The internet has been affecting reputations since its earliest days, and its impact has grown as more people use the web as part of everyday life. Product reviews are ubiquitous and have become essential components of the websites of internet retailers large and small. Auction sites like Ebay, where the customer is inevitably dealing with an unknown seller, could not survive without a way to establish a basic level of trust. To that end, mutual ratings of buyer and seller establish users’ reputations, for better or worse.

Until recently, the internet had largely ignored services as a subject for ratings and reviews, but that has been changing quickly. Even the professions, once sacrosanct, have been touched, and the medical community is no longer immune from the judgments of the web.

In part this is the result of the appearance of sites that specifically invite patients to review their medical and dental providers, but it also stems from patients’ wish to learn about their doctor or dentist by any means available. These means have themselves multiplied. Search engines were once the information providers of choice. They are now supplemented by the “social web,” represented by sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and Orkut, and by a proliferation of blogs and forums.

Since there is so much information available, tracking what affects reputation is a daunting task. Monitoring all of that online content can be greatly simplified by using Reputationobserver.com, especially one that focuses on medical providers. Reputationobserver automates the process and sifts through the internet noise in order to get to meaningful data and provide useful results.
The advantages of using a Reputationobserver’s medical online reputation include:

• Constant, uninterrupted monitoring of all data that can affect reputation.

• Identification and analysis of the sources of reputation information affecting medical providers.

• Collection and analysis of data from sources in addition to search results, including social sites, blogs, forums and reviews.

• Analysis of the relative impact of multiple sources on medical reputation.

• Creation of complete reputation management documentation appropriate for both internal and external review.

• Ability to focus at the provider, practice or institutional level.

• Analysis of influential sources as those sources change over time.

• Analysis of medical reputation itself as it changes over time.

• Tracking of changes to reputation in response to the application of reputation management tools.

The powerful impact of the internet on professional reputation is an undeniable fact of current medical practice. That impact cannot be fully understood without a systematic and dedicated examination of the vast amount of data that makes up an online reputation. A medical online reputation management tool is the key to an effective response to this new reality.

President Barak Obama ignited controversy last week with remarks made during a commencement speech at Hampton University. The President, who is undoubtedly the most tech savvy President to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, told roughly 1,000 students at the historically black college that devices like iPads, iPods, Xboxes, and Playstations have proven dangerous to the cause for strong educations. Several minutes into his speech the President said:

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation”.

The remarks did not sit well with many observers and puzzled others given the President’s own technological knowledge. President Obama, it is well known, was not happy about having to be without his Blackberry cell phone once he became President and even gave the Queen of England an iPod as a gift in the early months of his Presidency. The President’s remarks appear contradictory to his own actions, most notably the means by which he got elected, and are even a little off base.

While Xboxes and Playstations could indeed be viewed as sources of distraction, particularly on college campuses where it is hard to find a dorm room lacking one gaming system or the other, the President seems to have forgotten about his 2008 election. Obama’s campaign placed campaign ads on over 18 different Xbox video games. In fact, the President’s election campaign was a massive media blitz with ads plastered all over the internet including videos on YouTube. Dr. Keith Ablow, a correspondent for Fox News Channel remarked that:

“The president is doubly correct. First of all, he is right (as I have written a number of times) that the Internet, Facebook and, yes, the new iPad and many other devices can interfere with people becoming wise and knowledgeable, rather than simply deluged with facts…Second, Obama is correct because his own ascension to power is a product of those very forces. He used celebrity and star power and the anonymous, pervasive reach of the Web to win his election. He is the iPresident.”

Media outlets and blogs have not only taken exception to the President’s bashing of the very media sources that got him elected, but also disagree with his take on the role of these devices in our media culture. The rise of the Tea Party is a perfect example of how technology and new devices in our media culture are not sources of distraction but instead are indeed sources of information. While the President may believe these people are misinformed by numerous blogs and online commentaries, the opposite is in fact true. They are merely a group of people who have used the internet and technology to empower themselves and have their voices heard.

Obama’s remarks cut deeper than offending other political groups; they offend American’s as a whole who use these technologies. As many blogs and other media sources have pointed out since Obama’s remarks were made public, devices like the iPod allow musicians and artists to be discovered through nontraditional channels. All walks of life in America have been empowered by new technology and devices, whether the President agrees or not.