The Internet is a powerful tool and helps users gather audience around them. This means it has a huge potential to either help or hurt the online reputation of the user. Because of this it is important to have an online reputation management. In today’s Internet-driven world, reputation management companies like David Rosenberg’s CleanYourName suggest that users simply can’t afford to have anything less than reputable and trustworthy information for their online identity.
Online identity is the identity that internet users use in virtual communities. Although individuals use their real name on the internet, most of them present themselves through pseudonyms, which reveal different amounts of personal information. On some online communities, including forums, Multi-User Dungeon – Role-Play Games, instant messaging services and Mass-Multiplayer-Online-Games – users can be visually presented with the help of avatars, images with icons size.
And depending how users perform with the interaction of their online-based identity, they create their online reputation, which allows others to decide whether their identity is reliable.
Online identity provides a greater freedom compared to the real identity which is shaped by factors we cannot control – including race, class, occupation, and level of education. With means such as online identity, people have the freedom to redefine themselves how they want.
Many internet users have more than one identity, a fact which is partly attributed to the lack of managerial identity in the infrastructure, which would enable a person to use a confirmed identity in two or more online communities. But when there are multiple online identities for same person, its “responsibilities” can be questioned. For example, this can be exploited to submit copyrighted videos on video channels like Vimeo, YouTube, or a person can start a new identity to avoid the consequences of negative online reputation, to change the outcome of voting on the internet, or to add additional support for the argument in some forum discussion. On the pages of the online auction, sellers can sometimes log in with unreal identities in intention to raise the bid price of the product they are selling.
An online identity that has achieved an excellent reputation is valuable for two reasons:
- one or more persons has invested a lot of time and effort to build online reputation
- other users can check the reputation of identity when deciding whether it is sufficiently reliable
It is therefore not surprising when such internet identities are put for sale on online auctions. However, conflicts arise around the property of that identity. Lately, a user MMORP game called Everquest, which is owned by Sony Online Entertainment, Inc. tried to sell his Everquest identity on eBay. Sony was claiming that the character is their intellectual property, and demanded removal of such auctions under the rules of U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA). The online store eBay was facing charges on the basis of breach of copyright if did not comply with their request. The class action suit never developed and an opportunity to litigate the issue was lost.
CleanYourName.com is a full-service Internet marketing agency offering web solutions for businesses around the world. David Rosenberg suggests that many private users and business owners never think about online reputation management until a negative news story comes to light. When done well, online reputation management serves to preserve client’s online reputation.
David Rosenberg CleanYourName 