Me and My Web Shadow: How to Manage Your Reputation Online

Originally posted on my personal blog, Open….

 

At the Brighton Digital Festival talk on online reputation for artists I did the other evening, I was asked to post some beginners’ guides to Twitter (thanks to Helen Wilshaw for the reminder).

Naturally there is a pretty good one in Me and My Web Shadow, but there’s no shortage of free good advice out there online…

Here are a few I like the look of:

• The Telegraph’s Shane Richmond’s step-by-step guide to getting started is great.
• As is is The Atlantic’s The Bare Bones Guide to Twitter
• And the Huffington Post has one too…

And, showing far Twitter use has spread, the DeBrett’s social networking etiquette guide has a nice way of putting things (via Harry Wallop in The Telegraph:

Do not overload the Facebook home page feed with countless status updates. Be sure that your posts are written to enlighten others, and not used as an exercise in vanity.

Well, quite!

Twitter image (cc) Svartling

The introduction to Me and My Web Shadow said that the book would probably be out of date before it was even published, and I wasn’t joking. It also said that Facebook was probably the most important place to start looking at what information about you is private and what is available for anyone to see.

In the past few weeks there has been a lot of conversation online about the rights and wrongs of Facebook’s privacy settings. The New York Times published this visual representation of the complex nature of them. It has made many people feel vulnerable and anxious about controlling the personal information that Facebook stores and shares. To try and tackle this, Facebook has rolled out some new tools for managing those settings – claiming that this is Making Control Simple.

This article talks you through these new top level privacy controls and should act as an update to the Facebook chapter in Me and My Web Shadow. Hope it’s useful. Read More…