Control-Alt-Delete Your Reputation
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | November 7, 2006 | Share This
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Websites touting the ability to seek out personal information are nothing new, but today Reputation Defender announced their contention to not only seek out personal information, but also destroy it when found. Reputation Defender is a start-up catering to students and parents, specifically advertising their ability to erase personal info from social media sites. For a low fee of around $15 a month, individuals can hire the reputation watchdogs to sniff out personal content, and then contact the host to have it removed.
Reputation Defender is marketing their service to people applying for jobs, parents, people engaged in online dating, and others concerned with personal data sharing. Corante predicts that this is becoming a very lucrative market,
“Aggregation, protection and adding value to nets of personal data online is going to be a huge business. Several companies are looking for the secret sauce of service differentiation and finding a niche that works for their business models. If they execute well, Reputation Defender could own a significant chunk of the emerging reputation management market.”
The real question is whether their technology will prove effective enough to rival larger corporate reputation management companies. Buzz tracking services have been struggling for years to come up with an effective way to manage the brands of high-profile clients. Because of the enormous breadth of user-generated content, it’s extremely difficult to create an adequate search-and-destroy engine that can not only measure updating content in real-time, but also run effective natural-language content analysis. It looks like Reputation Defender has side-stepped that issue by a) targeting low-profile clients, and b) limiting the number of sites searched.
Reputation Defender’s realm of coverage, however, may not be terribly effective if it only scans social media sites. Most of the sticky issues around reputation management are related to high-profile names or around sites that are more difficult to cease-and-decist. Wikipedia, for example, creates a big reputation issue for corporate executives, journalists, or other individuals with enough celeb-factor to be considered encyclopedia-worthy. Reputation wars in Wikipedia often last for months until a moderator puts a freeze on an account. When the “truth” about a personal profile becomes one critics opinion against another, it’s not always the individual in question who gets the last say.
But, I think Corante is correct - this is a big, and growing market. A system that can track down personal content of any kind will undoubtedly have a myriad of applications to user-generated media. Though Reputation Defender may open a new slew of lawsuits over content ownership, better data tracking is ultimately a win for online marketers. If we can seek and destroy within social media, we can seek and enjoy the benefits of dependable social media measurement.
Topics: Technology |
I think they are going to have some problems with this.
Arrrg…
http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=1022
It sounds good but does it really work?
We are entering this niche with a similar product, targeting companies rather than individuals.
I think the commercial sector is more likely to pay for this service than the private sector.
Not sure if ReputationDefender targets online bullying of children, if they do then their product may really take off.