As Seen on TV

On April 5th’s episode of the Today Show on NBC, they aired a segment about a new social networking website named UnVarnished.  This site represents yet another hazard in online reputation management.  UnVarnished targets business professionals to become users.  Once a user profile is set up, those users can review other business professionals based on topics from attitude to work habits.

At this time UnVarnished is in beta testing, so most people cannot create a user profile.  However, it is possible to sign up for the wait list.  An email invitation to create an account will be sent to those on the wait list once UnVarnished is launched.

Why would anyone want to sign up to yet another social networking site?  ANYONE can create and/or claim a profile, even if that profile is someone else’s. Once claimed, a profile is VERY difficult to change.  And, according to the Today Show, users can post very detailed information to their profile.  A profile claimed incorrectly, whether by mistake or on purpose, creates a very serious online reputation management threat.

Once a user sets up a profile, she may go out and review any other user on the site.  This causes two major issues if another person (let’s call him John Smith) is unaware that they have a profile on Unvarnished that someone else (let’s call her Jane Murphy) set up. 

First, any user can rate and review John Smith’s profile, and that information will be searchable on Google, Bing, etc.  If John is in career transition, and his potential employer finds negative information on UnVarnished about him, it would probably reduce John’s likelihood of getting that job.  This would all happen without John even knowing it because he did not set up his UnVarnished profile – Jane Murphy did. 

The other major issue would be if Jane went out onto UnVarnished and posted a lot of negative reviews on OTHER users’ profiles while using John’s name.  John could also have a lot of angry UnVarnished users out there, having negative conversations about him, and he wouldn’t even know.

Since UnVarnished is still in beta testing, the true impact of the site will not be known until it is open to the public.  However, most people should consider signing up on the waiting list to be notified when beta is open to the public.  Once open to the public, setting up a profile is a good idea; even if it will not be actively used, it will help protect that user from someone else taking their identity and causing online reputation issues.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 7:36 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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