The Importance of Personal and Brand Reputation Protection Online

Written by Pablo Palatnik on July 12, 2007

AS THE WORLD WIDE WEB KEEPS EXPANDING and we become more dependant on it for information as we probably are at that stage now, it’s extremely important to protect your brand or name online.

When you go interview for a job, you think employers interested in hiring you aren’t Googling your name? Checking out your Myspace profile? No? You don’t? THINK AGAIN. I know for a FACT employers are depending on the internet to do their “background” research. I asked five executives that own companies with more than 5-10 employees and almost always will search online to check up on the potential employee.

Quick personal tips:
*Google your name and see what comes up. If there is any negative content regarding you, try contacting the webmaster about taking it off. It maybe possible, it may not.
*Register your Domain full name online. (I’ve yet to do that soon…especially with my blog).
*Google/Yahoo search images for your name…make sure no negative or exposing pictures are there. Again, if there is, get the webmaster of the site to take it/them down.
*Make sure your profile (if you have one) on Myspace is set on private so it’s not open for the world to see.

We hear of a lot of identity theft through credit cards, social security numbers, etc. Identity theft will become more popular online. Check to see what personal information if any is published in search engines and social sites.

If you own a company, this is beginning to be an area of concern for big brands, mostly dealing with Public Relations issues. Not only is it a priority to protect the name of a brand but also of that of their executives.

I forgot what company it was (a big one) which an employee was fired and registered the CEO’s domain name, ranked #1 in Google after a few weeks and wrote pure negative content.

Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal had a great post on this issue with the airline JetBlue which if you searched for “JetBlue” on Google Video, the first video was the emergency landing which took place about a few months ago I believe.

Let’s take a very quick example of someone who needs reputation management online as an example. Hillary Clinton.

Look at the first image of her in Google:

Video on the first page of Google Video:

A Look Inside Affiliate Summit East 2007

Written by Pablo Palatnik on July 11, 2007

IT WAS MY SECOND DAY, the third day of the show as it had started Sunday. I was only able to make it from early morning to about late noon. Haven’t been to an Affiliate Summit yet or to any other conference exhibit hall yet…check out what it looks like…(this was in the AM before it got going). Walk with me…

I was able to catch the keynote session In the morning with Mark Papia from Fox Interactive and Rob Nice (I’m not sure if that’s how you spell his last name) product manager of Pay-Per-Action from Google.

It was a great session with a lot of insight from insiders. It’s nice for a change to hear insiders talk other than people talking and speculating about the companies themselves from these two giant companies.

It lasted for about two hours so they pretty much touched on many things. I was able to capture video of Mark talking about the changes from past to present and future of Myspace. It cut off a bit but…close to the end of what he was saying. Here it is:

Here is Mark Papia talking with WebProNews a bit further on Myspace:

Shoemoney had a good show last week on Net Income regarding conferences and how each differs from others in the industry. He described last years Affiliate Summit which really hits it with how it was this year.

Affiliate Summit East Miami 2007 Day 1

Written by Pablo Palatnik on July 10, 2007

For everyone who came here from another state or country to the Affiliate Summit Conference here in Downtown, Miami must be in love with my city. UNLESS, you’re not really into 95 degree blazing hot and humid Miami summer heat.

Due to prior commitments I couldn’t stay for the whole day but this conference is GREAT. It’s my first Affiliate Summit, and if you’re in the affiliate marketing space, you really need to make your way to one of these. There is no better and more effective way than making contacts and meeting the people behind these companies. It’s a conference you actually come out of really gaining great contacts in the biz.

I thought maybe the dates of Ad:Tech and Affiliate Summit were to close together but they are COMPLETLEY different. Affiliate Summit had many faces I recognized and a great opportunity to network. e-Mail networking will never replace the Face-to-Face interaction.

The one session I was able to attend was about monetizing your page which I will get into in a later post this week for you bloggers or webmasters that have a site that has traffic but can’t monetize on!

If you’re attending the summit and see me walking around aimlessly as I usually do…stop by and say hello. A shoutout to Shawn Collins for the pass…he put the affiliate summit together and is doing a great job. Check out his blog: Affiliate Tip Blog

SocialStream Is Next On Google’s Social Media List

Written by Pablo Palatnik on July 9, 2007

As the social space keeps developing and growing, you really think Google will just sit in the sidelines and watch? I think not. Besides Orkut, Google has been working to develop new social media projects, like SocialStream.

Human Interaction Computer Institute states:

SocialStream is the result of a Google-sponsored capstone project in the Master’s program at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. This project was guided by three goals that built upon each other:

* Initial Task: Rethink and reinvent online social networking

* Refined Focus: Discover the user needs related to social networking and explore how a unified social network service can enhance their experience.

* Prototype Goal: Create a system for users to seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks.

SocialStream allows users to interconnect content from different social networks into one. SocialStream would be based on a unified social network (USN), a single network that provides social data to other sites as a service.

HCII also describes SocialStream as, “…emphasizes improving social connections by making it more efficient to communicate with, share with, and view the social content of all the people in a user’s online social network. Socialstream provides a compelling user experience because it aggregates content across many different networks so a user has a single location to discover new content and communicate. The goal of Socialstream is to present social information in a way that ties it to the person who posted the information, and not the site from which it came.”

VIEW VIDEO OF HOW IT WORKS