49The Forces Driving Online Reputation
the Onion, a satirical newspaper; both websites are measured by the
same criteria, with no favoritism toward one or the other. Nor does
the Google algorithm know the difference between some individual’s
website and the Washington Post; to the algorithm, they’re both just
websites to be measured along the same scale, even if that means the
Post will usually win.
Internet scholar Andrew Keen thinks this new egalitarianism
will trash our culture, to the point of mindless Youtube clips replac-
ing meaningful movies and plays. In his book, The Cult of the Ama-
teur, he predicts that the noise created by amateurish user-created
content will drown out the contributions that can be made by
skilled and talented experts: He compares the music created by a
trained symphony to an average Youtube clip of kids rocking out.
2
Google, of course, is part of the problem because it makes no dis-
tinctions between quality and garbage; if you search Google for mu-
sic, it will bring up the most popular web page rather than the best
music. Even if you don’t agree with Keen’s doom-and-gloom prophe-
cies, it is undeniable that the ever-increasing visibility of user-created
content has changed the way we look at each other, and the way that
our reputations are shaped.
Everything Is Online Somewhere
Not only is information unfiltered, but there is a vast amount of it on-
line. The combination of individual contributions, corporate media,
and government records means that there is more data about private
individuals available online than through any other medium in history.
The Internet is without limit. Much like the universe, it is con-
stantly expanding. There is effectively no maximum size to the Inter-
net; new websites can be created, new blogs started, new information
added, and new photos uploaded without ever having to remove any-
thing. A prominent politician once verbally stumbled by comparing the
Internet to a dump truck and a series of tubes.
3
At the risk of repeat-
ing the error, the Internet is more like a black hole than a closet: you
50 Wild West 2.0
can stuff an endless amount of material online without ever having to
take anything out.
The infinite capacity of the Internet means that it is possible for an
endless amount of information to be provided about even the most ob-
scure topics and for this information to be archived permanently.
Almost everything can be found online somewhere. If it hap-
pened in the past ten years, it might be online. If it happened in the
past five years, it’s probably online. And if it happened in the past
two years, it’s almost certainly online. Not all of it can be easily found
(at least not yet), but it’s there—hidden in government databases,
corporate databases, blog posts, Facebook updates, Twitter “tweets,”
MySpace pictures, and all the hundreds of other ways that content is
shared online. The data varies from the mundane (the members of
local soccer teams) to the dangerous (property records that give
stalkers the info they need to find their victims) to the damaging
(uncorrected arrest records of people later proved innocent). Even
vast amounts of political information is online: All financial contri-
butions to political candidates in the United States made since 2000
are online now, copied across several sites, and readily found by
Google; it’s easy to find out if your neighbors gave to Democrats, Re-
publicans, Greens, Independents, or even the Marijuana Party.
4
The depth of information online is also staggering. Want to
know who played third base for the Red Sox in 1912? A simple
search reveals that Larry Gardner was covering the “hot corner” at
Fenway Park’s first opening day.
5
Want to know anyone’s current ad-
dress and previous residences? Just search a “whitepages” site online,
or at most pay a few dollars to a background-check company for the
data. Want to know how much your neighbors paid for their home?
Check Zillow.com, which lists past sales and current estimates on
millions of homes. Want to know what a particular beachfront home
in California looks like? There is a website showing helicopter
photos of every beachfront lot along the coast, along with compari-
son photos dating back to 1979.
6
The government has been just as aggressive about putting data on-
51The Forces Driving Online Reputation
line; one can easily find Ellis Island immigration records,
7
sex offender
registrations,
8
the names of current prison inmates,
9
and even com-
plete land historic ownership and appraisal records for every plot of
land in some counties.
10
There are even lots of things online that
probably were not meant to be placed online. There have been news
stories about curious Web visitors finding lists of passwords,
11
credit
card numbers, private phone meetings, and even access codes for
buildings.
12
Archives of old data are also being uploaded. The New York
Times has digitized its complete archives from 1851 through 1922;
any story from that period is available online and visible to anyone
who searches using Google. The original contemporary coverage of
President Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election can be found through a
simple Google search.
13
And, predictably enough, the election cov-
erage shows how the long life of online data can harm reputations;
for example, the Times article detailing the 1860 election results in-
cludes an allegation that a Census Bureau clerk by the name of
Goldsborough was plotting to disrupt the counting of the ballots.
