Are Online Reputation Scores in Our Future?

Yesterday, Hutch Carpenter wrote an excellent blog post on the importance of online reputation management and how business and technology trends over the last 15 years are leading us to a future where we might all have reputation scores based on our digital identities. The post, which combines a lot of different studies that we have talked about here on the ReputationDefender Blog (such as the Kaiser Family Foundation study we talked about last week), is very well-researched and we recommend checking it out.

One thing that popped into my head while I was reading Hutch’s blog post was how closely tied it was to some of the things that ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik has been saying in interviews for the past couple of years. In fact, if you look back at Michael’s pre-New Year’s ZDNet column, you will see that one of his social media predictions for 2010 is the widespread adoption of the online reputation score as a replacement or alternative to traditional credit scores. If that sounds far-fetched, consider that we have already seen banks and creditors admit to checking social media sites as part of determining an individual’s credit-worthiness.

Again, we urge you to check out Hutch’s well-written blog post. It is a pleasure to see other intelligent commentators beginning to share their insight into the reputation management field. While you are checking out the post, begin considering how your actions online are contributing to or detracting from your personal and professional success. If you don’t have control over your reputation currently, what are you doing to gain control?