputation.com customers to opt out of direct communications from the more than 3100 DMA members easily and efficiently, providing them with greater flexibility and choice when it comes to their direct mail preferences.

Protecting our customers from identity theft has been a priority at Reputation.com from day one. With this agreement, we have completed a powerful upgrade to our innovative MyPrivacy service that will further help us achieve our goal of giving our customers actionable control over their privacy. For more information on the Reputation.com and Direct Marketing Association partnership, please see the complete press release below.

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Reputation.com, the first comprehensive online reputation and privacy management company, today announced a new partnership agreement with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which represents nearly 3100 companies. The partnership will allow Reputation.com customers to easily manage their mailing preferences with DMA member companies.

Reputation.com is the pioneer and global leader of a growing market geared toward protecting consumers’ privacy and helping them to accurately represent themselves online. As part of the DMA’s Commitment to Consumer Choice (CCC) program, Reputation.com customers will also have the option to choose the types of catalogs, magazines, and other mail they receive from direct marketers.

“We are working with Reputation.com as a result of their commitment to consumer choice and privacy, supporting the rights of individuals to control the information that reaches their homes,” said Senny Boone, SVP, Corporate and Social Responsibility at DMA. “At DMA, we are committed to consumer choice, and marketers are now making it quick and easy for people to control offers. We support entities such as Reputation.com that are committed to building consumer trust in the marketing process across channels, a major driver of our economy.”

Reputation.com has revamped the “Control Your Mail” section of its MyPrivacy product to allow customers to create exact specifications around the types of mail they would like to receive. With the update, customers are now able to make specific opt-in or opt-out choices for catalogues, and make categorical opt-outs from magazines, email, or other marketing offers like coupon books and discount programs.

MyPrivacy is a solution that was created to help consumers control the exposure of their information online. It works by removing personally-identifiable information (PII) from Web databases, preventing personal information from being sold or given away without express permission and providing protection from nosy individuals, credit fraudsters and identity thieves.

“Privacy and control are Reputation.com customers’ top priorities. They want protection against identity theft and impersonation, but they are also very concerned about receiving unwanted marketing offers,” said Michael Fertik, CEO at Reputation.com. “Our partnership with the DMA underscores their leadership in the area of consumer choice and privacy. Together, we are empowering consumers to increase their privacy. We plan to give our customers complete privacy control with new feature updates to MyPrivacy in the months ahead.”

About Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

The Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) is the leading global trade association of businesses and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques. DMA advocates standards for responsible marketing, promotes relevance as the key to reaching consumers with desirable offers, and provides cutting-edge research, education, and networking opportunities to improve results throughout the end-to-end direct marketing process. Founded in 1917, DMA today represents more than 3,100 companies from dozens of vertical industries in the US and 48 other nations, including nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations.

In 2009, marketers — commercial and nonprofit — spent $149.3 billion on direct marketing, which accounts for 54.3% of all ad expenditures in the United States. Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures will generate approximately $1.783 trillion in incremental sales. In 2009, direct marketing accounted for 8.3% of total US gross domestic product. Also in 2009, there were 1.4 million direct marketing employees in the US. Their collective sales efforts directly support 8.4 million other jobs, accounting for a total of 9.9 million US jobs.

The Power of Direct: Relevance. Responsibility. Results.

About Reputation.com

Reputation.com is the world’s only comprehensive online reputation and privacy management company. Through its suite of services, including MyReputation(SM), MyEdge(SM), MyChild(SM), and MyPrivacy(SM), Reputation.com helps its customers manage and protect their online information. Reputation.com also helps customers promote themselves and their businesses online. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Munich, Reputation.com serves customers in over 40 countries and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, technology blogs like ZDNet and broadcast programming, including FOX News, ABC News, Good Morning America, The Today Show and Dr. Phil.

Media Contacts

Raksha Varma

The Horn Group for Reputation.com
Email Contact
+1 415 905 4022

Lara Sasken
Email Contact

The recession has been hard on everyone in the country, but 2009 was an especially tough year for small business owners. Sadly, it won’t be getting much better soon. This week, the National Federation of Independent Business reported that the Small Business Optimism Index decreased another 0.3 points to 88.0 from November to December, an indicator of a lengthy struggle ahead.

Small business owners shouldn’t close up their doors just yet, however, as there are a number of things that they can do to help create new business and expand their marketing efforts at very low costs. I’m talking, of course, about social media. Although they can be tricky to learn, social media tools provide the best opportunity for small business owners to grow their brand organically without hemorraghing the money they need to keep their bills paid. Social media tools are also an important of managing and promoting one’s personal reputation online.

