The World Wide Web has enabled people everywhere to share their ideas and experiences with a large number of people. The social networking website, Neiia.com, is a great way to bring all of your closest friends together to meet on the Internet. Don’t get lost in the clutter of other massive social networking sites, enjoy the closeness and comfort of Neiia.com.

Join the Life!”

Welcome your friends and business partners to your own tight-knit site: Neiia.com. It is easier to focus, concentrate and target topics that interest you on Neiia.com. Enjoy the freedom of your own site tailored to fit your needs.

Choose one of the following circles to move in:

+ Human
+ Business
+ Nonprofit
+ Media
+ Blog

Closer Human Circle

Some social networking siteslike Facebook and Twitterhave become so large that it is easy to get lost in the shuffle. Oftentimes, people will be added as friends who you really don’t know. You can’t feel comfortable sharing personal stories with the majority of these people.

Discussing important topics on these large sites is like having a conversation with someone on the other side of a football stadium. It doesn’t get anywhere. Neiia.com makes it so your personal connections can function in a smaller, more intimate arena.

Many businesses are on these other massive sites trying to use them as stepping stones for business marketing. But they become lost in the shuffle. Their messages are drowned out.

On Neiia.com, it is easier to share your unique experiences with your closest friends. Feel free to exchange your most personal ideas. Work with those whom you’ve built up a greater level of trust. Voice your preferences; speak your mind.

When you are more comfortable, you will feel more at ease in sharing your impressions of goods and services. Perhaps, there is a new medical treatment that has profound results. Maybe, you saw a movie before others. Share your daily life experiences with those who are interested in knowing how you feel.

Special Business Projects

It is easy to post articles, documents and videos to share for special business projects at Neiia.com because it is a smaller, more concentrated circle. Business professionals can share their expertise and strategies on Neiia.com. They can collaborate across time zones, national boundaries and other physically limiting factors.

If you have a new product or service, share it with this smaller, more tight-knit group. Market positioning and project promotion can be accomplished more effectively in the Neiia.com environment. Professionals can build up their competitive advantage. It is easier toincrease salesvia Neiia.com.

Nonprofit Organization

When people share an interest, hobby or goal, they can get a lot more done on Neiia.com. Working together in a nonprofit organization can be made easier on the Internet. Work on projects at all hours of the day on Neiia.com.

Media Promotion

Get noticed on Neiia.com. The Internet makes it easy to share great videos with your friends. Media promotion is about telling relevant stories to people who are interested in what you have to say.

It is easy to create your own news agency for sharing real stories. Media communities can cover their favorite events. Gather your friends together to learn the latest news on sports, entertainment or other hot topic.

Blog Expertise

The Internet is great for sharing personal experiences on products and services. Advertising only promotes people who offer unrealistic praise for items that they probably have never even used. They are paid to exaggerate.

At Neiia.com, bloggers can give people real advice: “I have tried this product and this is how it really works.You are more likely to trust the comments of those whom you have worked with.

Bloggers can tell people about travel to other cities. You will have a better idea of where to go when you visit a city on vacation or business. First-hand knowledge of different stores, events and places can be a great service to your close-knit circle of friends on Neiia.com.

Over time, bloggers interested in the same topics can create their own groups. Connect subject matter experts together in your own Neiia.com circle. Live your life and expand your opportunities with Neiia.com.

Peter Marino is the owner and CMO of reelWebDesign.com and can be reached via email through his Social Media and Marketing Firm in NYC.

Development of HTML5 started in 2009 and was still going under development as late as October 2011. There is a lot of hype surrounding this newest version of HTML. Many game programmers are talking about how HTML5 is going to replace Flash and more complicated programming for gaming. Since HTML5 will work the same on smart phones as it does on a desktop or tablet, the question remains whether smart phone apps will become obsolete.

