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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
The Reputation Economy summary
Michael Fertik and David C. Thompson
How To Optimize Your Digital Footprint in a World Where Your Reputation Is Your Most Valuable Asset
16 mins
Table of Contents
The Reputation Economy
summarized in 7 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 7
Everything you do online is recorded, stored and analyzed to determine your reputation score.
Before the advent of the internet, people had a fair amount of control over how they presented themselves to the world. Today, however, such tight control is a thing of the past.
This change is partially due to the dramatic expansion of our data storage capacities. Previously, only major institutions, such as the CIA, the NSA and IBM, had the resources to store massive amounts of data. Then came the internet, and now anyone can store huge amounts of data for close to zilch.
For individuals, that means that their digital footprint, the trail of data they leave behind after surfing the internet (photos uploaded to Facebook, credit card transactions and ATM withdrawals), will be recorded and permanently stored by a motley of companies.
Furthermore, emerging technologies are making it easier and cheaper to analyze, quantify and draw conclusions from this data. And companies increasingly rely on data-analysis tools to discern patterns in their customers’ behavior.
Amazon, for instance, uses a system called Hadoop to find, among millions upon millions of purchases, patterns that allow them to make customized product recommendations. And LinkedIn uses a similar system to recommend “People You May Know.”
These systems organize the cascades of data via numerical scoring. And at this point, pretty much everything is being processed and scored.
So whatever you do online – each click of your mouse – is represented as a number. And many companies are plugging these numbers into an algorithm that computes a reputation score for individual people.
Pretty soon, reputation scores will be ubiquitous. In other words, whatever you want to do in the future, whether it’s getting a job or buying a house, you’ll first have to reckon with your reputation score – the sum of all your online habits.
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What is The Reputation Economy about?
The Reputation Economy (2015) explains how to optimize your digital footprint and establish a first-rate online reputation. The authors identify emerging trends and describe how you can improve your prospect of both professional and financial success.
Who should read The Reputation Economy?
- Anyone interested in protecting their online reputation
- Every internet user
- Anyone who wants to be up to date on the latest trends in hiring
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