I came across this post recently on Bigpond by Meg dealing with online reputation management for businesses, and the point is made that the old line that “if you like the service, you tell 3 people. If you hate it you tell 50 of your friends” was never more apt than in a world where people can make blog entries about things.
I recall particularly this sort of issue from watching Amanda Congdon (I’ve been watching since the Rocketboom days and through to today – there seems to be Another New Project coming), when she dumped on Sprint in the US with this video and praised the boring qualities of the Volvo in this one.
Essentially, businesses need to monitor their online reputation – at differing degrees, but something has to be done. I also think people need to monitor their own personal situation – a vanity search recently turned up my photo on a French forum likening me to a young Bill Gates. I’ll run with the young part. My French is very rusty but there seemed to be an ethical debate over whether they should get my permission before posting it in the forum.
Short answer: “Yes”. Long answer: “Yes, you really should”.
I guess I can understand then why my wife won’t let me put pictures of children up on the web for fear of identity theft/stalking/very much worse stuff than this. There’s also the news out of the UK about blurring the faces of kids’ school photos online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/7280088.stm. In that context I once did some work for a school with a password for a webcam that was set up in the prep kids classroom, so parents could see their charmings and darlings. The password was ‘secure’ in that it was ‘only known by the staff, the kids, their parents, and members of the past students association’. Which was about 8,000 people all of whom I am sure had a blue card. And, it hadn’t been changed in three years. That, my friend, is asking for trouble.
The post above by Meg points to some really good tools for businesses to use in monitoring their online reputation. This can be a fairly simple automatic email or much more involved. I suggest you do it for yourself, your business, and the kiddies!