One thing to consider is whether consumers are still going to need to do what they currently do with their phones. An example would be a Weight Watcher’s application on the phone to calculate how many points are in a specific type of food or meal. A smart phone user that is trying to lose weight will still need to be able to figure out how many points are in her meal.

People aren’t going to want to change how they do things, so you might wonder where that leaves app developers. Just because a developer is no longer programming specifically for iOS or Android doesn’t mean that developer will be out of a job. Instead, app developers will need to adapt to the new HTML5 and CSS3 standards.

Will iOS or Android Stop Movement to HTML5?

Currently, iOS and Android both fully support HTML5 and CSS3. It is probable that these devices will continue to be at the forefront of the HTML5 revolution, though online game programmers will run a close second. With HTML5, programmers can develop full games, including online multiplayer games with graphics and sound that are rendered without Flash. Hard-core gamers will need to seriously consider how well they can play some of the more complicated games without a keyboard.

In addition to better graphic rendering, HTML5 allows for a host of other enhancements. Speed and functionality will be improved. Programs and web apps will work faster and more smoothly. Though not as obvious to the end-user, performance and connectivity will be improved as well.

Adapt or Become Obsolete

Those who currently work with iOS or Android will need to learn how to program with HTML5 and CSS3 if they don’t already know the syntax for these languages. Once a developer is familiar with the new standards, a single developer can devise web apps that work across all mobile platforms instead of programming for one specific mobile OS at a time. This can save time, and allow for more developers to work on more web apps.

There are already moves underway in the mobile developer community to adapt to the new programming standards. Websites such as phonegap.com have sprung up in answer to HTML5 and CSS3. Mobile developers can work with PhoneGap to deploy their phone apps across multiple platforms and operating systems.

Some web developers are embracing the changes to HTML. Many more are using the changes as HTML4 with some parts they don’t use, or HTML4+ where they use more than simple HTML4, but don’t fully embrace all aspects of HTML5. These partial uses are to some degree delaying full deployment of HTML5.

On the other hand, phone apps and game developers are leading the way. With HTML5, you can make all kinds of cool phone and web apps easily. In fact Adobe products like Dreamweaver CS5.5 and the beta release of Adobe EDGE have made it much easier to do so. Doing the same things with HTML4 was much more difficult and gave uneven results. In this situation, HTML5 is the winner hands-down and will continue to be embraced by more and more developers. So although the app and the app developer are both not obsolete, how you develop and deploy them is rapidly changing.

Peter Marino is the Senior Partner of reelWebDesign.com a web design and social media marketing firm in NYC. We make all of our new websites HTML5 compliant.Peter deployed his first Android app on the Android marketplace called ‘Swarm Knowledge.

“]Why Websites Are Slow & Why Speed Really Matters [INFOGRAPHIC]What a difference a millisecond can make. When it comes to browsing the web, every tiny moment counts — and the fewer moments that pass between a mouse click and a fully loaded page, the better.
More reading >>

Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford.html

My latest articleMaking the Case for Ruby on Railsis now online @ Website Magazine.

Creating Animated 3D Popping Text in CSS3 http://bit.ly/kA2FI4

My current article entitledMaking the Case For Ruby On Railsis now available at newsstandsor you can wait for me to post it on my blog in a few weeks. [Update: Now available online: http://bit.ly/os2LOa]

Graphene in A Nutshell

June 5, 2011

Want to know more about the origins and future of the wonder material GRAPHENE? Download my report and analysis by clicking here:

Check out 'Storing Clocked Programs Inside DNA: A Simplifying Framework for Nano…' by Dennis Shashahttp://amzn.to/j99JXf

Graphene enables us to make modulators that are incredibly compact and that potentially perform at speeds up to ten times faster than current technology allows,” explained UC Berkeley engineering professor Xiang Zhang, who led the research group. “This new technology will significantly enhance our capabilities in ultrafast optical communication and computing.
Agencies must be content producers to survive and help their clients thrivehttp://bit.ly/kAbJ3Z

It’s a classic case of Photoshop versus website. Existing wireframing and prototyping tools are incapable of accurately reflecting the environment of the web.

