Many people are surprised to learn that, even though they don’t participate on social media and only use their computers for work, they have a digital life. This is partly because publicly-available information about you is collected from the internet, and this information is used by companies to create records about you. Join Kimberley Barker for an overview of topics such as digital privacy, online reputation management, personal branding, and online identity.

1. Introduction to Digital Life
Kimberley R. Barker, MLIS
Librarian for Digital Life
@KR_Barker
Kimberley@virginia.edu

2. Learning Objectives
• Learn to define digital life
• Learn about digital identity
• Learn about how Google works
• Learn about reputation management
• Learn about digital privacy & security
• Learn about personal branding

3. Digital Life
“A personal, professional, financial, and social
inhabitation of the digital world via
investments of time, talent, and money.”
- Kimberley R. Barker
Image credit: Microsoft

4. Digital life: how did it become
possible and popular?
• The Internet
• Cost of technology lowered
– Home computers; records put online; databases
created
• Smartphones
• Music, calendar, GPS, apps (banking, etc)
• The Internet of Things
–Fitbits; smart refrigerators; heartrate-monitoring
clothes  generating massive amounts of data

5. Your own habits
• How many of you Google the following?
– Job candidates
– Potential employers
– Dates
– Children’s friends/counselors/teachers
– Healthcare Providers
– Products
– Hotels
– Restaurants
• How much are you influenced by what you find?

6. Digital Identity
• Property values
• Current & past addresses
• Your alma mater
• Place of employment (past & present)
• Charitable contributions

7. Digital Identity
• Information about your family
• Endorsements
• Obituaries
• Anything you’ve not protected on
social media

8. Digital Identity:
What’s yours?
• What would people find if they Googled you?
• Have you Googled yourself?
• If so, did anything surprise you?
• Were you happy with what you found?
• What do your search results say about you?
• What could your worst enemy do with those
results?

9. Digital Life
Reputation Management

10. Reputation Management:
The Three-Fold Understanding
• Understanding the reputation economy
• Understanding how Google works
• Understanding how to establish, monitor,
and maintain your online reputation

11. Reputation Management:
“The reputation economy”
• Refers to the way in which the standing of a
product/person/institution/business is
shaped by the contributions of customers
– Review sites (RateMD, Angie’s List)
– News coverage
– Social media platforms

12. Why
?

13. Google was King
Data from Hitwise, 1/21/2012
reputation economy neurosurgery

14. Google
is
STILL
King

15. Why are we about to view eight
slides about how Google works?
• If you understand how it, you will
understand how to:
– Positively increase your online presence
– Monitor your reputation
– Formulate a basic reputation restoration plan
– Understand when you need to seek professional
help

16. How Google works (1 of 7)
• Google is comprised of three distinct parts
– Googlebot
– Indexer
– Query processor
• Each part has its own specific and unique function.

17. How Google works (2 of 7)
• Googlebot
– Composed of 1000’s of computers engaged
in parallel processing:
• Requests & retrieves 1000’s of different pages
simultaneously; does this two ways
– “Add URL” forms
– Find links via web crawling
» Fresh crawls
» Deep crawls

18. How Google works (3 of 7)
• Indexer
– Receives full texts of pages from Googlebot;
stores them in databases
– Index sorts search terms alphabetically
• Ignores “stop words”
• Converts all text to lower-case
– Each entry in index stores list of documents
with that search term and also the location
within the text of that search term

19. How Google works (4 of 7)
• Query processor
Multiple parts
•Search box
•“engine” that evaluates
searches & matches to
relevant documents
•Results formatter

20. How Google works (5 of 7)

21. How Google works (6 of 7)
(It’s a popularity contest… sort of)
• PageRank
– Link analysis algorithm
– Page with higher rank displays higher in results
list
– Google uses over 100 factors to determine rank
– How is PR calculated?
• Basically, the more times that a page is linked to
determines its PR
– Built from this algorithm, which is used iteratively:
» PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