What we hope to do with today’s blog post is help small business owners kill two birds with one stone: Make your personal branding efforts work for your small business branding efforts and vice versa. Now, let’s get started.

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How to Use Your Username

In order to use the vast majority of social media sites, you must assign yourself a user name. Typically, this username also gets carried into your public profile URL. For instance, the official Reputation.com twitter account can be found at http://twitter.com/RepDef. In this case, “repdef” is our Twitter username. What is unique about Twitter, however, is that your username and your real name are shared simultaneously.

If you look again at the Reputation.com Twitter account, you will see that, while our username is “repdef,” at the top of the browser window you will see Reputation.com (repdef). If you sign up for Twitter, you can use this unique functionality to promote your business while also promoting your own good name. In other words, if you are Bill Johnson, the owner of Johnson Tax Prep Services, you could set your Twitter username to JohnsonTaxPrep and also use your real name.

Besides Twitter, you can also play with your username and public URL on other social networking websites, such as LinkedIn. As I showed in our recent guide to making LinkedIn an effective online reputation management tool, LinkedIn users have the ability to set their public URL to anything they want. If we use the Bill Johnson example again, the LinkedIn URL would be http://linkedin.com/in/JohnsonTaxPrepServices while the actual content of the LinkedIn profile would be about Bill Johnson himself.

Be a Better Business Blogger

Does your small business have a website? If it doesn’t, stop reading this post and find yourself a good designer to help you make one. Seriously, it’s that important. If you do have a website for your small business, though, does it have a blog? As we’ve explored previously here on the Reputation.com Blog, setting up a blog for your business is a great way of opening up a dialogue with your customers and getting feedback on how to improve your products or services.

A good example to check out is our very own Reputation.com Blog. The reason we set up the RD Blog was to provide a way for our customers to learn more about online reputation management and Internet privacy issues. If a customer connects with a blog post, he or she may want to learn more about our services, which is why there are a number of navigational links at the top of the page for the Reputation.com homepage as well as other parts of our website. It is important to note, however, that utilizing your company’s blog to bring in customers requires little cost, but lots of effort. Blogs don’t become popular overnight, and it may take time for you to find the right voice for your business.

An added bonus of setting up a business blog is that, if it’s used correctly, it can boost your personal brand too. As you can see if you look at the title of this post, I use my full name when I publish something to the Reputation.com Blog. By using my full name rather than something generic such as “Admin,” I can build up a strong collection of content that Google and other search engines will associate with my name when people search for me. In fact, if you search my name, one of the top links you will find is my author page for this very blog.

There is a trade-off to using your full name when you post, however, and that’s privacy. As long as you’re proactively controlling the content that you put online, this shouldn’t be a problem. Plus, in the context of a small business blog, using your full name will help your customers put a face to a name and let them know that a real person is back there helping them with their problems.

Bring Your Social Networks Into Your Real Network

One of the things that small business owners sometimes forget to do is to carry over their web presence into their real lives. If you’re an avid social media user, make sure that you highlight that fact when you’re meeting with a client or possible business partner in real life. An easy way to do this is to list your social networking profiles on your business card. If you’re preferred method of communication is Twitter, shouldn’t you have your Twitter handle highlighted. Similarly, if you go to a networking event, don’t just write down your name on your nametag, throw in your web address as well.

Another way of incorporating your web identity into the real world is to investigate some of the small business resources in your community. Does your local chamber of commerce have a Twitter account or a Facebook Fan Page that you can connect with? Is there a meeting of dentists/decorators/hardware store owners/insert your job here coming up soon? Tweetups – Twitter meetups – are a great way to expand your network of contacts and promote your business in a real-life setting. If you sense that there isn’t a well-developed social media presence in your small business community, take the initiative to start one. If you become known as the social media guru of your town, not only does the value of your business rise, but so does your personal brand.

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Finding ways to get ahead in a tough economy isn’t easy, but the business owners who take the time to explore the many powerful tools on the web will be rewarded for their efforts, both in their personal brand and their small business brand.

If all of this still sounds like too much for you, call 877-720-6488 to speak with one of our expert online reputation management consultants here at Reputation.com. You can also contact us online using this form. We love helping entrepreneurs promote themselves and their businesses online, and we’d be happy to help you too.

With over 350 million users, Facebook may be the king of general social networking, but when it comes to professional networking, LinkedIn is definitely on top. Since it was launched in 2003, LinkedIn has become one of the most popular professional social networking websites on the Internet, boasting 55 million members in over 200 countries around the world. Best of all, these 55 million users aren’t here to share inane details about their life, but rather to meet other professionals in their field, expand their skill sets, and promote their positive reputations on the web.

