Just when you thought you had a handle on your online reputation, along comes the site AboutEveryone.com. Haven’t heard of it yet? I suspect in the very near future, you will.
What is this new site, you ask? Well, it allows people to post anything they want about you, based on your Facebook profile link – completely anonymously. Let me repeat that – anyone can post anything absolutely anonymously about you on this site and the link points back to your Facebook profile page. Even if you have your profile privacy settings set pretty high, most of us still allow “everyone” to see our name and profile picture. So, any nasty comments posted on this site will at a minimum link to your actual profile page and show your name and photo, so people will know it is about you.
The site is in beta now. According to AboutEveryone.com’s About page, don’t expect them to help when someone posts awful, damaging or untrue statements about you:
“AboutEveryone is not the author of the posts that appear on the site. Rather, AboutEveryone is the provider of an interactive computer service. As such, AboutEveryone is immune from liability arising from content posted by users.
Operators of Internet services are not to be construed as publishers and thus not legally liable for the words of third parties who use their services.
AboutEveryone is still in beta. You will have more opportunities to remove content [in] the future.”
Not sure what those opportunities to remove content will be in the future, but I sure hope they provide some mechanism where you can remove defamatory comments or I can see this site getting seriously out of control. The ramifications for your online reputation are potentially catastrophic. There are a few nice comments posted, but the majority are not.
See for yourself…
We will be keeping an eye on this as it develops.
Have you Googled yourself or your organization lately? If you haven’t, you definitely should. Being aware of what’s out there is the first line of defense in the rapidly expanding world of online reputation management.
First, the good news…
You probably won’t find anything that is particularly problematic. But, the full list of just what is out there about you individually and your organization can be really eye opening! You should see certain results pop up, both for you and your company. For individuals, you should expect to see results such as:
- Your bio page on your organization’s web site
- Your LinkedIn Profile
- Your Google Profile
- Your Facebook Page (depending on your privacy settings)
- A personal blog, if you have one and blog under your actual name
- Other references to you on the web, including places where you might be listed as a member, volunteer, sponsor or board member
- Links to other social media sites you participate in (depending on your privacy settings)
For your organization, if you’ve done a good job with SEO, you should expect to see results such as:
- Your company’s web site
- Google Places page
- Local links in Bing or Yahoo
- Your company’s Facebook page
- Listings on directory or local search sites, such as Yelp, Insiderpages, Yellowpages.com, etc.
- Links to employee or board member LinkedIn Profiles
- Other references to your organization on the web, including places where your company might be listed as a member, sponsor or contributor
But, what else might be lurking out there?
Sometimes, the answer to that question can be a little horrifying. Surprise results can range from the relatively benign – links to another person with the same name, which can create confusion, to the downright panic-inducing – finding an entire blog or web site dedicated to excoriating you or your business – and everything in between.
It is a little disconcerting to think about, but pretending that the information isn’t out there, really is not a viable approach to protecting and managing your online reputation. It is a fairly regular occurrence to find severely outdated or incorrect information about you or your organization. It might surprise you to know that Google has very little interest in verifying the “truth” of content they index. It is important to realize that the truth according to Google, is for all intents and purposes, considered to be the truth, period.
So, what can you do?
Knowledge is power and the first step in starting to address any misinformation in Google results is knowing that it is out there. We suggest that clients make it a regular practice to Google themselves and their organizations at least once a quarter (or more frequently if you sell directly to the public) so you know what’s out there. These days, you have to assume that at least 75% of potential customers or employees will Google your company at some point in their decision-making process. You need to know what they will see so you can be prepared to discuss it and professionally correct any misinformation you’ve found.
Preventive maintenance when managing your online reputation is always a good idea. If you discover a major issue in your searching, it may be time to bring in a professional to help mitigate the damage and start the hard work of repairing your online reputation.