They produce static designs that can’t be seen through the variable known as the web browser. And when you build the final website, some elements won’t look exactly like their draft counterparts, and the client will notice those minor differences in fonts, positioning, etc.

You may be more comfortable with a graphics program, and rendering the design iterations may seem to take longer if you have to hand-code the HTML.

However, the advantages of creating a wireframe in HTML from the start are beginning to outweigh the alternatives: not only do we have new layout elements in HTML5 and more powerful selectors and styling in CSS3, but by combining them, we can throw together a simple layout quickly.

Read more >>

Standing is better!

April 22, 2011
Why standing at a desk is better than sitting. http://on.mash.to/ifh98n
(From Nanowerk) The extremely high electron mobility of graphene – under ideal conditions electrons move through it with roughly 100 times the mobility they have in silicon – combined with its superior strength and the fact that it is nearly transparent (2.3 % of light is absorbed; 97.7 % transmitted), make it an ideal candidate for photovoltaic applications. As such, it could be a promising replacement material for indium tin oxide (ITO), the current standard material for transparent electrodes used for electrodes in LCD displays, solar cells, iPad and smart-phone touch screens, and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays for televisions and computer monitors.
Full article here: http://bit.ly/eWKl1Q

See part 2 of The Future of Marketing; Analytics Vs. Wisdom now online at: http://bit.ly/exW6o5

Read my latest article about the future of marketing and how analytics will play a big role, but not the final wordhttp://bit.ly/i8e0Pl

By Peter Marino; the Senior Partner of reelWebDesign.com a social media marketing and web design firm in NYC.

OMMA Metrics

March 23, 2011

Currently at OMMA metrics learning about analytics. OMMA Metrics

Hi All, I wanted everyone to know I started a networking MeetUp for creative professionals in NYC, come join in if you’re from New York city: http://bit.ly/gfaXyl

The Car as A Marketing Tool

January 26, 2011

Read my latest article about utilizing the new in car navigation services as a marketing tool.  Read more >>

While attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week I saw a great collaboration tool for micropreneurs. Many new online businesses, like my own, have a team that is spread out throughout the world. Talking to each other even by Skype can be difficult at times because of varying schedules and travel. So having a service that includes mobile face to face chat is key to collaborating effectively. Although Qik allows you to talk face to face over mobile phones it has one drawback; it has a push to talk button on the screen which is necessary for talking. This can be annoying or limiting in certain situations. A fairly new company called ooVoo has conquered all of these problems. In fact, according to their side by side video quality comparison of Qik and ooVoo the quality is better as well.
ooVoo also has a free video chat room service that you can place on your blog/website as well giving you the ability to talk face to face with your readers (something I will be trying out)!
Another benefit to ooVoo is that no software is necessary to download for conferencing and when you utilize the mobile to web or mobile to mobile feature it can be executed on any smart phone with a video function; Yes that includes Windows, Android and iPhones/iPods. The ooVoo Call Me Button, which can be placed on any web page makes it easy for your readers or friends to do a free video call through any web browser. So if you’re a small business with communication/meeting problems within your company or a blogger looking to get more acquainted with your readers I suggest you check out ooVoo’s service. Try the ooVoo chat room below!


By Peter Marino
Senior Partner and CMO
reelWebDesign.com

For some short videos of the conference and show go to my qik broadcast page at: www.qik.com/reelwebdesign

Read my latest article on Search Marketing Standard which brings design and analytics together into a more palpable infographic (the visual representation of information, including math and statistics, for the rest of us):

Read it here >>
You can also read the translation in Belorussian

Many websites claim to provide objective analyses of products, goods, and services. These are known as “review sites”. The type of product presentation these sites offer is known as “consumer lead marketing”, because the “leads”, or new prospect referrals originate from first-hand consumer evaluations.

