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December 02, 2004
"Peter Brinkerhoff Is a Sexy Beast": Tall Tales of Digital Reputation
Scoble's comments about defending your name in the online world reminded me of a recent experience my friend had over the summer.
An honorable, savvy fellow, he was interviewing at several organizations to run regional micro-economic development programs. Great resume, great business mind, &c. The organization that he is now working for began their interview with the question, "Why is Peter Brinkerhoff a sexy beast?" He was flabbergasted, and muffed a response along the lines of how they came about to ask that.
A few months ago, a satirical newsletter from his alma matter had run a chop piece on him that fancifully imagined him, the student government treasurer, as a new-money playboy about campus. That newsletter later went online as a blog, and uploaded its archives. Since blogs tend to receive high Google rankings, this article appeared on the first page of results. A simple Google search for "Peter Brinkerhoff" returns a result entitled "The Drone: November 2003 Archives" with the body of "... Peter Brinkerhoff Is A Sexy Beast. ... For now, Peter Brinkerhoff remains notoriously
single, but don’t be surprised to hear engagement rumors start flying. ..." as the third hit on the first page.
The interviewer had passed his name around the organization's office, and one of the department heads had executed the above search, grabbed the link, and passed it around the office. Fortunately the interviewers in question caught the humor and were having a laugh at my friend's expense, but Peter (not the film actor, nor the business consultant, nor the sailor) was deeply concerned.
A couple of days later at a party he asks me, "What can I do? They can't publish that! How do I get my name back?" Well, yes they can, and there's not much you can do to alter a Google results page. However, there is a way to regain your name, and that is by blogging yourself (or receiving a favorable blog post). Become a valuable contributor in the conversation about your name, and you control the conversation. That shouldn't be too hard if your name doesn't have a *sucks.com domain running around. Thus, this post is my contribution to the conversation about Peter Brinkerhoff, affectionately known around his office as Sexy Beast, or SB. Whaddya think, Pete? Want to start a blog?
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Posted by Noel at 10:42 AM
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Comments
yes yes yes. josiahroe.com
Posted by: JosiahQ at December 2, 2004 10:55 AM
That's amazing. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, either.
Posted by: ryan at December 2, 2004 11:29 AM
Josiah: Yeah, that's yours to own. Crow away.
Ryan: I think my point is that we can no longer treat this sort of thing as an unfortunate accident, but instead must actively participate in the digital conversation about ourselves. In other words, this will happen to everyone who doesn't prepare themselves by blogging, commenting, etc.
Of course, there's a gap running on socio-economic lines here too, so my "everyone" above isn't universal.
Posted by: barelylegalprogrammer at December 2, 2004 03:42 PM