Google yourself lately?

This weeks reading reagarding reputation is one that was highly publicised lately, espcially last semeter. Facebook--once a place for college students to keep their friends informed about their lives became a potential informaiton mecca for potential employers. This created potential business for companies aim to protect reputations. As discussed on National Public Radio everyone can have a person PR staff working for them.

Having a reputation online I think is harder to valudate and proctect because there are no history, non verbal cues and body language to count on. Which is why I think online dating is close to impossible. How can someone trust a profile base on just text or photo? These days any photos can easily be alter. I think there should be a dating sites where a potential mate should get other close friends and contact to build their website rather than themselves. This way a potential mate may find the profile more credible. The more people involved in the building the website the more creditble it becomes.

I question the fact how can all the profile say they are "funny, smart and intelligent" yet they are single? there must be a flaw in either their reputation or something else less to be desired. Therefore, it is always a good idea to google someone before getting too involved. However, as more companies establish their business to protect their online reputation (NPR) googleling someone may not work as effective as it use to be.

An E- Trail

One of the great point made in the reading is how blogging allows for a electronic trail. This aspect of the technology is a reason that can benefit businesses exectives. Especially when the media portray the interview in a fashion far from truth.

Another source of electronic trail is through blogging. It is the ultimate form of keeping thoughts and ideas because it can never be destroy. Once a blog is publish everyone who has internet can have a copy of what has been typed. It is especially true when the blog is read by a large network.

Consumer Power

The reading from Cluetrain Manifesto, Chapter 4, "Markets are Conversation" brought up a very interesteting point about how markets are essentially a conversation between buyers and seller. I do not agree with the author regarding how consumers need to buy more and not just consumer more but more of the same things. More of the same things so that a "one size fit all" model can be used by manufacture to save money and in turns create more profit.

Americans are more in debt today then they were in the past. Driven by credit cards company to qualify people for credit cards and charging phenominal interest rates. Our society is already driven by consumers. We consume the most natural gas and create the most waste out of all develped nation.

The internet allows consumers to chose from a vast amount of goods and products. It also benefit sellers and company from maintaining a store front and start up cost. Through sites such as Ebay and Amazon, consumers have the power to select among a global market. Things do not need to be stream line and often cannot due to the prefereneces among culture.

Internet all around

As I sat in an auditorium listening to Vint Cerf, the "father" of the internet (who now works as an evangelist at Google) speak about the internet I found his note on the globalization of internet interesting. He spoke about how a few years ago over 50% of the internet is in English. As technology advances this statistic is shifting toward the Asian market, now being 56% in languages other than English. He pointed out the fact that this is because of the cell phone, many of which have internet capabilities.

The cell phone is a device that merges the virtual world with reality. It allows for virtual network to communicate in reality through instant messaging. Many messenger devices now enable users to input their mobile numbers to enable them to receive text messages from the virtual network. Similar to what Robert Rheingold (57) said in his book regarding the merge that has happened between the communication nodes.

One of the indicator of advancement in a country is by the amount of land telephone lines, hence many third world have more cell phone users than land phone users. Therefore, I think logically anyone with a cell phone can be connected despite being oceans apart. In the future I believe that the 6th degree of separation will be more true. As the internet integrate into our lives with just not our phones but also in our appliances, cars ect.