Search engines are going social – at least in the results you might see. Both Google and Bing have recently announced changes to their search results algorithms that will start to include “social” results. What are social results and what does this mean for you SEO and social media strategy?
Both sites describe social results as including links that have been publicly liked, shared or commented on by people in your social networks. What does this mean in a practical sense? For some searches, it won’t impact your results at all and for others, you will start to see links endorsed by friends throughout the search results for your queries. Both Google and Bing are banking on the idea that knowing what your friends like is valuable data in your decision-making process. Looking for a restaurant for dinner this weekend? Now you can see more links from your friends. Need a plumber or contractor? Now you can see who your friends like (and dislike) right in the search results.
I tried several searches myself and did not see any social results. I expect that this will change over time though.
So, what does this mean for your SEO and Social Media strategy? It is not completely clear at this point, but what does seem clear is that the convergence of your brand controlled web properties and social media activity will likely become even more intense as this type of search matures. We will be following this story as it develops so we can keep you up to date on the ever-changing social and search landscapes!
Have you noticed a difference in your search results? Let us know, we’d love to hear about your experiences.
Here are the announcements about this from:
Bing
Google
Facebook is in the news again this week with the announcement of its new “Sponsored Stories” ad product. This on the heels of the rollout and subsequent rollback of granting applications access to users’ home addresses and cell phone numbers. So, what is this latest “feature” and how might it impact you and your Facebook habits?
In a nutshell, this new feature would take various actions, such as Liking, posting a comment on a fan page or checking in and turn them into ads. The program is being piloted with a small set of advertisers, but Facebook has made it clear that this “service” will be available to any company in the future. What does this mean, in real terms, for you, the user? Say you’re at your local Starbucks and you check in. With this new feature, Starbucks could take your check in and create an ad that would appear in your friends feed, with your name and profile photo beside it. You don’t opt-in to this and you can’t opt-out. There are no parameters for how often a company could use your actions or for how long.
Facebook’s attitude seems to be that they are only highlighting information that you chose to share anyway. Which, in a way is true. But, they also fail to see the nuance here, as they seem to do so often when it comes to users’ data and posts. Me, taking an action, such as Liking a company has historically shown up on my profile page and in my friends’ news feeds as a single line – Julie Friedman Bacchini likes Company X, for example. I’m ok with that, I chose to Like Company X. By Liking them though, am I giving them permission to use me in an ad for Company X as an endorser? I don’t think so, and at a minimum, I should have a choice about that usage of my name.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out…
You can read more about this on:
It is getting a little tedious writing about Facebook and its seemingly continual issues with protecting user data. The latest privacy issue to arise with Facebook is the news that the social networking giant this week, began allowing applications to have access to your physical address and your cell phone number. Just take a moment and let that sink in… Like with any application, you must grant it permission to access this information, but most users don’t understand what they are agreeing to when they grant an application access to their profile information. You do have the option to not allow access to this information, but the default is, if you grant an app access to your profile, it will have access to this information.
After a ton of coverage and serious concerns about user privacy, Facebook announced on Monday that they will temporarily suspend this service until the can “fine tune the way it works”.
I’m not sure why Facebook continues to move in this direction? Maybe they figure they’ve got enough users and enough marketshare that even if they are cavalier with users’ data people will complain, but won’t actually stop using their service. That seems shortsighted to me, but I suppose only time will tell.
What can you do if you don’t want apps to have access to this information? You could disallow access to this information when you grant an app access to your profile. Or, you could simply remove your address and cell phone information from your Facebook account all together. There is no reason for Facebook to have either piece of information, in my opinion. I’ve already commented on posting your birthday, as it is one of the key personal identifiers used to authenticate individuals. What do they ask you when you call your doctor’s office right after your name – date of birth.
Read the full story at about the program suspension at CNN.com. You can read more about the specifics of the new app permissions, in their previous form, at The Atlantic.
We will continue to follow this issue.