If you’re not already using LinkedIn to promote your good name online, you should be. Besides the fact that it will help you expand your professional network, a strong LinkedIn profile can help offset any negative content about you online (or protect you from slander or inaccurate content in the future).

Here are our tips to make your LinkedIn profile a great tool to help manage and promote your positive online reputation.

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Make Your Summary Shine

One of the most important parts of your LinkedIn profile is your summary. It is here that you can tell the world in your own words just why you’re the best accountant/veterinarian/contractor/whatever it is that you do (and why they should want to work with you soon).

In many ways, your LinkedIn summary is like a cover letter that you’re sending to the world. It is an opportunity to explain who you are, what you’ve done during your career, and why you’re good at doing it. In writing your summary, don’t focus too much on specific accomplishments, but on your core skills and experience. You should try to distill your summary into one or two paragraphs so that you don’t bore the reader or sound self-aggrandizing. Also, don’t forget to use strong keywords related to your profession so that recruiters can find you. You can list relevant keywords in the “Specialties” section of your summary.

Use Your Vanity URL

All LinkedIn profiles come with the option of creating a customized vanity url for your public profile. It is important that you use your vanity url so that individuals searching for you on Google can find your information more easily. To create your vanity url, click on the Edit My Profile tab. From here, scroll down to Public Profile and click Edit.

To get the maximum effect out of your vanity profile, you should use whatever name someone would most likely search when looking for information about you. If you have a common name, such as John Smith for example, you can add some other qualifier to your LinkedIn vanity url such as your current city or your primary job function, i.e. JohnSmithTuscon or JohnSmithCPA.

Be Specific About Your Experience

Some people call LinkedIn your online resume, but I don’t think that goes far enough in describing its usefulness. Typically, because of the length and design restraints of most resumes, you don’t have a ton of space to talk about your previous positions. With LinkedIn, you have lots of space to talk about your former jobs, and you should use as much of it as you can.

Under each previous position, make sure to add your specific job function along with specific accomplishments that set you apart from your peers. Also, while this should go without saying, don’t lie or exaggerate your work history to try and sound more experienced than you are. If a past position doesn’t seem like it’s anything worth writing about, consider how your role fit into the greater context of your company and work on crafting a strong sentence or two about that.

Get Recommended

In August, Reputation.com COO Owen Tripp advised that you need “to get some LinkedIn recommendations” and he was absolutely right. The reputation value of having a strong and honest recommendation from a former manager, co-worker, or client is immeasurable.There are some tricks to getting a good recommendation though.

First, before asking someone for a recommendation, make sure that they’re someone who can speak to your work. It might sound good to have the CEO write you a recommendation, but if they only offer vague praise about being a hard-worker, it’s not as valuable as you think. Seek recommendations from the people who know your skills the best so that they can give you a specific shout-out that clearly demonstrates your value as an employee.

Similarly, if someone asks you to recommend their work, and you are comfortable doing so, give them specific praise. Always remember, however, that you don’t have to give a recommendation if you don’t want to. Your reputation depends not only on who says good things about you, but on who you’re saying good things about. If you give someone a positive recommendation just because they asked, even though you don’t have much knowledge of their work, and they end up messing up somewhere down the road, it could reflect poorly on you.

Connect Your LinkedIn Profile to Your Greater Online Identity

If you’re using LinkedIn, there’s a good chance you have your own blog or that you use other web tools such as Facebook or Twitter as well. LinkedIn makes it very easy to share your other web accounts via its websites section. Here, LinkedIn provides three space for you to add links to your most relevant professional websites. While LinkedIn already offers suggestions such as My Website, My Blog, and My Company as link titles, for the best SEO benefit from your links, use the dropdown menu to select “Other” and write a custom title for whatever it is you’re linking to, i.e. John Smith’s Personal Homepage.

In addition to listing links to your other web properties, LinkedIn recently integrated Twitter accounts into its functionality, allowing users who also use Twitter to share their tweets on LinkedIn. When you integrate your Twitter account onto LinkedIn, you will be asked if you want all of your tweets shared. We recommend avoiding this option so that you don’t accidentally share something inappropriate or irrelevant with your professional connections. Instead, choose the option where you only share Tweets on your LinkedIn profile if you use the hashtag “#in” at the end of your Twitter update.

Join a Group

Unlike Facebook, which is rife with irrelevant, silly, or otherwise non-work appropriate groups, groups on LinkedIn tend to be useful for expanding your professional network. An additional benefit of joining a LinkedIn group is that it expands the number of people you can contact through a direct message. Typically, the only way to send a direct message to someone is if you are a first-degree contact. For second- and third-degree contacts, you typically have to ask for someone to arrange an introduction. However, if you share a group with someone and they have their accounts set to accept messages from other group members, you can connect with them directly.