14
The clerk is long dead, but the unsubstantiated allegation about his
character lingers 150 years later. Even much smaller newspapers, in-
cluding college newspapers, are placing their archives online. The
Ya l e D a i l y New s , the oldest college daily newspaper, has placed online
its entire archive back to the first issue in 1878.
15
Of course, there has been a backlash against the permanent mem-
ory of the Internet. A recent book by scholar Viktor Mayer-Schon-
berger, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, proposes that
all website data should automatically be deleted unless there is a com-
pelling reason to keep it. He proposes that programmers set up web-
sites so that “old news” is eventually hidden from Google’s memory,
especially when it does not concern matters of great public importance
(e.g., national politics, scientific advancements). While compelling, his
ideas are unlikely to be implemented soon, which leaves everyday users
the task of trying to control what information about them will be per-
manently archived.
52 Wild West 2.0
Everything Is Instant
The Internet creates instant universality. The very moment that
something is created online, it is available to be viewed by anyone,
anywhere. A newly written blog post can be transmitted around the
world, copied digitally to tens or hundreds of websites, and perma-
nently archived—all faster than you can blink. A newly posted photo
can be copied, analyzed, and redistributed in the time it takes to
sneeze. And a newly penned comment in a forum or blog can become
irretrievably permanent in the time it takes for the mouse button to
rebound after clicking on “submit.” Everything is instantly universal.
Technologies like “Really Simple Syndication” (RSS) make sure
that new content automatically gets distributed as fast as computers
can process data. Using RSS, it is possible for a blogger to automat-
ically notify other news outlets and news aggregation sites that there
is new content available. Those aggregators often immediately scan
any new content provided, process it, and display it to their users
(like at NewsVine) or pass it on to yet another step (like at Yahoo!
Pipes). The next step can display, pass along, or do both. In seconds,
a new piece of content can circle the globe and appear on tens or
hundreds of sites.
This culture of speed is a sharp break from the old “news cycle.”
In fact, the concept of a “news cycle” at all is a remnant of the pre-
Internet era of news publication. Before the Internet, for a news story
to reach a mass audience it had to be published in a morning news-
paper or appear on an evening news program. As a result, editors had
time to stop, think a story over, and then decide whether to publish
it. There was time to gather additional facts, do further research, and
perhaps debunk false stories before they were published. Of course,
false stories and errors got through, but at least there was time to try
to limit their numbers.
Today, the Internet news cycle is constant: at any hour of the day
or night, anyone can publish news, which is immediately viewable by
millions of readers. There is a never-ending race among news outlets
53The Forces Driving Online Reputation
to be first to break a story. All the major news sites update their con-
tent 60/24/7/365. Breaking news is posted within minutes. The
time to investigate a major scandal is measured in hours rather than
days. And big news organizations are not merely competing against
each other; they’re also competing against thousands of blogs and
other small outlets. The legacy news organizations are left to play
catch-up; they must investigate and publish every story in the short-
est amount of time possible if they hope to compete online, while
desperately trying to preserve the journalistic standards of a more
leisurely era. One or the other has to give.
This culture of rushing to be first has extended beyond just writ-
ing the news. It has also extended to sharing and discussing it. On
news discussion sites, like Digg, Slashdot, and Reddit, many users
compete to be the first to post a link to a news article or discussion
topic; on some sites, users are even awarded “karma” points for being
the first to submit a breaking news story. The online culture of speed
has even extended so far that, on many blogs, readers race to be the
first person to comment on a new post, if only to shout “FIRST” in
all-capital letters. (This practice gets old just as fast as you think it
would, namely the “FIRST” time you see it.)
In the end, there is little time to consider whether publishing a
news article, blog post, or comment is a good idea. The result is that
ill-considered and poorly researched content all too often is un-
leashed after an impulsive mouse click. The race to be first has over-
come the quaint desire to be right and appropriate.
Everything Is Permanent
Anything that is said online may be available forever, no matter how
hard anyone tries to delete it. Conversations among friends were
once conducted in private; they left no permanent trace once the last
echo faded, and they could spread only at the speed of interpersonal
communication. Classroom notes were passed and trashed or at
worst intercepted by a teacher and read aloud before being recycled.
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