Online Identity Management
Online identity management (OIM) also known as online image management or online personal branding or personal reputation management (PRM) is a set of methods for generating a distinguished Web presence of a person on the Internet. That presence could be reflected in any kind of content that refers to the person, including news, participation in blogs and forums, personal web sites (Marcus, Machilek & Schütz 2006), social media presence, pictures, video, etc.
Online identity management also refers to identity exposure and identity disclosure, and has particularly developed in the management on online identity in social network services (Tufekci 2008) or online dating services (Siibak 2007).
One aspect of the online identity management process has to do with improving the quantity and quality of traffic to sites that have content related to a person. In that aspect, OIM is a part of another discipline called search engine optimization with the difference that the only keyword is the person's name, and the optimization object is not necessary a single web site; it can consider a set of completely different sites that contain positive online references. The objective in this case is to get high rankings for as many sites as possible when someone search for a person's name. If the search engine used is Google, this action is called "to google someone".
Another aspect has to do with impression management, i.e. "the process through which people try to control the impressions other people form of them". One of the objective is in particular to increase the online reputation of the person.
Online identity management often involves participation in social media sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Twitxr, Last.fm, Myspace, Orkut and other online communities and community websites, and is related to blogging, blog social networks like MyBlogLog and blog search engines like Technorati.
But it can also consist in more questionable practices. Hence in the case of social network services users have the possibility to buy 'friends' so to increase their visibility.
Read more about Online Identity Management: Objective, Motivation, See Also, References
Famous quotes containing the words identity and/or management:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)