Attack of the trolls - managing your online reputation

Managing your online reputation? This is actually a blog post promoting Beevolve's monitoring services, and reveals that the company apparently failed to do the obvious: Contacting him directly to ask why he tweeted the comment in question.

Corporate reputation is one thing, private reputations are far more fragile I think and the trolls have lots of tools at their disposal to make your life hell.

I'm currently hip-deep in tracking a guy that has been harassing some of the users of my website in ways that defy they imagination (and I thought I'd seen it all), and with every layer of dirt that gets peeled back more is revealed.

Really, if someone has it it in for you online they have a pretty easy time and you'll have a very hard time trying to get rid of things that damage you. This is in large part due to the unwillingness of the larger players to keep their userbase in check, and if the language in which the harassment takes place is not English then you're facing an even bigger uphill battle.

Managing your online reputation should be easier than it is today, the damage is very real and it is with the current tools for a non-technical person next to impossible to put a stop to it.

I can see why beevolve targets businesses but there definitely is a lot of work to be done for private individuals as well.

How is this promoting their own product? I think its a genuinely effort to put forth a real life story before you. Most of the SM gurus would say that feeding these trolls is usually a waste of time; instead, monitor quietly to gauge the response to the comment. For a bigger brand, it might not hurt at all, but for a startup, the impact would be much higher. The approach taken by Beevolve as a whole is certainly a better way to tackle this issue. If otherwise, I am hoping someone here might be able to at least point me in the right direction.

These aren't "attacks", they're just the exercise of free speech on the internet. No matter what, some people are always going to say bad stuff about you and if you take an adult attitude towards these things then you just have to live with criticism - even if it seems unfair or unpleasant to you.

I work at Beevolve. One of the lessons this incident has showed us is safeguarding privacy in an increasingly open world has its own disadvantages. This kind of troll attacks will only increase as stakes get higher.

Why is this being upvoted? The entire article boils down to "People say nasty things about your business online. Products like ours help you find when they do that"

There's a story to illustrate this, but then -- and this is the kicker -- we never find out who the guy is or what his beef was. If we had, it would have been an acceptable story. But as it is, I can't see what people will get of value from spending their time reading it (Aside from the commercial value the writers got, of course, and I don't begrudge them that. Just trying to help them with providing a better trade for the reader next time)

This article promised to be a great detective story, with lots of twists and perhaps with a surprise ending. But it wasn't that. That makes it frustrating.

Slanderous language? Really?