When contemplating major purchases or financial commitments, people naturally seek input from others about their experiences in similar matters. It is widely believed that such input is unbiased, and gives true insight into a particular service or product. Advertisements, of course, are designed to induce salesregardless of product or service quality.

What will come of all of this consumer lead marketing?

In general, review sites are funded by advertisements. Due to high public confidence in consumer reviews and their long-standing history, consumer lead marketing is flourishing and clearly here to stay!

For review site operators, potential profits are astronomical due to popular demand. For the advertisers that support such sites, high visibility of their products or services is similarly profitable.

The Picture is Not All Rosy..

The profit motive inherent in such arrangements, however, creates a high risk of corruption and misrepresentation. For instance, the majority of review sites make very littleif anyeffort to verify consumer statements that they publicly present. Consumer review site debunkers frequently argue that favorable reviews are often written by the businesses under review, while negative input often originates from competitors, or disgruntled former employees, etc. Also, those biased againstor in favor ofa business can post multiple comments, thereby distorting the overall conveyed impression of a product or service.

All Sites are Not Equal…

Review sites offer different levels of quality and effectiveness in presenting objective consumer leads. A few of the better-known consumer review sites are StickyBits.com, Yelp, Angies List, and Foursquare.

Yelp, Inc.

At Yelp’s homepage, a search feature is displayed that allows site visitors to review comments about 22 categories of products and services in several major US and European cities. A convenient counter is also included that indicates the number of customer comments on file for that product category.

Foursquare

Foursquare is a software program designed for use on mobile devices. Users communicate with friends and family about their experiences in various locales. Businesses “reward” patrons with discounts and prizes. Its format is primarily social networking. The consumer evaluation aspects of Foursquare are more side effects, than primary function.

StickyBits

StickyBits is a software application that members use to scan product barcodes. Software users earn “rewards” (discounts and freebies) upon completing “challenges” (series of tasks). Consumers must first download the program and scan barcodes to view product evaluations which can include comments, pictures and video. A consumer must possess a smartphone with a barcode scanning app which may seem like a small percentage of people right now but in two years most people will have a smartphone. Therefore, I predict StickyBits will have a slow rise to authority with a a bright future.

Angie’s List

The homepage of Angies List presents a clear, organized search feature for would-be consumers seeking medical and construction services. Consumers are charged a fee for Angie’s List membership, and the site employs a “report card” system whereby consumers rate providers on an “A to F” basis.

All consumer evaluations are not included in contractors’ overall ratings, as Angie’s List employees screen every evaluation for “possible malicious intent”.

In my view, two sites that offer even better consumer review content are consumersearch.com and epinions.com. Consumers can join both of these sites for free, and they provide a much larger product/service base for opinion seekers to search. This increases the likelihood that others’ comments about a particular item will be available for perusal. There is no cumbersome downloading or label scanning required to input your feedback. The focus is plainly on product evaluationnot social networking or any other purpose.

If a company discovers vindictive derogatory reviews, it may publicly rebut them or initiate litigation. Businesses have filed multi-million-dollar libel lawsuits against consumers and review site operators who disseminate negative information about them. Such suits are often unsuccessful, due to free speech concerns, and the obvious deterrent effect they have on honest consumer reviews.

The best defense against damaging opinions that a business can employ is prevention. High emphasis on customer satisfaction and retention should be foremost on any company’s agenda. My take is this; if you want people to change their bad reviews then YOU, the owner of the company, should get in touch with theses individuals and try to personally resolve the issue. Ofourse you cannot do it for all bad reviews but you should be involved with the most detrimental comments as anything less will ultimately lead to less than optimal results.

Peter Marino is the Senior Partner and CMO of reelWebDesign.com, a web design and search marketing firm in New York City.

Read my latest article about the future of computing and how the X-Box Kinect and other full body immersion devices are on the forefront of the biggest change in computing since the mouse! Read it here on Search Marketing Standard.

