Online Identity and Reputation Management

I think most of people had googled themselves. For some the search results are pretty normal and reflect their online activities, but for others the top search results can be unexpected. My teacher, Annie, who is married but did not change her last name, the reason for this, she found out when she googled her married name and the top search result is a woman, who has the same name with her, is looking for a sexual partner for her husband.  This discovery is a quite compelling reason for her not to change her last name, and plus she does not think the married last name is quite as sexy sounding as her maiden name. 

In this day and age our online appearance is important, personal identity and reputation not only exist in real life but also online. More and more companies use the internet as a tool to find information about their potential employees. A survey by CareerBuilder.com found that one in four hiring managers used search engines to screen candidates. One in ten also checked candidates' profiles on social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. According to a December 2007 survey by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research organization, approximately half of the U.S. hiring officials use the Internet in evaluating job applications. Those statistics should be a considerable reason for anyone who wants a career to start managing his or her online identity and reputation, so I ask what exactly is online identity and reputation management and how to make it work t advantage.

According to Personality in cyberspace: Personal web sites as media for personality expressions and impressions, online identity management can be consider as online image management or online personal branding, in which a individual generates a web presence that reflected in any kind of content that refers to the person. The content can be personal web sites, blogs, forums, social networking sites, picture, and video and so on; then the goals of online identity management are expand the positive online references about ourselves, especially on search engine, build an online identity or presence if there is none or minimal, and finally resolve any existing online reputation problems.Wow, that is a lot of things to look after and worry about, but luckily, if there is a domain for something there are always services fulfilling that need, so there are several tools that aim to simplify this process.

For Starters, Google alerts let you keep track and search what is being side about you online. Garlik.com also works for a similar purpose that is searches the web for any mentions of your name and protect your online personal information. Then the webs that help you manage and verify your identity across multiple websites, claimID.com, MyOpenID.com, and FindMeOn.com.