It had to come eventually. Think flip side to the glowing recommendations you can get on Linked In and consider scathing criticism of you, your career , your personality, your trust rating.
Welcome to getunvarnished.com, thankfully still in beta.
This is what Leslie Gaines Ross a reputation specialist has to say about it.
'What are Unvarnished's creators thinking? How can this be good? With no accountability and no restraints, people will review and rate bosses who hired and fired them, Rumors, innuendo, and hearsay will be aired, regardless of whether even a scrap of truth lies beneath them.'
In my view she's right.
Ok- Unvarnished allows you to respond to reviews, and you can always invite friends to rate you more highly. But in the absence of credentialed, independent third-party reviews, that may not provide much counterweight. Unvarnished promises it will remove "abusive" reviews. But it also states that abuses of expression, such as libel, are "very specific, legally defined condition[s]." There need not be restraints, it says, on opinions. How this will work in practice remains to be seen, but I suspect that the company's view of what constitutes abusive may be different from yours.
One 'good' aspect of all this is that ordinary people may now begin to appreciate what companies have had to endure since social media tools first empowered one-off antagonists to blast them without warning. There may also be lessons to be learned from that quarter. The experience of companies who have successfully fought off reputation snipers suggest approaches that could work for individuals, too.
But from an earleir post I did around brand and personal reputation, and how as an Entrepreneur the highest asset value on your balance sheet is trust, this shows just how very careful you have to be when building your business.
This is the dark and I would argue destructive side of social media, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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