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released a study about Twitter usage last week and it is full of some very interesting stuff! The headline for the study on Pew’s web site is “8% of Online Americans Use Twitter”. Twitter promotes itself as having millions of users worldwide, but there has not been a lot of data available about who is using Twitter and how they are using it. It is a tool that many businesses and organizations are struggling to figure out how to use in a way that produces tangible results.
What else did the study show? A few other highlights include:
- The biggest age demographic for Twitter use is the 18-29 bracket
- Women are slightly more likely to use Twitter than men
- Urban populations are the heaviest Twitter users
The most interesting finding, I think, was this:
One-quarter of Twitter users check in multiple times per day for tweets from others, while one in five never check for new material on the site…
In the follow-up questions on those October surveys, we found that Twitter users are nearly equally divided between those who check the site on a daily basis (or multiple times per day) and those who check the site infrequently or never.
The study also found that the greatest number of posts were of a personal nature.
So what does this mean for your organization? It certainly raises some questions about Twitter users. I think there has been a tendency to think of Twitter users monolithically, which does not seem to be a smart approach. This study should remind us that all channels we use to communicate with our customers require specific strategies and may also require micro-strategies to reach different target audiences or achieve different engagement goals.
I’d encourage you to check out the full report on the Pew Research Center site – here.
Facebook recently enhanced its Groups feature – as is the case with many enhancements, the new feature also comes with a few potential problems.
What’s changed in Facebook Groups? Essentially, now any of your friends can add you to a Group – you need not agree or opt in to be added. The idea behind this feature was to allow users to create subgroups within their Facebook friends so that you could share some information with select sets of friends and not necessarily all of your friends. This ability has been available in Facebook through the use of Lists, but most users have no idea that feature exists, or how to use it. Groups have 3 levels of privacy available – Open, Closed and Secret.
I think allowing Facebook users more control over what information is shared with which friends is a great idea. Being able to separate out posts for friends, family and co-workers just makes sense.
Reaction to this new feature has been mixed. There have been the expected cries about privacy – and I see where these folks are coming from on that. I really don’t want anyone adding me to a group without my consent… When you are added to a group (either by doing it yourself or having someone add you) it generates a news item that goes into your feed and spreads across your network (unless the group is secret). For me, it just adds one more thing to have to monitor – not exactly an enhancement for a casual user like me.
You can’t opt out of this feature either – there is no mechanism to have your default setting be that no one can add you to a group. See Facebook’s Help Answer here.
And then there are the marketing possibilities – imagine organizations and companies creating groups and tapping some of your friends to be part of them. Before you know it, you could be added to quite a few of these purely marketing groups… See this article on Yahoo! for more.
Is this feature a major concern level issue? Probably not. But it certainly has the potential to make Facebook more frustrating to use. One of Facebook’s recommendations to help make sure you don’t have people adding you to groups you don’t want to be added to is to be careful whom you choose to friend… easier said than done. Interesting too, since several of Facebook’s other changes in the past year have been encouraging users to share more and more information with more and more people.
What do you think? Will this change the way you use Facebook? Does it even matter at this point?
Not to pile it on Facebook – I know it has been a topic of a lot of my posts, but when news of privacy issues breaks, it just isn’t something I can ignore. Especially knowing how many people use Facebook and how few actually understand how it really works.
I’m not opposed to Facebook, in fact, I find it quite useful to keep up with friends and family who live in different time zones! But I do believe that I, and all users, should be in complete control of the information we decide to post on the site. I am of the belief that whatever you decide to post online, you should inherently understand that you have a lesser “expectation of privacy” (to borrow a Law & Order term!) than you would, say having a face to face conversation with someone. I think we all accept that in exchange for the connectivity these types of programs offer us.
But, when things are happening behind the scenes, without our knowledge or opt-in consent that shares or potentially compromises our information, that is where I think the line must be drawn.