If you’re planning on starting a blog, at some point you’ll have to decide whether to host your blog on your own website or on an offsite blogging platform like Wordpress or Blogger. Here are the pros and cons to each decision.

Offsite Blogging: The Benefits

The biggest benefit of offsite blogging is that it’s free. A domain name costs about $9 a year, web hosting costs about $5 to $10 a month.
Another benefit is that it’s easier. You don’t have to go through the process of setting up a Wordpress (or other platform) blog. You don’t need to go through the process of buying a domain name, setting up your DNS, buying and setting up web hosting, so on and so forth.
For beginning marketers, the difference between free and $20 could be important. New marketers often start out broke, and sometimes have to go through a handful of failed websites before they start making money. Starting on an offsite blogging platform allows beginning marketers to experience making money without risking their own money.

Offsite Blogging: The Drawbacks

There are many drawbacks to offsite blogging. First, it looks less professional. A blog that’s hosted on blogger.com will always look less professional than a blog that’s hosted on your own domain. A less professional looking blog generally means less publicity and likely lower search engine rankings.
Another drawback is that you’re at the whim of someone else’s company. If blogger or Wordpress suddenly changes their policy, they can just turn your site off on a whim. This has happened to many bloggers in the past. Basically you’re not in full control of your business.
An offsite blog is less flexible. You can’t install your own custom plugins or themes. You’re pretty much stuck with the designs that the offsite service provides to you. Although Wordpress has many beautiful themes to choose from that have great plugins included.

The Comparison: Offsite VS Onsite

Basically, onsite blogging will allow you to get higher rankings, look more professional and most likely be more successful, get more traffic and earn more money in the long run. Offsite blogging allows you to start with no startup costs at all and allows you to bypass the website setup process and get started right away. One quick note: You can’t ever really move an offsite blog to an onsite blog. You’ll lose many of your visitors and all of your search engine rankings.

Which is the best option for you? If you’re just getting started in internet marketing and want to get your feet wet right away, then offsite blogging is a great way to jump in feet first without a high learning curve. You can start blogging within 15 minutes of choosing a topic.
On the other hand, if you already know how to buy a domain or currently have a website, how to setup hosting, how to direct your DNS, etc, and you don’t mind spending the $40.00-$3000.00 (if using a pre-made theme or making a custom theme) in startup costs, then onsite blogging is most likely a better and more profitable option for you in the long run.
I prefer the latter as it has boosted my own domains search engine status and notability in just 2 years which ultimately increased customer loyalty, trustworthiness and sales; all of which is priceless!

By Peter Marino: Senior Partner and CMO of a search engine marketing web design firm in New York City.
If you want to start a blog but don’t feel comfortable writing for it regularly we can set it up, design it and write for you on just about any topic! We have writers from all over the USA and Canada that can write for you, and you get all the credit! Try our blog writing and marketing and see your website soar up in ranking on Google and Bing.

For a long period of time, the enriched-web juggernaut known as Adobe Flash seemed like it would remain the unchallenged king of the proverbial mountain. With the introduction of libraries such as jQuery and MooTools, it seems JavaScript, a once-haggard, much-maligned competitor could be making a comeback in the face of insurmountable odds. So, what is it that has web developers flocking to JavaScript?

