If you search Google for “reputation management” in quotes (in order to only receive results with the exact phrase), you will probably see Jack Nielson’s article from February 8, 1998 at the #1 spot. In the article, Jack briefly discusses the difference between branding and reputation management.

Keep in mind that Jack’s article is 9 years old. Some of his comments are so dated, it’s hard to believe they were ever applicable. Let’s forget about that and look at the “reputation manager” he proposed:

My vision for a reputation manager involves the coordination of billions of individual quality judgments by hundreds of millions of users. Every time you encounter an information source on the Internet, your Web client software will present you with an opportunity to vote on its quality. Typically, this would be done by adding two buttons to the interface: a thumbs-up button and a thumbs-down button. A neutral rating would be given by doing nothing (since we want to minimize overhead in the user interface), but when a user encounters something particularly good, he or she would hit the “good” button. Similarly, disappointing services would be punished by a click on “bad.”

Sound familiar? That’s because years later, Digg.com implemented this idea into a website, whereby individual articles and blogs could be rated exactly the same way with the exact same icons. Everyone out there who thinks Digg is original will just have to weep and moan. Then again, Digg made the idea workable and popular. So perhaps you can forgo the Kleenex at this time.

It’s important to note that in 1998, Jack was using the term “reputation manager” to represent a software program similar to Nielsen Ratings which would represent each website’s popularity based on fair and accurate opinions of users. In 2007, anyone using the term “reputation manager” is more likely to be referring to a person or product which assists a company, person, or product with public image problems. As a person, a reputation manager is likely to look somewhat similar to an image consultant, only more tech savvy. As a product, a reputation manager will likely be some kind of web scouring software that reports on every comment made about the name in question in order to help a client address negative comments made.

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