The web, in general, has always been a positive place for personal branding. No one is going to write someone else a negative LinkedIn recommendation, and even if they did, it doesn’t have to be accepted and published. Most people aren’t going to speak poorly of another individual in a public saying because it makes them look bad as well. They are easily identifiable based on their name, picture and language, and their negative comments are search-able. But, you will always have critics, trolls, and other types of people who seek to do you harm online, but those opinions are typically washed away by the power of community.
On November 23rd, 2009, I wrote a post called “The Personal Brand Marketplace of the Future.” I knew that the future would be different for our brands because the world isn’t full of care bears, rainbows, and peace. There are wars, robbery, rape, violence, etc. The online world is a complete representation of the offline world. There are also a lot of people who want to see you fail, who talk behind your back, and who will sabotage you, whether they are your competitors or not. That is how life is, and now the web is starting to move to complete transparency and “truth,” so I’m not surprised that a new site called Unvarnished is about to launch.
People trust recommendations
It won’t surprise you that people trust other people, especially if they are your friends or family. You would trust your mother over some random person from Alaska, but you might still trust that person if they are an expert or used a product or a service that you’re interested in. The following research proves just how important recommendations are, especially online where people are searching for reviews before they make a purchase. You will always trust a third party over a company just like how you’ll trust PR over advertising. You know the company is trying to make a sale, but if someone else recommends that product, it carries more weight.
- 90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people they know; 70% trust opinions of unknown users. (Econsultancy, July 2009).
- 85% of people tell their friends when they have a problem with a brand (eMarketer, March 2010)
- 83% of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74% are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place. (Manage Smarter, September 2009)
- 67% of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from online community of friends. (Internet Retailer, September 2009)
- 42% trust word-of-mouth recommendations (eMarketer, May 2009)
Unvarnished: An online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation.
Online reviews and your personal brand
The more money a product costs, the more time people will spend actively researching it. If a product has received one hundred negative reviews, the consumer is going to be suspicious and might seek a similar product elsewhere. This typically occurs for products of all kinds, regardless of brand, and brand names do have an advantage because consumers already trust them. Online reviews have taken many forms, from consumer reviewing products on a flip camera and then uploading them to YouTube, to a simple 140-character tweet review.
Websites that offer product / service reviews
- Glassdoor.com – You can review your experiences working at a company anonymously. CEO’s are also given ratings in the same fashion. They usually receive a lot of negative reviews from people who have gotten fired or laid off too.
- Yelp – You can review restaurants, bars, schools, hotels, stores, and a variety of other places. Users aren’t anonymous on Yelp, and they are rated on how helpful they are.
- Amazon – You can review books, kindle editions of books, DVD’s, CD’s, toys, electronics, clothing and more. You don’t have to actually own the product to review it, as long as you’ve made at least one Amazon purchase.
- Rotten Tomatoes – You can rate movies and establish your own online profiles.
- NEW Unvarnished – You can rate people anonymously.
When you rate a product or a service, that might hurt a company, but few individuals take it to heart. When you rate the average person, that’s when feelings get hurt. Calling someone ugly, fat, annoying, or making fun of them in some other way, can have a devastating effect on them. Unvarnished is about to turn the recruiting, career, and reputation game on it’s head and there’s no going back!
Unvarnished reviews personal brands
When Unvarnished launches, everyone in the world will be held accountable for their brands on it, and it will force everyone to search their name online much more often. You will also have to claim your profile page before someone else does for you. As you can see from this screen shot, taken from TechCrunch.com, people get reviewed based on skill, productivity, relationships and integrity. If you have a bad rating, the system allows youto invite your friends to post positive ratings and comments. Just like Amazon.com, and the Google search results for your name, you can’t remove negative comments from your profile. This makes them more legitimate, yet poses a threat to people who either should get bad reviews, or has people who disagree with them.
The workplace is an environment, where many interactions and experiences occur. If you have a bad manager, you could give him a negative review, which will hurt his brand forever (or as long as this site exists). They may know it’s you if it’s the first published review and you’re the only person they manage. Would you hire a person who received a poor review on this site? You probably won’t unless you already know, like, and trust them. The key here is that people will judge you based on what’s observable online and more and more people do research before they go on dates, or do business deals, so you better make sure you have your head around this site.
Your turn
What are your feelings about Unvarnished? Do you fear it?
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Hello Dan,
Thanks for presenting Unvarnished, I hadn’t heard about it before.
I think Unvarnished is the worst possible threat to someone’s identity I’ve ever heard of. The sole act of “rating someone” can be such a subjective activity, I can’t even begin to imagine what can happen if the rating’s online and anonymous.
Worst even, it appears you have to claim your own self before someone does it for you – leaving the place open for identity theft. As an employer, I would never trust a site that allows public and anonymous reviews of people.
