Reputation Management: Porn Versus Day Traders
I’ve been tossing an idea around in my head for several weeks now. It goes like this.
Supposedly, virtually all technological innovation is driven by porn. Well, not exactly. All exploitation of technology is usually done first by pornographers. They make money if they can more efficiently sell sex. The conclusion is simple for businesses. If you want to know the future of technology adoption and exploitation, watch pornography. Um, I mean watch the pornographers using technology.
Here are some references if you care to research the points above:
- Pornography and Technology
- Pornography Drives Technology
- Cellphone technology rings in pornography in USA
- Is Pornography Driving Technology?
- Forbidden Science
So, does it make sense to look at how pornographers are using technology to understand reputation management?
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If you’re stuck on the concept of reputation management and why it’s important, check out a previous WebWord post: Poor Man’s Reputation Management Back to the show…!
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I think that there is a better place to look than pornography for answers about the future of reputation management. In particular, I think that day traders have a better sense of reputation management than anyone. As an added bonus, their focus is on making money. So, if you’re a business and you care about your reputation as well as your bottom line, it might be time to look at how day traders stay on top of companies.
Let’s dig…
Here’s a great list of things that day traders look at:
- Quote
- Tape
- Level II
- Charts
- Spoos
- Listen Only Squawk
- Bonds
- Currencies
- Sectors
- News
- Message Boards
- Chat Rooms
- Newspaper
- TV
- Fundamentals
Obviously, not all of these things are worthy of your attention. They are too broad and they just don’t relate to your company’s reputation. Instead, look at the intent of these things. Day traders look at what is going on with the finances of companies, but also the entire market, message boards, chat rooms, news lists, and more.
Many of the things I mentioned above are a bit old skool. There is a new wave of day traders doing something a bit more sophisticated. They are looking at blogs, and they’re sifting through podcasts and blog comments. Furthermore, they’re spending time managing their day trading information with tools like del.icio.us and Furl. Of course, while they are there in these social zones, they’re digging into what others are keeping track of and posting.
To paint this another way, some of the more sophisticated day traders are moving beyond old media and traditional financial indicators. They even moving away from more established online information streams. They’re getting hip on Web 2.0 and the social networking found at places like eBay, Digg and MySpace. They’re reading TechCrunch and they’re spending time at YouTube and Yahoo Answers.
Not for fun, but for profit.
Taking this a bit further, if we look at how day traders use technology, we can start thinking about how to manage reputations. We can think about these tools being used to manage personal reputations as well as business reputations.
I’ve already heard about HR staff poking around Facebook and MySpace, making sure they are not going to hire an idiot. This is old news to many folks. Reputation management in this case isn’t just for the person who wants to get hired, but for the company doing the hiring.
Another point lost is that the actual HR recruiter is being forced to look at other how other people manage their reputations so that they don’t get burned. Imagine how some HR recruiter bosses might scold HR recruiters about hiring some idiot, when that idiot “obviously” posted insane and inflamatory material.
Let me turn this another way. We’re moving into a new way of life, where reputations are impacting reputations. This is a second derivative impact on us. That is, I have to worry about how your reputation impacts my reptuation. Online. All the time.
See now why reputation management is so critical? See also why reputation management will be big business, right on the back of security and privacy management of course.
If you don’t learn how to manage your reputation and if you don’t learn how to monitor the reputations of others, you could be in big trouble. Personally and professionally. Learn from the day traders. Learn how they stay on top of what is important.