• The most cybersquatted housemate is Caoimhe Guilfoyle, giving an indicator of who the speculators are backing to win. Over the last week, cybersquatters have registered domains such as: www.caoimheguilfoyle.com, www.caoimheguilfoyle.co.uk, www.caoimheguilfoyle.net and www.caoimheguilfoyle.info

• The next most popular are Josie Gibson, Ife Kuku, Rachael White, Corin Forshaw and Mario Mugan who, in the past week have each had  a combination of three potential domain names registered (.com,.co.uk, .net, .info)

• Only two housemates have escaped – Ben Duncan and Dave Vaughan – a sign that speculators don’t rate their chances of winning

Beyond speculators, some unofficial online fan groups and blogs are growing for the housemates but, without moderation, these are receiving negative as well as positive comment: Josie, Mario, Rachael and Corin also have the dubious honour of having gained unofficial blogs since going into the house, which feature blog posts such as ‘Corin Forshaw’s bisexual romps’ and ‘Rachael White likes skinny ginger guys’
It seems ironic that the producers of a show about monitoring people 24/7 has failed to monitor the basic online profiles of its contestants.

Endemol has obviously done some work in advising the housemates on how to protect their online reputations as none have publicly viewable social networking profiles, but it seems clear that it  has not done much to advise them how they will be able to manage their fifteen minutes of fame online once out of the house.

For a company who have made a lot of noise about Big Brother’s influence on the web, they have missed a fairly obvious trick here. It is easy to buy a domain name but much harder to get it back once someone else owns it.

There is no reason why a non-tech savvy and – before they entered the house – non-celebrity housemate should know what steps to take to protect their celebrity personas online. Contestants on a public show should really have received more professional advice on how to protect their online reputation.

My thoughts on this personal and brand reputation management issue on this are….

While Manchester United’s decision to ban its players from Twitter will prevent leaking sensitive information and reduce the risk to its reputation from ill-considered player tweets, simply banning everyone from the platform is a myopic, draconian measure.

What Sir Alex Ferguson has failed to realise is the positive impact that allowing players to engage with fans online in the right way can have for the Manchester United brand, especially in light of their current financial challenges. People respond most passionately to other people online, and Twitter provides such a huge opportunity for teams to really tap into their fan-base support. A more progressive approach would have aimed to educate players about Twitter and other social media platforms and put in place common sense guidelines for their usage, harnessing the positive opportunities rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As CEO of a digital agency, and a parent myself, I’ve always been vocal about the need to educate not just our children, but also parents, and how youngsters can safely and sensibly make the most of the online world that is available to them.

Where adults have tended to be in the dark about what their kids do online, seeing it as risky and to some extent unproductive, young people have always been highly motivated to participate and engage with digital platforms. Unlike adults however, they’re not streetwise, they don’t understand the threats.

In order to get a picture of how UK parents’ perceptions to their children’s online activity, we commissioned the first ever Digital Literacy Report, launched today.

In the poll with research specialists YouGov, we were pleased to find that the majority of parents see a need to teach their children about how to conduct themselves online, and have demanded the Government introduce lessons to improve young people’s understanding of online privacy and the value of their personal reputation with 69 per cent of parents calling for compulsory lessons to be introduced as part of the national curriculum.

This in part is born of the fact that almost half (48%) of adults asked admitted they were worried that their children’s online actions will potentially harm their future chances of getting into a chosen university or landing a first job. Parents recognise that online comment or mistakes made by young people on sites such as Facebook, Bebo and YouTube will go on to impact their adult lives.

Unfortunately the report also showed there is a lack of control among parents over what exactly children are doing when they log onto the web. With more children accessing sites like Facebook through their mobile phones instead of family PCs, parents are struggling to stay on top of what their children do online, with 44 per cent conceding they don’t ever check the content their kids are accessing or what they are posting online.

If we do not proactively teach young people about the impact of their online activity how can they better protect and promote themselves? There needs to dialogue between parents and their children, as well as at school, where online socialising is recognised as a social and technical skill for contemporary society. Schools as well should be looking to ways to encourage children to use the online tools at their disposal in a positive way, such as setting homework that is based around hosting and reporting a group discussion online.

If we want to see a generation of digitally ‘literate’ adults emerge in years to come, it is our responsibility to ensure it.

Wiki-bullying is at the top of the news agenda following the revelation that the Tower of London has suspended two beefeaters as part of a harassment investigation of its first female Yeoman Moira Cameron, with resulting implications for the legal system that will directly affect cases brought to court.

Wiki-bullying could result in criminal convictions that see the bullies responsible put behind bars. With direct legal consequences as a result of an individual’s online actions, internet users need to think before they edit what the ramifications of their conduct may be.

There are now legal implications for anyone posting inappropriate content to sites such as Wikipedia, as Scotland Yard yesterday demonstrated when they confirmed that a “56-year-old man received a caution under the Communications Act 2003 on Tuesday October 20 following an investigation by officers from Tower Hamlets. It related to inappropriate use of the internet.” We can expect to see this trend continue and the internet remain at the heart of future harassment, slander and other criminal cases that affect personal reputation.

