Pulling the BS Card on the Boston Globe and their "Digital Dirt" Story
The Boston Globe, one of the most reputable newspapers in the country (well, used to be I guess), published a story today written by Johnny Diaz that's about firms that can help consumers remove the digital dirt online.
What's digital dirt? Well, remember that blog post that your ex-wife wrote about you; the one that talked about you farting in bed, putting boogers on the bathroom wall and oh yea, cheating on her with a red-headed midget named Baby Blue from Seattle?
Yea, that one. Remember it? Well, this story is about being able to "remove" that from the search crawlers so when you go for that job as a McDonald's drive-thru technician, they won't pull your bad boy card.
Diaz interviewed "professionals" in this particular field who charge anywhere between $2,000 and $10,000 to help consumers (and presumably companies) remove the negative crap online that can tarnish their brand.
I'm calling the bullshit card on the Globe for one major reason. This isn't news, folks. There are countless blog posts about how to remove negative content about your brand online. You can't REMOVE content from the web, really. It'll live on forever. So what this story is really about, which takes a little time to get into, is that if you're freaked out about negative stuff online, you need to drown out the noise with more positive and neutral content via the help of various social media channels.
Basically, the point of the article is that you need to be in the volume business in order to kill the bad stuff.
Well, no shit Sherlock.
When I take a step back, I realize that not everyone has a Facebook account. Not everyone knows the value of using LinkedIn. Not everyone realizes that Twitter is something you can use to create positive content and connections online and it's something you can't catch via a one night stand.
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