JavaScript has several key advantages over Flash that makes it a much more attractive option for developers. The largest determining factor in making the choice between JavaScript and Flash is easily the range of platforms which can display enriched content using one or the other. With the rise in popularity of smart phones and the paradigm shift to a focus on mobile web, delivering content to mobile users has become a priority for many web developers. There are very few mobile devices which handle Flash well, if at all. Apple’s iPhone, iPod, and iPad, at the time of this publishing, cannot display Flash content at all and Steve Jobshighly-publicized comments about Flash suggest it may never be able to. Recent reviews of Flash’s first appearances on Android paint a bleak picture of poorly-functioning Flash videos and unplayable Flash games. Neither Sony’s PlayStation 3 nor PSP support Flash entirely. On the contrary, all of these platforms support JavaScript. Although JavaScript’s ability to deliver enriched content to so many platforms is the most often cited and publicized advantage, JavaScript offers several other upsides in areas where Flash falls flat. Developing in Flash can get costly, Adobe’s Flash software is not cheap and many independent developers and small-to-medium businesses simply cannot afford to purchase it or the developers. JavaScript offers further savings in the form of reduced bandwidth. Additionally, the concept of graceful degradation is alien to Flash developers. Either your program works or it doesn’t. JavaScript offers options for a well-coded page to degrade gracefully. Flash also offers little in the way of options for interacting with search engines, while JavaScript plays very well with Google and its like. Lastly, the Flash learning curve is steep and can be quite daunting for newcomers to the realm of web development, but JavaScript libraries such as jQuery and MooTools can make learning JavaScript a much more pleasant experience. With so much going in favor of JavaScript, can we, like Steve Jobs, argue that Flash is dead? Not quite.

Flash still has several areas where it outshines and outperforms JavaScript by orders of magnitude. Flash is so feature-rich that it is hard to find anything that can compete with the dizzying number of features it can offer. Also, Flash handles three-dimensional graphics much better than JavaScript. To JavaScript’s detriment, it offers its own set of problems, such as the innate ability in modern browsers to disable JavaScript support and the inability for developers to protect their source code.

Returning to the original question posed by this article: Is JavaScript making a comeback? Definitely. Expect to see more enriched content optimized for mobile devices, with graphics that can render within mobile browsers while using as little bandwidth as possible. JavaScript is the currently the best way to do both of these things at the same time. Flash, however will not be put out to pasture quite yet as its continued usefulness is undeniable.

This article was first published in Website Magazine by Peter Marino, Senior Partner and CMO of the NYC Web Design Firm reelWebDesign.com

Read my latest article on Search Marketing Standard about Google TV and how it will change media and how we interface with it:
http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/google-tv-the-end-of-linear-pixel-slop.

The following article was first seen on Search Marketing Standard:
Social media has brought along many amazing innovations – and Ping.fm is one of the best kept secrets among social media marketers to make their job a lot easier. If being able to conveniently get an update out to all your social networks, no matter where you are (café, bookstore, conference, etc), in a matter of seconds, sounds appealing … then read on to learn more about Ping.fm.

What Can Ping.fm Do?

Ping.fm allows you to post to your social networks at any time, from anywhere in the world. You could make a Facebook post or a tweet from your cellphone, from instant message, from an iPhone, from a computer, really from just about any electronic medium.

Ping.fm gives you a single access point to all your social networking sites. Instead of needing to log in to each site separately to do an update, just do it once and ping.fm will cross post your update for you. The technology is easy to use yet incredibly powerful.

What Sites Can Ping.fm Post To?

Ping can post to almost all the well-known social media sites, as well as many of the lesser known ones. Supported sites include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Shout’Em, MySpace, Hi5, Blogger, Wordpress, Xanga and many more.

Why Use Ping?

There are two main reasons to use ping:

First, it saves you a lot of time. Each social network requires you to go to their website and log in before you can post your update. Let’s say each one takes 2 minutes. If you’re updating 3 sites, that’s 6 minutes.

The difference between a quick update on your phone and a 6 minute interruption in your work flow is vast. It’s just far more convenient to do it all at once – And it doesn’t even cost you anything.

Another reason to use ping is that you can update on the fly. Something funny or relevant happen during your life? Send ping a text right away. You don’t need to wait until you’re in front of your computer.

If a significant event happens, you may not want to wait until you’re in front of the computer to post. If a massive event happens that’s relevant to your industry happens unexpectedly, (oil spill, death of someone important,) you want to be able to post about it – immediately.

Ping for Mass Social Media

If you’re just getting into social media, if you’re not using many services or not updating often, then Ping.fm might not be for you.