I happen to agree that bullies should be properly punished for their actions, regardless of whether its online or offline. However, this story just goes to show the increasing importance of online reputation, and why we all must be more proactive in monitoring our online presence.

If internet users are more literate digitally they will be better equipped to protect themselves online. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In an internet age, personal brands are never off limits and are always available to see.”

Employers and government alike need to be doing more to improve people’s understanding as to the implications of the internet and they can be profiled on it, helping them to take control of their reputation online. The most important considerations for individuals remain:

• Be proactive – Check your profiles online regularly and ensure the content on it is positioning you in a way you want to be positioned
• Have an online base – Create a personal home page (blog or even a basic website) and set up official social media accounts across the major platforms that link into that base, making sure the content across all of them is accurate and true
• Report inaccuracy – If someone has posted untrue or slanderous comment about you to an online site, contact the service’s administrators and encourage your circle of influence to post comment supporting your position

I was inspired to put pen to paper – that’s quite a challenge for me, as the team I work with know; my dyslexia makes it a challenge to write down what I’m thinking articulately. The excitement about helping people harness the explosive growth of search engines, for their own personal empowerment won.

How we find the information that is important to us has changed dramatically over the last ten years. We now live in a world where the internet and search engines dominate our business, personal and professional research. How we are seen by others can be enhanced or degraded in an instant and our personal brand, whether good or bad, can be now globally amplified.

In addition, the ability of an individual’s ‘personal copyright’ to be heard is being diluted by the vast amount of information that is thrown at us daily. Being visible to the people that matter to our professional life – our prospective or existing customers, clients or employers – is becoming harder and harder. Welcome to the brave new world of personal reputation management, where you can be in control of how you are perceived online and can create, plan and executing job hunts, new business drives and all manner of professional and personal projects in a way that was until recently, impossible to achieve

It’s pushing forward these possibilities that have driven me (and my co-author Roy Murphy) through plenty more sleepless nights and days. I want to help you redress the balance. Nearly one year on, I feel the results have been well worthwhile and we’re awaiting the first delivery of our Personal Reputation Management printed book. The whole book eboook is available now from reputation-book.com or the first chapter is available free.

I’d love to hear your feedback about personal reputation management – making the internet work for you – and how you have implemented some of our strategies and tactics.

I hope you enjoy the book, and find it useful, practical and inspiring.

The revolutions were:

1. “A round Earth” – The realisation that the earth is not flat
2. “Evolution” – Acceptance of Darwin’s theory that we evolved and were not simply put here by G-d in our current form
3. “Unconscious mind” – Psychology & Freud showing us that is much going on in our minds beyond the rational
4. “Information” – Technology facilitating modifying the way we interact with everything around us

There are lots of things that shape what we are.  The information revolution has changed the constraints of what we do.  We shape ourselves in ways that have never been possible. We represent and define our lives on line.  Every body’s at it: Facebook, Linkedin or at a lower level to “Google” has even entered the English language.  The information reality has become normal.

Technology changes have forced us to change how we interact with each other.  Until recently we were just a body made up largely of water that was constrained in it’s physical presence.  We are now information.

The telephone started this revolution. The persuasiveness and power of the Internet means that we can interact in ways that were never possible.  We can build second, third and fourth identities for ourselves and can even have multiple economic profiles.  We can have multiple conversations where ever we are with multiple people.  Perhaps this is why Twitter has taken off as people have accepted this with out realising it.  Paradoxically the world has shrunk and grown concurrently.

Perhaps we are becoming information organisms.  Defined not by our bodies but by how we interact with the information presenting itself to us.  We may have always been information organisms but we have never before had the opportunity to dress in different skins.  Each one needs careful reputation management.

Reality is now what you interact with and how you present yourself.

[Inspiration for this blog can be found at http://is.gd/1s4yn]

Sometimes it’s excellent to be reminded about what you already know.

Pearlfinders interviewed 100 senior decision makers from 100 leading UK companies:

• 55% said that budgets were down from last year. Cost cutting was the most common reason cited.
• 33% said that their budgets have stayed the same, with most stating their aim was to cement their position in their market
• 12% said that they have increased their budgets

One, unnamed, marketing director reported ‘We take the view that it’s better to spend more in times of crisis, so that we stand out from the crowd’.

Nothing surprising there…

The role of agency PR in winning business provided some incite.  Last year the respondents said PR was very important in agency selection. This year 70% said that this was irrelevant when it came to decision making.

Social media has become very much mainstream in the past 5 years but is the cause of the diminishing power of PR.  The rational was the bombardment with messages from blogs, dm, cold calling and press coverage means that brand differentiation was diminishing.

Agencies are great at giving advice on how to keep brand messages succinct and make all channels consistent but often fail with their own work – to many creative geniuses I suspect.

Talking about social media, like all good clients with a newish trend on their radar, 89% of respondents claimed social media is important for their brand but only 29% are actually doing anything about it.   Perhaps they should start with managing their personal reputation on line and then go onto use the lessons for their brand.

It’s nearly there.

It’s being self published so we’ve sent a draft to the printer to define the format of the book.   The three formats are coming back soon then it will be time to commit the first few thousand copies.

Here’s a quick peak at the cover of the book.

We’re going to make it available in multiple formats.  Obviously the printed book, but also various ebook formats.