When I think about this question: "to evaluate my online reputation", I have to be honest and say that I've never really thought about it seriously before. As for me I have to think about the one social networking site that I use on a regular basis, "Facebook". To tell the truth I never really thought that posting comments and silly photos would harm my reputation as I assumed that only my close friends and family could have access to this information. Now when I think about this (online reputation), I have to admit.... "what a fool I've been".
When I think about the first time I used the Internet, I thought," hey, this is awesome! I can say anything I want and nobody knows who I am." In other words, everything that was said or done was anonymous. These days ,however, everything you do leaves an electronic footprint back to who you are.
I feel a little concerned about my current online reputation in terms of future employment. If a potential employer was to go through my Facebook profile (especially photos) they would see some contents I consider a little inappropriate, weird or compromising. Their reaction would probably be, "Hell no! we're not going to hire that guy". This thought makes me feel disappointed in myself for not showing enough initiative to stop those photos being posted or being tagged in them.
A more professional and responsible attitude is needed by me to stop these potential problems in the future.
Now I need to ask myself what can be done on my part to sculpt my digital reputation in a better direction. Firstly I really need to learn, operate and pay more attention to the security settings on Facebook. Hopefully this will only allow people I want to view my profile and especially my private social photos with friends. I also have decided that at the completion of this course I will go through the painstaking hours of photos that are posted of me and untag my name and if possible, remove the more embarrassing photos that I find myself in.
Overall I wish to have a more professional online reputation and thus in terms of any further online social networks I join like Twitter, My space , Pinterest etc, I will make sure I read and operate the security settings properly and take more care as to what is posted on these sites. In a nutshell, I need to think twice "Does this post/comment etc have the potential to damage my online reputation in the future?"
Hey Tristan, I enjoyed reading your blog. I think you brought up an excellent point that people should ask themselves the question, will this tweet, blog post, comment or upload potentially ruin my online reputation? Another good point that you raised is that people should be fully aware of their security settings before posting anything online because once it is out there it is nearly impossible delete it completely. There will always be a trace or print left behind so we should critique before we click.
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