On the other hand, if you’re taking full advantage of the social media sphere, if you’re on multiple services and you’re updating often, if you’re doing social media on a mass scale, then Ping.fm could be a lifesaver.

The interface is easy to use and the service is completely free. If you think Ping sounds like something that could help you and your social media, why not give it a shot and see if you like it? I love it!

Peter Marino is the Senior Partner and CMO of reelWebDesign.com a search marketing firm in NYC. If you’d like Peter to write for your marketing blog contact him at peter@reelwebdesign.com

Reputation management is a process whereby an individual person or group, such as a business, is assigned a ‘ranking’ based on how that individual or group interacts within a larger structure. Reputation management usually takes the form of professional software or a specially developed application. While there are free versions of this technology, in practical market terms, reputation management is usually handled by what is known as “innovation management software.”

Paid Services

Innovation management software allows large global corporations with literally hundreds of thousands of employees to gather ideas from their workforce, and correspondingly assign reputation rankings to each individual employee. The employees can earn their reputations based on how their comments are rated by both their peers and their superiors. In this instance, reputation management is a constantly evolving process, with the software recalibrating the ranking based on new, incoming data.

There are several software major innovation management software companies that provide this service, including Brightidea and Spigit. Within each company’s software suites there are customized reputation management modules. In Brightidea’s case, each employee’s reputation is based on an in-depth point scheme. Employees earn these points by participating in voting and collaboration sessions, where ideas are both critiqued and improved upon by the larger user community. Employees who perform exceptionally well by consistently voting for ‘good’ ideas, or earn a significant number of points by always being helpful in collaborative efforts, earn points. The more points they earn, the higher their reputation ranking, which draws attention within the framework of the reputation management module. These individuals are singled out for either recognition or reward by senior management. Spigit’s process is similar, although it emphasizes an slightly more opaque approach, providing management with more discretion as to how individuals may earn higher status within the reputation management system.

Reputation management can also be bought as a separate service to enhance the online reputation of a company. An example is British Petroleum, which after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico aggressively worked to make sure that positive articles about the company and its efforts to clean up the spill would appear when a user typed in keywords relating to the spill into global search engines. While this service was folded into a larger public relations campaign, the technology that powered the service is a perfect example of reputation management.

Free Services

Large online businesses provide a ‘free’ version of reputation management. ‘Free’ is in quotes in this context because the service often requires the user to pay a fee to use the service itself; the reputation management aspect of that service does not cost anything. An example is eBay, where users can rank other users based on their responsiveness and general conduct during a transaction.

Benefits and Drawbacks

Reputation rankings play a huge role in the amount of power any one person or group has in influencing a process. Prior to the advent of this technology, a person’s presence online or within a computerized software suite had an importance ratio of 1:1; in other words, that person’s commentary had the same weight as any other user. The corresponding clutter of ideas, both good and bad, led to the need for a hierarchy and a cleaner organizational format.

The increasing popularity of reputation management software has both benefits and drawbacks. Reputation management can help identify leaders and thoughtful individuals who have a worthwhile contribution to make out of a sea of literally billions of opinions. Unfortunately, reputation management can also create artificial barriers to innovation and an inaccurate reflection of reality. On the positive side, singling out exceptionally savvy individuals helps advance both the career of that individual and the prosperity of the organization or community in which they are participating. However, on the negative side, reputation rankings can shut out slightly more unusual ideas that may lead to improved processes, especially if those ideas originate from an individual with a low or nominal reputation score.

As with any business, those who control reputation management must be vigilant, and open to frequently changing or updating how reputations are tallied. Individuals who attempt to “game” the system by illegitimately inflating their ratings must be screened out; likewise, those who are hesitant to participate must be encouraged to contribute.

By Peter Marino

Peter Marino is the Senior Partner and CMO of reelWebDesign.com a search and social media marketing company in NYC.