Online reputation

From IT

== INTRODUCTION ==

Reputation is considered to be the opinion and thoughts that a person or community has about a particular person, group, organization or company, brand… In other words, reputation refers to how the world perceives a particular subject. It can be said that the word reputation is very close with the image that the subject has in a community, the subject’s image can be perceive as good or not trusty.

An individual knowing the opinion of other people about the particular subject will decide how much he can trust in the subject. The role of reputation deciding if it deserves to be trusted or not is very important due to two decisions. Firstly, because usually actions that happens in the past might imply that these actions will be repeated in the future. So, if a problem with a subject has happened before, and more if it has happened more that once, the same problem might happen in the future. Secondly, because an individual or a group’s bad opinion or complaint, although it is a lie or a gossip constructed to deceive, can be taken seriously for the community and this can lead to problems for a company or subject. For example, consider that a person has expanded a gossip that involves a member of a company, although the gossip is false the community might trust it and the company will be affected as it has the responsibility of this worker. In this case, the individual might not trust the company for its member. In addition, the weight of some opinions has more weight of others and could be trusted for the individual easily.

Online reputation takes the description of reputation as it has been described before, but with a difference. Online reputation refers to how much online community trust a subject and how they perceive their image looking to the opinions and other content that they find in the web.