CorporatePR

Multiple Identities Part 2

Last week I wrote about managing your identity, with a focus on reputation:

The question of a global, persistent online identity (and corresponding reputation) is a challenging one. One of the big issues is how to measure reputation (not easy). If you are anything like me, your online reputation is fragmented or multiple. I blog in a variety of different places, on a number of different subjects. In each, I have some roughly visible level of reputation. But I don't think I have any global/aggregate reputation. And I can't carry any of those reputations with me easily if I move into a new topic area, for example.

Or to put it another way, say you are the expert blogger at a company. Maybe you are the CEO. And you leave. This throws a wrench in your former place of work's online reputation, and leaves you fragmented. And what about history? Is your past reputation-generating device archived? Does it disappear? Is our reputation so ephemeral?

I'd like to revisit this idea of multiple identities, as I have been thinking a bit more on it.  This past week, I wrote an article on social bookmarking, tagging and folksonomy for the January issue of PRSA's Tactics magazine.  In my research on tagging, I came across a variety of very interesting articles that looked at tagging from human psychology and behaviorism.  (You can see the list of articles I consulted here.)  Thinking about tagging gave me some insights into thinking about identity.

Great Series on Tagging

Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.  Great stuff.

More on Tagging

So, I did a little research on Technorati to figure out some relevant tags.  And I added a category called Tagging, which will show up at some point in Technorati.  I offer the below for your edification.  All numbers are as of 10/3/0605.

TAG	NO. of POSTS
pr	2,943
Public Relations	1,975
Marketing	17,099
communications	1,005
participatory communications	1
new communications	0
new media	1,307
blogging	35,365
blog	105,192
weblogs	36,448
buzz marketing	248
word of mouth	166
WOM	40
wiki	1,448
media relations	53
ethics	1,972
web 2.0	1,188
web-20	235
tagging	1,198
tags	2,615

Tagging Is Too Much Work

I love the idea of tagging and emergent knowledge organization.  I use del.icio.us religiously to keep track of posts I read in various categories.  I like to see what's happening on a variety of Technorati tags.  But I always forget to tag my own posts.

Tagging is too much work.

I want a cheat sheet sidebar I can drop onto my blog with pre-coded tags I can simply click on.  Or maybe a drop down menu built into TypePad I can populate with my favorite tags.  I'd like others to be able to tag my own posts (hey, share the workload).  Until I have at least one of the first two, my tagging will always be sporadic and half-hearted.

Now we have tagging silos all over the place.  Technorati, del.icio.us, digg, furl, flickr...arrgh.  I want it to be simpler.  The ubertag, the master of tags, the tag search engine.  Something. Help!