2. Reputation.com
⢠Reputation.com (formerly
ReputationDefender) is a private online
reputation management (ORM) company
based in Redwood City, California.
⢠It provides software and services intended to
push down or remove negative information
and create higher-ranking content from a
company or individual.
4. Reputation.com Reviews and
Information
⢠Reputation.com Company Information on Crunchbase -
http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reputation-com
⢠Reputation.com Services Review on Profyling.com -
http://www.profyling.com/reputation-
management/reputation-com
⢠Get detailed information on the companyâs background
and services on itâs Wikipedia page -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation.com
5. Corporate history
⢠Reputation.com was founded as Reputation
Defender by a lawyer, Michael Fertik, in
2006.
⢠According to Fertik, it was intended to help
parents after their children reveal too much
online, but most of his clients were young job-
seekers. By 2007 it had grown to 55
employees and $2 million in revenue.
6. Services
⢠Reputation.com is the most well-known
online reputation management company.
⢠Its tactics and services vary from one client to
another and there are separate sets of
products for consumers and businesses
respectively.
⢠Get more info on the companyâs services,
submit feedback and browse customer
reviews of Reputation.com services here
7. The monthly reports
⢠It may generate monthly reports noting
changes in search results or ask websites to
remove private information.
⢠In other cases it will generate websites and
social media profiles that are intended to rank
higher in searches than negative results. It
may also refer some clients to lawyers
8. Don't make threats
⢠The company often begins by writing to the
operators of websites hosting negative
content about the client, asking them to
remove the information.
⢠According to the Wall Street Journal, the
letters "don't make threats... but instead try to
appeal to recipients' sense of fairness."
9. Newspapers records
⢠It generally cannot remove newspapers or
court records.
⢠The company charges its customers at least
$1000 a year for its services. In 2007 it
introduced a $10,000 service for executives.
10. Patents
⢠Reputation.com holds a number of patents.
"Detailed sentiment analysis" describes the
automated interpretation of a statement such
as "Highly acclaimed surgeon John Smith
was arrested last night in a prostitution sting."
⢠Such a sentence may be interpreted by
software as positive using a business profile,
negative using a legal or vice profile, and
neutral using a malfunction profile.
11. Monitoring for individuals
⢠Applications described include reputation
monitoring for individuals, review of job
candidates, or detection of unprofessional
speech.
⢠"Follow-up determination" describes the
identification of potential reviewers who have
not reviewed a product, and facilitating the
transmission of a review request to them.
12. Targeting review placement
⢠"Targeting review placement" describes
analysis of reviews on several sites, yielding
⢠"An indication of at least one review site on
which the placement of at least one additional
review should be targeted
13. Patented software
⢠Some of the companyâs patented software
includes scoring systems used to identify
consumer information and generate
reputation scores for individuals.
⢠It has software that locates websites where
an individualâs personal data is unknowingly
listed and attempt to get it de-listed.
14. Company Reception
⢠According to The New York Times,
Reputation.com is popular, but controversial,
due to its efforts to remove negative
information that may be of public interest.
⢠According to Susan Crawford, a cyberlaw
specialist from Cardozo Law School, most
websites will remove negative content when
contacted to avoid litigation.
15. Un-intended consequences
⢠The Wall Street Journal noted that in some
cases writing a letter to a detractor can have
un-intended consequences.
⢠Though the company makes an effort to
avoid writing to certain website operators that
are likely to respond negatively
16. First Amendment
⢠The company's CEO says it respects the
First Amendment and does not try to remove
"genuinely newsworthy speech."
⢠It generally cannot remove major news
stories from established publications or court
records.
17. The harassment of women
⢠In a 2009 paper in the Harvard Journal of
Law & Gender, law professor Ann Bartow
said ReputationDefender was exploiting the
harassment of women on the internet for
media attention.
⢠BusinessWeek noted that "Reputation.com
scam" was an autocompleted when typing in
the company name in Google and that many
negative search results were on page 2.
18. Notable work
⢠Two months after the company was founded,
ReputationDefender was hired to remove
online images of 18-year old Nikki
Catsouras's lethal car accident, which police
said was leaked by an officer.
⢠The company was able to get the images
taken down on about 300 out of 400 websites
19. Surprisingly effective!
⢠The New York Post said their effort was
"surprisingly effective" but raised concerns
that its polite letters were resulting in
censorship of material offensive to their
clients.
⢠Newsweek said it was in-effective.
ReputationDefender said
removing the images was
an "unwinnable battle".
20. Competitors
⢠BrandYourself â Founded in 2010, BrandYourself is a
New York based online reputation management
company that specializes in personal branding and DIY
approaches to reputation management.
⢠InternetReputation.com â Online reputation
management and internet privacy firm based out of
Denver, Colorado. Read and submit customer reviews
here.
See a complete listing of Reputation.com
competitors here.
21. To sum it up!
⢠In a nutshell, online reputation management,
or ORM as it's known, is the practice of
making people and businesses look their best
on the Internet.
⢠To accomplish that, people need to control
their online search results because they
frequently contain inaccurate, misleading, or
outdated material which can adversely
influence how web searchers view them.
