The problem is that people embraced all of this junk without thinking of the consequences in advance. What someone needs to do is really take a good long and hard look at the social engineering that’s behind all this social media. It will make you think twice about a lot of this…

The Shift you speak of will be required if we are to become a global community.

If a post-privacy world means we’re left with just “managing vulnerability and reputation,” we need to be more aggressive than most are used to being in managing our public image, even if we’re not that public of a person. These days, everyone is a public figure. Rather than curse the dark, however, we need to pursue more selective policy of lighting candles in the right places. Strategies should include:

1) Active reputation construction. Don’t wait for our uncontrollable information exposures to do it for us. For some this means doing more of the technological exhibitionism that social media enables, not less. Create your own net-enabled public persona, rather than an other-constructed one. A strong reputation can buy you a great deal of grace when negative information emerges. Ideally, it can push the negatives off the first page of your personal search page. You want to drown the negative with plenty of positive.

2) Active opt-in/opt-in. We have to be more conscious about the things we allow to be done in our name by companies such as those listed in Linda’s post. Read the fine print, at least a bit. Don’t always hit the “yes” button when a company you don’t know asks you to overshare. A simple example: avoid those silly quizzes and tests that infest Facebook. Such quizzes have become a major security risk and can expose us to more problems than they could possibly be worth. If you still somehow have to do one of them, don’t share it with everyone else. It’s worse than sending along a chain letter, and should bring you bad luck, or at least bad karma. This general approach can reduce your vulnerabilities by reducing your most problematic sources of exposure.

3) Active monitoring. Brands and companies have learned they need to monitor the Net to see what’s being said about them. People do too, and there are free tools to make it easy. Google News Alerts can grab stories about you. Increasingly, they’re bringing in material from the real-time web as well. HootSuite can track things being said about you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and on WordPress. Gist connects your contact list with your social media contacts in a proto-CRM package to see what they’re writing to and about you. This strategy is about tending to your reputation.

4) Active response. When things DO emerge, don’t just sit there and let them wash over you. Taking days or weeks to respond is a recipe for disaster. If it goes really badly, get some professional help in managing the mess. Tiger Woods would have benefitted on both counts.

5) Active engagement. I’ve created a site called http://www.onlytimebuystrust.com to start talking about some of these issues of reputation and trust. It’s hard to know who to trust when you don’t know the person well. It’s useful to remember in this socially mediated world that our tools have provided us with the illusion of deep and intimate knowledge of many people whom we previously knew only a little bit. We still don’t know them that well. Trust the ones you truly know with the information they truly need. And actively manage all the rest. Thanks

That thinking speaks to the economics of identity/reputation loss. At some point the lines cross and an individual realizes they have something to lose. I think you’ve pointed out correctly that the lines are now crossing much sooner.

I agree with (and applaud) your hunch.

I have a notion that reputation is often overshadowed by vulnerability concerns.

Vulnerabilities lend themselves to marketing-by-fear-mongering around products aimed to reduce vulnerability. As such, vulnerabilities capture our attention.

Reputation is more subtle force. But, we ignore it at our peril. A while back, I blogged about developing a professional persona in social media http://bit.ly/2CT1XB, so that professionals aren’t shooting themselves in the foot by exposing the unvarnished-self shared with friends and family.

Unbeknownst to a surprising number of professionals, a person’s Tweets comprise a body of work that becomes analogous to building a brand. I coined “chirpitude” as a word play on turpitude http://bit.ly/Fch8Y to remind professionals that their reputation is increasingly exposed in the Twitterverse and other social media.

I first had to get past ZG being anything beyond the initials of the website where I reveal my squiggly self in every line (http:bit.ly/AFgM) . Then I appreciated the fact that the trend is towards closeness and not alienation.

Squiggliness is my form of vulnerability. Its sensitivity and lack of boldness leaves the door open to collaboration. I remember each of the layers you outline in turn – the mainframe vax we had within Time Inc. There, my line was dictated by the polygons provided by Naplps graphic creation terminals. The squigglier drawings I did in the Times (or books) that invited readers in to identify with stories, and most recently, experience sketches that welcome customers to new places.

I don’t know if one day people will look down at my DNA and see the squiggly (but not knotted) DNA that makes me do the work I do. But I’m thinking that will only improve my reputation.

Gary