Often, LinkedIn Groups revolve around geography, so if you’re a member of a regional network (Software Programmers in Silicon Valley, for example) you will frequently find yourself receiving invitations to networking events and meet-ups. Attending these can be useful in helping you take your online brand offline and actually meet some of the people whom you know only digitally.

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Now that you have a world-class LinkedIn profile to help you protect your reputation online, don’t just sit back and relax. To really manage your online reputation, you have to be proactive. Get out there and start connecting with others in your field today to build your professional brand and make yourself an indispensable asset for your company.

Humphries, who is currently seeking employment after losing his position as a technology manager in June, writes that his strategy for protecting his online reputation during his job search is three-fold: “monitor, manage, and manufacture.”

To this end, I’m going to share Humphries’ insights for each step.

On monitoring:

Monitoring what the Internet says about me isn’t very exciting, but it’s an important first step. The easiest way for someone else to get some quick information about me is to search on Google, so I need to keep myself informed about the information that Google will present others about me. The first link in the search results that is actually about me is the link to my Twitter account. The first time I checked Google after signing up for Twitter, I was a little surprised to see it so high in the search results, since I didn’t consider it noteworthy. Lesson learned: I need to keep closer track of every piece of online information I post, because there’s no way of knowing for sure where the information shows up.

On managing:

I take steps to manage my online reputation by educating myself, using a pseudonym where appropriate, and taking steps to correct information where I can. It’s been helpful to learn about the way information is collected, aggregated, stored, organized, searched, and presented online. In order to separate information that I want associated with my actual name from information that I don’t, I make use of pseudonyms. Unfortunately, nothing can totally erase information that’s already been published. Often, the best you can do is make the information hard to find, then hope that prospective employers don’t put enough effort in their online searching.

On manufacturing:

Aside from monitoring and managing my online reputation, I’m manufacturing information. If I can control the information that’s easy to find about me online, I can present the best view to potential employers. I’ve set up a Google profile with information that I want potential employers to know. In addition, I’m currently working on a re-launch of my own Web site that I can use to publish information about myself, as well as aggregate information from other sites I use and participate in.

Kudos to Mr. Humphries for taking these intelligent and practical steps to protecting and promoting his good name online. If you’re currently unemployed, we highly recommend you take Mr. Humphries’ advice. It will greatly improve your chances of finding a position. If you need help getting started, feel free to give us a call at 877-720-6488 or contact us online.

If you are fortunate enough to have a job right now, don’t think you can sit back and rest easy though. Maintaining your online reputation isn’t just something that job seekers need to do. If you make one too many social media slip-ups, you could find yourself joining their ranks. For more tips on keeping your job once you’ve gotten it, check out our “Don’t Get Fired Because of the Internet Survival Guide.”

“You better watch out, you better not cry.

You better not pout, I’m telling you why.

Santa Claus is coming to town.”

Before I get started with this post, I just want to say that I love Christmas. I love being able to spend time with family, I love giving and receiving presents, and I love all of the cultural aspects of Christmas too (Santa Claus, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, etc.) Still, when you look back on some Christmas traditions, it really makes you scratch your head.

Think about it. When we were kids, we were told that an old man named Santa Claus, who lived with elves and reindeer thousands of miles away in the North Pole, was silently passing judgment on our behavior, deciding whether or not we deserved to open toys on Christmas morning. What’s more, there was no hiding from Ol’ Saint Nick, because he could see us while we were sleeping and he knew when we were awake. Talk about an invasion of privacy. It’s a good thing most kids aren’t naturally neurotic, or we’d never have been able to sleep.

Anyway, while I was wondering about Santa Claus and his omniscient gaze, I started thinking about Google. Is there a closer proximation of Santa Claus in the real world than Google? For the first time in the history of civilization, practically all of the world’s collected knowledge is at the touch of our fingertips. From Google, you can find out not just whether someone’s been naughty or nice, but where they live, where they work, what they like, what they hate, how old they are, how much money they make, and much more. If Santa did exist, he wouldn’t carry a long list of paper, he’d just bring a laptop with a wireless internet card (wi-fi gets a little spotty north of Greenland).

The truth is that, thanks to the web, everyone can wield the power of Santa Claus, and not just at Christmas time either. Whether it’s a recruiting manager dismissing a job candidate over a nasty blog comment, or a college admissions officer rejecting an applicant because of an unprofessional Facebook page, we’ve seen the story a thousand times over. It’s about time we realized that how we act online is as important as how we act in real life, if not more so. In the digital age, proactive online reputation management is the surest way to personal and professional success. And for those who ignore it? Well, they’ll be having a Blue Christmas indeed.