The following online articles uncover a scary big brother scenario for the future of our reputations inhibiting one's ability to gain future employment due to some silly college photographs posted onto a college website such as facebook and myspace:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72063-0.html?tw=rss.index
Goffman's "Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" boiled down in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Life
Listen to: NPR on "Startups Help Clean Up Online Reputations" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6462504
Business Week Online: "Are Online Reputations Portable?" http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/11/are_online_repu.ht
The reality is that college students are getting slammed by future employers and barred from jobs due to an evening of normal college rite of passage. College students are being educated about the new horrors that await them due to their "fun times" they want to share with their friends. Perhaps the education should go the other way around towards employers as well. Employers that use such tactics for employment should be boycotted with a list of their names published for their "police state" tactics. Companies also happen to hire consulting companies to do the dirty work for them and they should be sifted out as well.
In the meantime, a company helping to protect the innocent from these busy bodies is Reputation Defender. http://www.reputationdefender.com/ Much like the way a credit repair agency would operate, Reputation Defender uses competer technology and human search ingenuity to locate damaging content about an individual and have it removed for a fee.
Reputation Defender has a brilliant idea and I give it 5 stars! In the meantime, more needs to be done to right back to defend our lives and freedoms from this invasive behavior. Start listing the names of these human rights violators! Fight back!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
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2 comments:
that's really interesting about somebody or a group of people who have made a business of cleaning up after social networking websites such as facebook and myspace. At the introduction of myspace and facebook nobody would have thought that it would one day prevent people from getting jobs and such. ReputationFinder is interesting because it capitalizes off this social concept. Think about the money-making possibilities that seem to come along from social networking websites. Other ways are advertising, posting facebook fliers and such. Facebook especially has such a niche in a certain age group that it is prime for those companies who wish to market to the college aged. its all genius!
One major concern that companies usually have with these pictures are the photos of college students and others applying for jobs is that they are partiers. I think that these people need to realize that having fun and drinking seems to be the way of life for many young adults. They need to realize that people do it, and i'm sure they did the same thing when they were younger and need to realize that more than likely the employer was no angel in college. I find that there as happy medium between the college students and young adults who part, and those who seem to be partiers. It seems as though these employers are setting a double-standard for the young applicants. I also agree with you that these websites are smart because they are in the interest of the public and making money for simple software! Impressive business!
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