I believe that, unless they immediately re-adjust their model, Unvarnished will end up being a place for comment spam. But of course that wouldn’t matter too much to the 5 people using their site…
Your identity is attached to your Facebook identity because they use Facebook connect. I know it’s unfair and I understand your concerns, but negative comments are going to come out regardless if this site existed or not. People could always blog a bad experience with you.
I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of Unvarnished, but sites like this are certainly worrisome. They especially cause concern because participators are allowed to remain anonymous. People are much more likely to stretch the truth, if indeed their complaints about a company or person are even based in truth, when they know no one will connect them to the negative comment.
People who enjoy making snarky comments – and there are many out there who seem to be driven by putting others down – will have a field day with Unvarnished.
I’m guessing a lot of folks who don’t deserve it will be hit. We can only hope that, over time, the world will realize they shouldn’t necessarily believe what they read on such sites.
-Meg Guiseppi
Meg, thanks for the comment. People will gladly take their first amendment right. Honestly, I don’t see any smart professional commenting or giving a “poor” recommendation in public or online. Anonymity sometimes let’s the truth come out. It’s interestesting!
“If you have a bad rating, the system allows you to invite your friends to post positive ratings and comments. ”
There in is why it is skewed. If people receive negative ratings/comments, they can merely invite friends to come and post good things about them? Hmmmm….let people self-spam so to say to build false positives sounds to be accurate?
On Amazon and other rating systems it’s the same though.
Amazon is the most gamed rating system there is. There are books, even sold on Amazon, on how to manipulate the ratings to sell more books. Tim Ferris, god love him, took this game and turned it into an art form.
I can say this type of site causes me concern. Beyond personal branding, there are a great many people who just don’t understand people sometimes have “Very” unpopular jobs to do. I have been a consultant brought in to fix someone else’s broken project. Needless to say, the people I came into replace, bad mouthed me to the company trying to save their jobs. Also the co-workers of the displaced did not love me ether. I was nothing but professional, but literally got personal threats. So in an anonymous forum, I can see real issues ethical and objective verses subjective issues; let alone, the ex’s, getting online for some vindictive fun.
So all and all I can see a real legal issue around personal slander, especially within the US legal system. Youtube had some real growing pains around copyright infringement that threatened their very existence in the early days. I can see similar legal battles for Unvarnished.
The online world is a representation of the offline world. The only difference is shelf life.
This is where I disagree, in this context. In the real world a great many employers have the policy of giving no reference good or bad… just that a person worked under their employee, because of law suits over defamation of character. As the keeper of such non-vetted negative and slanderous content I believe Unvarnished will be held legally accountable for their content, as Youtube was and is for theirs. In the case of Youtube, they must remove all infringing materiel brought light by copyright holders and also must take actions preventing copyrighted material from being dispensed from their site. Youtube’s issue is copyright, Unvarnished is slander. Think about the lawsuits faced by tabloid reporting, it’s going to be a goat rodeo… I hope you did not invest.
Paul, GREAT example with YouTube…I see what you’re saying now, thanks.
Hey Dan,
I’ve given Unvarnished some thought since we touched base last week and the more I think about it, the clearer I am that its not only a terrible idea but also that it won’t catch on. I’ve yet to talk to anyone who thinks this is a positive move and I’m struggling to see how it would be widely used. The anonymity will damage the credibility of any comments that are on there – there’s nothing stopping anyone from creating multiple profiles to themselves a positive rating – and without a way for the audience (recruiters, employers, HR?) for verify those accounts, that’s got to invalidate the comments. I think this will work very differently to Jobvent.com, even though the concepts are identical. I’d be interested in your thoughts on why, but there’s something very different about commentating/rating a company or product as opposed to another human being
It’s because our culture frowns upon this type of behavior, yet secretly people are interested to know what people think of them and other people.
[...] Unvarnished Changes Personal Brand Reputation Management Forever Published: April 5, 2010 Source: Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel The web, in general, has always been a positive place for personal branding. No one is going to write someone else a negative LinkedIn recommendation, and even if they did, it doesn’t have to… [...]
Unvarnished has an interesting model. Other social networking site build upon the concept of the promoting trust and social capital through their community. Unvarnished is doing the opposite. Here are some of my thoughts:
1. Sign up and submit unbiased and credible review on other people.
2. Pass around your Unvarnished invitation to those people who would like to help promoting other people well being.
3. Share your thoughts and opinion about the site.
[...] Unvarnished Changes Personal Brand Reputation Management Forever [...]
[...] to Dan Schwabel (the self-proclaimed ‘leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y’), “people who want to see you fail, who talk behind your back, and who will sabotage you, whether they …” now have an official place to call home — Unvarnished. It’s a new website which will [...]
[...] Meg Guiseppi, cited a blog post by Dan Schawbel regarding the site which was entitled, “Unvarnished Changes Personal Brand Reputation Management Forever.” Dan commented, “”When Unvarnished launches, everyone in the world will be held [...]