Classifying the tools of online reputation management

25 February 2008 by Olivier Zara.

Certain services, such as Google with its PageRank algorithm or eBay, owe the lion’s share of their success to their reputation management systems, even though these do not represent their core offering. Thus, one can argue that reputation management is sometimes a very useful “add-on.” One could even go so far as to define Google and eBay as, first and foremost, tools for reputation management which happen to incidentally provide a search engine in the case of Google and an e-Commerce site in the case of eBay!

This post offers a way to classify the tools available to manage your reputation on the Internet. The following analysis deals with any and all services that, as a core or subsidiary offering, either directly or indirectly, provide a system for evaluating reputation. Services that enable you to promote your reputation will be dealt with in another post since this involves a different dynamic (communication). Incidentally, communicating about your reputation is as essential as building it in the first place! Once you’ve succeeded in creating your digital reputation, it will become necessary to enhance its visibility and to promote it.

The goal of this post and of the following posts is to enable you to:
- understand the inner workings of each service,
- compare them with the help of relevant criteria and,
- develop a global understanding of all the services offered to help you make an informed decision.

The follow-up posts will therefore deal with:
1. How certain services can destroy your reputation, even though they are supposed to help you build it (For more on this, read the next post eBay, a universal system for evaluating reputation?)
2. A broad overview of the tools of reputation management accompanied by a summary of each service,
3. From most popular to least, a description of each service. The format of these descriptions will be as follows: subject of the evaluation, method of the evaluation, description, feature set, critical analysis (strong points & potential areas of improvement) and finally service continuity. For example, Opinity has already shut its doors, the year-long “48-hour service interruption” notice notwithstanding!

I. What are the methods of evaluation?

Here is a quick reminder of the definition of reputation (Read this entire post for more information): “The trust that your close ones place in you can be measured by what is called “reputation”, a word whose root stems from the Latin “reputatio”, meaning “evaluation”. Reputation is thus a social evaluation, or more simply put, it is the opinion of one or more people about another person. An opinion is a value judgement and as such it has a subjective dimension. Sometimes, it rests on observable and incontrovertible facts; other times, on rumors, prejudices, even wholecloth fabrications aimed at destroying a rival.”

In general, reputation management services offer 2 methods of evaluation: by means of a score or through references. On a different note, the services whose business centers around evaluating a person’s or an organization’s reputation use various computing and legal techniques. These can be summarized as: looking for evidence of your digital life, analyzing this evidence and, in the case of certain services, removing any evidence that could offend.

A. Evaluation by scoring

This approach relies on mostly quantitative criteria for its evaluation. Most services, however, allow you to leave a comment and/or tags to give the evaluation a broader context.

Here are some examples of scoring methods:

-> Click on each image for a bigger version

- eBay uses positive, neutral or negative ratings but also offers a more detailed evaluation of the seller (see the right part of the image)

- iKarma works along the same lines (take a look at the CEO’s profile for an example)

- Rapleaf also uses this system (take a look at the CEO’s profile for an example)

- TrustPlus uses custom symbols

- Gorb offers scales from 1 to 10 to rate both personal conduct and professional performance

- Venyo offers a scale from 1 to 5 (mainly to evaluate a blog’s content)

- Jobvent offers very specific criteria for the evaluation of your current company (model of an evaluation for Ford)

- Criticat does as well (model of an evaluation for Google)

- Amazon offers a gold star system: with one star being bad and 5 stars excellent

- Other services that also use this approach: Odesk, Elance, PriceMinister, Opinity, Shopping.com, RateItAll, ePinions, TripAdvisor, TravelPost, U.lik, CrowdStorm, Squidoo.

B. Evaluation by references or recommendations

This approach relies on mostly qualitative criteria for its evaluation (written text in the form of feedback, recommendations, comments…). It does, however, also use quantitative criteria (number of recommendations, number of readers, popularity,…).

Here are some examples:

- Recommendations: Linkedin, Viadeo, 6nergies, Ecademy, Spock and Tribe.

- References (a reference is a person who trusts you and is willing to vouch for your reputation) : CV 2.0, Repvine and Naymz.

- Popularity:

1. As reflected by the number of people who link back to some content from within their own: Google, Technorati

2. As reflected by the number of people who recommend reading some content or using some product or service: Digg, Wikio, Zlio, Alenty, Newsvine, del.icio.us, Fuzz, TapeMoi, Scoupeo, Nuouz, Agoravox.

3. As reflected by the number of readers: Feedburner, FeedBlitz, Zookoda

II. The subject of the evaluation

The evaluation can focus on:

1. An object (books, DVD, games, video camera,…) or a service (trips, hotel,…)

2. A person (from a personal and/or professional standpoint, on their roles, abilities, areas of expertise or personal qualities)

3. The actions of a person:

a. producing written, video or audio content on a site (in particular blogs),
b. making a transaction or exchanging goods or services (selling, buying, swapping,…)
c. having a relationship (friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues,…) or interacting with another person (discussions, dating, online games,…).

4. An organization (see services such as Jobvent or Criticat which enable an organization’s stakeholders to give their opinion about it - private company, association, bureaucracy,…)

5. A reputation (see services which analyze your reputation using the following method: research, analysis and sanitizing).

III. The specific approach of reputation evaluation services

Services whose business centers around evaluating your reputation use various techniques. Generally speaking, they search the Internet for all the evidence of your digital life and any evidence left by others regarding you . They then deliver back indicators that enable you to take stock of your digital reputation and, from then on, follow its evolution.

As an organization, it is possible to evaluate the reputation you have among your employees, clients, suppliers, and stakeholders in general (NGO, shareholders,…)

Finally, certain services offer you the possibility to sanitize your reputation by removing any offending evidence. Aside from legal filings, there are simple techniques, such as asking Google to remove content from its index.

Here is a list of services which we will later discuss in greater detail: Online Reputation Monitor, iGooq (Filteris), Biz360, BrandPulse (Nielsen BuzzMetrics), BuzzLogic, ReputationDefender, ReputationManager, Quova, iFeed Enterprise, Reputation Defender, Distilled.

The number of companies involved in this market space clearly indicates the magnitude of the stakes of digital reputation management, for individuals as well as for private companies! ReputationDefender even offers to defend the reputation of your children… You can’t stop progress

IV. Summary table

The table below breaks down all the services by method of evaluation and by subject of evaluation.

-> Download the table in Word format

Certain services appear in several table cells because they enable multiple evaluations, in particular for the actions of a person.

As with any table, the goal is to highlight trends and give reference points. One can always argue that this or that service doesn’t belong in a particular column or a particular row, that there is a need for a new column or a new row. I invite you to discuss these permutations in the comments section!

The list of tools is probably incomplete. I would be grateful if you would bring any missing services to my attention either in the comments section or by contacting me through the following link: http://www.axiopole.com/en/contact.php . I will promptly update this list and credit you as a contributor at the end of the post.

This post was inspired by, and I would like to thank, the following:
Techcrunch & Fred Cavazza who enabled me to complete my list of services.

Posted in Monitoring Tools, Cleaning Tools, Definitions - Concepts, Evaluation Systems | 1 Comment »