Cross-post from my piece on Telnic's site

Fairly relevant due to the topic of change:

http://www.telnic.org/blog/2011/01/17/navigating-change/

What’s your online reputation like?

Currently, a number of eminent thinkers are releasing thoughts on reputation and engagement online. In past few weeks and months, books and businesses which has obviously taken time to gestate in the minds of people coming from several different directions have been announced. What is interesting is that they seem to be converging on a central thesis, explicit or otherwise, that, like Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, search is becoming, if not has become, the central player in understanding and defining what is true. That truth, whether it be about the collective listing of information about who a person is, or the collective sentiment about what people feel about a particular business or product, is being defined by trust developed on the basis of search rankings, the popularity of the sources and the ability to interpret individual pieces of information within the context of the sum of search. This means that, whether consuming or promoting, everyone is in the search business, either pulling or pushing, these days.

The most recent piece to emerge is from ex-Financial Times journalist Tom Foremski, who postulates that ‘Every Company is a Media Company’ (EC=MC) in his new thesis which he writes about here. His position is clear; regardless of the business you are in, you’re also in the business of media publishing. Content, communications through social media, advertising in the non-traditional sense, open customer services models letting the world see you deal with your customers in a transparent way, reacting and acting online to maintain positive feeling with your existing customers and utilizing fan pages to grow your potential customer base. All of these are employed with increasing energy as businesses transform into what they need to in order to survive in the competitive marketplace that has become global and virtual. And if you’re not publishing, and controlling, what you want people to see, or engaging in the conversation, you’re not long for this world in business terms.

From a completely different angle, taking the individual and non-technical perspective, Antony Mayfield, an ex-PR man and now VP of i-Crossing here in the UK, has come up with a constructive discussion of the importance of managing one’s own ‘web shadow’ – the sum of the parts of the internet that you once played with and forgot, blended with the sum of the parts of the internet that other people played with tagging you in a photo of a drunken party, with a dash of some of the professional stuff you might have done or still do, all served up without empathy on Google’s front page. Luckily for most, Antony also outlines what you can do about it even if you’re not technical, in his excellent and thoughtful book Me and My Web Shadow.

Stuck in between the large organizations and the individuals, are 90% (if not more) of the rest of the business world. Small and medium-sized businesses at a loss to understand how to deal with all of this reputation and search stuff, knowing the importance of being found online but struggling with the time-poor aspects of developing and growing business from a day-to-day perspective. Luckily again, another book This is Social Media, written by business journalist Guy Clapperton, outlines in a very simple way, what can and can’t be achieved with various social networks and technologies.

What it comes down to is this. No longer can you take the chance to ignore search results. There’s little or no time to be able to retrospectively fix negative customer sentiment already on the web, but it’s not too late to begin to engage. Skins need to be thickened. Sleeves need to be rolled up. Taking control is not out of the reach of the individual job-seekers concerned about employers finding negative impressions of them on social networks, nor is making sure that you can be found as high up the search results in order to be the authoritative source of information about you. Businesses can take control of all of the ways in which they can interact with different constituents and be more open on the internet whilst maximizing their investments in their social media channels.

The time is definitely right to look at a .tel name as a way to help with all of these issues, especially, but not exclusively, if you’re not technically inclined. Online reputation matters – it’s time to do something about it.

Tags: .tel, Antony Mayfield, dot tel, dottel, EC=MC, Guy Clapperton, online reputation, social media, Tom Foremski, web shadow

The new way to communicate

The new way to communicate

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Who opens the Open Web...?

I definitely agree that the next stage of community is the open web as Steve Rubel highlights. But I'm much more a believer that the individual will be in control of the information that is shared rather than an aggregator such as Google or other entity and that technologies - such as .tel which provide the individual with a neutral hub in which to manage all of their interactions and subscriptions - along with APIs that enable communications to be run impartially across all service provides, will become the way in which people wish to share or withhold opinion, data and interaction.

Notes from a large continent...

So by now you'll have probably gathered that I'm out in the US having been speaking at a certain conference for six minutes (well, 5 minutes and a little extra, but who's counting?)

How photographers continuously manage to shoot my best side I will never know - I guess I'm just blessed that way.

However, having managed to avoid breaking both the still and TV cameras, it's been a very successful time indeed. We're off to a great start. Now the hard work begins.

Time marches on...

It's been a while since I talked about life in Percy Street and the development of launch plans for .tel. There's a good reason for that - we've been busy!

The momentum on registrars signing up to the agreements is really positive. We've got the number one registrar in a significant number of territories already and we're still relatively
in stealth mode and definitely well away from Sunrise period. This is a fantastic position and we're very pleased to be here.

We're now just about to emerge in September with a concerted communications campaign. I've been chatting to bloggers and commentators behind the scenes and in front of them, and there's a growing understanding of the fact that the .tel is a significantly different use of the domain name system and the DNS than anything that's gone before. As too are the registrars we're meeting with, who we're helping understand the USP of the .tel to different types of individuals and organisations.

But the really exciting piece is that we've been invited to DEMOfall to present alongside 71 different companies who are launching new products. We'll be announcing something at the event, but obviously people won't be able to apply for a .tel address until December 3rd (if they're trademark holders) and February 3rd (if they're not). But the point is is that we've been evaluated by a critical body with a leadership position in attracting sources of investment and have been invited into an impressive alumni who have all had a great impact on the adoption and use of technology over the past 19 years. So hopefully the question about why we're different from every other top level domain will be firmly placed in people's minds as they listen and watch the six-minute demo that Henri Asseily, our Chief Strategist, is putting together, either on the day or after on the DEMO website.

Pinky and the Brain...

"Same thing we do every morning, Pinky - try to take over the world..."

My Wordle