This author of this article present an interesting theory, that privacy stands in almost direct contrast to your online reputation. He is particularly perceptive about the history of privacy and how it has changed with the advent and evolution of the Internet.

It is becoming very normal for someone that I am meeting with that has never met me, to look online.  What they see forms an early opinion and I would rather they hear from me than others.  This means I must put information about me online.  Ergo, our desire for privacy is running smack dab into our need to culture an online reputation.

I’m not sure I agree with his theory, but it’s certainly entertaining and interesting. It seems to be intuitively true, too. The need to credential ones’ self online can only be accomplished effectively by personal reputation management.

http://www.technologystory.com/2010/03/21/privacy-vs-online-reputation/

David Letterman’s reputation certainly hasn’t taken a hit the way Tiger Woods’ has, despite the fact that both of them committed acts of infidelity. Why has Letterman’s reputation done so much better than Woods’? Well for one, Letterman came out and admitted it–he controlled the message. Secondly, Letterman was sort of the victim in that particular situation because someone was blackmailing him.

About 4 million people tuned to see what Letterman would have to say about the guilty plea entered that day by a former TV news producer who admitted he’d tried to shake down the late night host to the tune of $2 million by exposing Letterman’s taste in interns/staffers. One week earlier, Letterman averaged 3.7 million people on Tuesday night.

Now, Letterman’s reputation has still suffered, and he’ll need a business reputation management campaign to fix the damage–but at least he controls the message.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tvblog/2010/03/david-letterman-scores-again-w.html

Bristol-Myers, the bio-pharmaceutical company, has named a new CEO–Lamberto Andreotti. He replaces outgoing CEO James Cornellius, who will remain as the chairman.

Cornelius’ tenure can’t be judged until the fate of those drug candidates is clear, Funtelyder said aid.

“Right now, we have to give him an incomplete,” he said. “You won’t know whether his strategy pays off until post- Plavix, probably 2013, 2014, and there’ll be a lot of Monday- morning quarterbacking over whether he made the right moves.”

The article certainly ends with a dose of truth, there will be a lot of bloggers and tweeters out there who will immediately seize upon the news and castigate Cornellius, no matter how innocent he might be. A business reputation management campaign would go a long way to relegating those Monday-morning quarterbacks to the bench.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-02/bristol-myers-names-andreotti-to-chief-executive-post-update1-.html