So what’s this week’s issue? Apparently, many of the uber popular apps in Facebook have been capturing personally identifiable information or users and sometimes of their friends and storing it and/or providing it to third party companies. As usual, the Wall Street Journal has a fantastic article on the topic today:
“Apps” are pieces of software that let Facebook’s 500 million users play games or share common interests with one another. The Journal found that all of the 10 most popular apps on Facebook were transmitting users’ IDs to outside companies.
The apps, ranked by research company Inside Network Inc. (based on monthly users), include Zynga Game Network Inc.’s FarmVille, with 59 million users, and Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. Three of the top 10 apps, including FarmVille, also have been transmitting personal information about a user’s friends to outside companies.
Read the full article here.
To Facebook’s credit, they are taking this revelation very seriously and seem to be making moves to curtail the practice and disable apps that violate Facebook’s privacy terms. In the meantime, now, as always, be thoughtful about what you post online, even if you have your privacy settings set at the highest level. It is ultimately up to you to manage what is even available to a site like Facebook.
The Wall Street Journal has a fantastic series all about this topic – it is definitely worth the read.
The article that originally caught my eye was addressing the topic of data scraping and its pervasiveness. Most of us think that only some of what we might post online is vulnerable to being captured and attributed to us, right? Not so fast! We all know that Google has tons of information in its database about what we search for, and most of us don’t give it a second thought. We also all know that if you create an account with a web site, that company has your particulars.
But what about the stuff you post on a site behind a login, such as Facebook – that is private, right? You have complete control over who can see your postings through the site’s privacy settings… or do you? I’m not just picking on Facebook here, the data scraping is happening over the entire web. I’m using Facebook as an example because it is so widely used. Companies often engage services that help them to find information online about prospective employees, including “private” posts. The WSJ article highlighted a particular case where a marketing company was scraping a private patient discussion board.
Pretty unnerving stuff. I guess the old adage “never put anything into writing you wouldn’t want to have to admit to later” now goes a step further. Don’t post anything online that you don’t want to have to answer for later. To their credit, most web sites are actively mounting defenses against this type of scraping, but much like viruses, it is a constant game of catch up and innovation.
So what’s the bottom line? Most of us know that when we post something online, even if the site is “private” or password protected that there is always some risk of the data being accessed by unauthorized persons. In exchange for easy communication we have ceded some ground on the privacy front – it is a deal we are generally willing to make these days. But it is certainly worth thinking about…
Managing your online data and your online reputation gets more complicated by the day!
Access the WSJ section here.
Facebook unveiled its new Places feature today. What does this feature do? Why should you care? How can you adjust your account settings?
What does this feature do?
Facebook Places is a geolocation or location-based functionality where you can “check in” via Facebook and let your friends (or the world) know where you are at any given moment. The functionality currently works with iPhones and can also be accessed with other smartphones via the web. Android and BlackBerry support is said to be coming soon.
Why should you care?
Not everyone wants others to literally know where they are – with GPS precision. There are the obvious safety issues to consider and it is probably not a great idea to tell the world you’re on vacation and exactly where – nothing like pointing a neon sign to your empty house! The feature is automatically enabled in your account, but if you don’t actively check in, your location probably won’t appear on your profile or in anyone else’s feed.
If you don’t want your location shared, ever, you should update your account’s privacy settings so that others cannot check you in.
How can you adjust your account settings to completely opt out?
Go to Accounts and choose Privacy Settings. In the list of settings you control, you’ll see a new one called Places I Check In. Click on the Customize Setting option. When you get to the next screen, in the Things I Share area you will see a choice for Places I Check In – choose the level of privacy you want. If you don’t want your location to ever be shown, choose Only Me from the options.
To make sure no one else can check you in either, you’ll need to change another setting. In the Things Others Share section, scroll down to the Friends Can Check Me In to Places option and disable it.
How much information you want to share about your real time, actual location is an individual choice. Just make sure you know how your settings are configured so that information you do not want to be shared remains private.
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