22. How Google works

23. Hummingbird
• Google replaced its algorithm in August 2013
• The preceding seven slides are still valid
• Hummingbird is semantic; i.e., based on
natural language queries
– Conversational search technology
– Uses Google’s Knowledge Graph
• Google is looking towards future
– 60% of Americans access Internet on mobile
device
– Spoken searches

24. Mobile-Friendly Update
• April 21, 2015
– Mobile-friendliness
• Tappable buttons
• Easy to navigate from a small screen
• Important information front & center
– Mobile speed
– Desktop speed

25. Why should you care about
reputation management?

26. Pew Internet & American Life’s
Internet & Health Report 2013
http://www.pewinternet.org/Infographics/2013/
Health-and-Internet-2012.aspx

27. Social Media &
Online Reputation matter

28. Googling among employers
is on the rise
• 60 % of employers use social networking sites
to research job candidates
• 41 % of employers say they use social
networking sites to research current employees
• 32 % use search engines to check up on current
employees
• 26 % have found content online that has caused
them to reprimand or fire an employee.

29. No one is
caring about
it for you. 1/16/2015

30. Safeguarding
your Digital Life:
Privacy vs. Security

31. Safeguarding your Digital Life:
privacy
• Privacy describes “the way in which we
gather, store, use, share, and delete data…
helps us to understand what is permissible
and inappropriate with regards to our usage
of data. ”

32. Safeguarding your Digital Life :
security
Information security relates to “the
confidentiality, integrity and access to data.
Information security is born from the
technological and procedural controls that we
place around our data to achieve these goals.”

33. Varying levels of
privacy AND
security

34. Remember this from 1993?

35. Keep in mind…
• Free wifi isn’t free- you’re paying with your
personal information
• Frequently review your privacy settings on all
social media platforms
• Build strong passwords; change them
regularly

36. Digital Life
Personal Branding

37. Personal Branding
“Personal branding is essentially the ongoing
process of establishing a prescribed image
or impression in the mind of others about an
individual, group or organization.”
- Los Ellis

38. Personal Branding
• Have a look at the following logos

45. Personal Branding
• What was your reaction to each logo?
– What did you feel when you saw them?
• Did you recognize them all?
• How much are each of the organizations
part of your daily life?
• How loyal are you to them?

46. Personal Branding:
Key Takeaways
• Choose three cornerstone words
• Write your mission statement
• Appoint a Board of Directors

47. Personal Branding:
Key Takeaways
• Establish yourself on at least two social
media platforms; post 2-3 times/week
• Have a high-quality photo of yourself on all
of your digital real estate
• Monitor your presence & reputation

48. Resources
• “The Meaning of Digital Life”
– https://theartofadvice.com/2015/08/17/the-
meaning-of-digital-life/
• “Digital Life in 2025”
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/03/11/
digital-life-in-2025/

49. Resources
• “Rising Use of Social & Mobile in
Healthcare”
– http://mashable.com/2012/12/18/social-media-
mobile-healthcare/
• The Pew Research Center: Internet, Science,
and Tech
• http://www.pewinternet.org/

50. Resources
• “Number of Employers Using Social Media to Screen
Candidates…”
– http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/number-of-
employers-using-social-media-to-screen-candidates-has-
increased-500-percent-over-the-last-decade-
300258537.html
• “The Reputation Economy: Managing Your Online
Identity in the Age of Google”
– http://www.slideshare.net/KR_Barker/the-reputation-
economy-june-2016

51. Resources
• “The History of Personal Branding”
– https://www.socialfresh.com/history-of-
personal-branding/
• Introduction to Personal Branding
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/personal-
branding/home/welcome
• “The Quickest Way to Annoy a Privacy Pro”
• http://www.csoonline.com/article/3086079/security/the-
quickest-way-to-annoy-a-privacy-pro.html