Digital Biographer™

‘Keeber-biograph‘, meaning Cyber-Biographer.

This is a term I came across today when searching through Yandex, the Russian search engine that’s been in the news recently, and which is rightly proud of the fact that, thanks to them, Russia is one of only four countries where Google is not the significantly dominant search engine.

The term came up in a blog by Maya Kim, in the context of an article by Steve Rubel entitled ‘Three Emerging Digital Careers to Watch‘ and I was interested to see that only one of the three terms Steve had used had been expanded and given further clarification using English terms in the context of a Russian blog.

Steve’s Term of Super Cruncher was unchanged, and Chief Customer Experience Officer was simply translated into Russian as ‘Head of the Department of Quality Service for Clients’. But his term ‘Digital Storytellers’ was translated into Russian as ‘Cyber-Biographer’, and also expanded to include the English terms ‘digital storyteller, cyberspace concierge, blog butler, ghost blogger, digital biographer‘.

I recall the terms ‘Cyber Concierge’, ‘Blog Butler’ and ‘Ghost Blogger’ were used when BBC News 24 wrote about my work over a year ago, but I was surprised, and quite delighted, to find this reference being made. (For those of you who may not be aware of the fact, I speak fairly good Russian.)

I like the term Digital Storyteller – it’s a good description of some elements of my work. But I still think that ‘biographer’ is closer to describing things accurately:

biography

noun ( pl. -phies)
an account of someone’s life written by someone else.
• writing of such a type as a branch of literature.
• a human life in its course : although their individual biographies are different, both are motivated by a similar ambition.

When individuals and companies working as web designers, web programmers, in public relations and search optimisation experts all begin to start dropping the same buzzwords and approach into their promotional material, you know there’s a bandwagon rolling…

The latest big bandwagon is Online Reputation Management which now appears in the famous ‘Web 2.0 Buzzword Bingo’. It’s popping up in hundreds of blogs highlighting how ‘if you Google Company X, the first page is full of people dumping on them‘ and invariably points to the author, or their associates as the expert who can fix the problem, and make this bad coverage disappear. A search in Google for the term ‘online reputation management’ finds over 4.6 million entries, and the sponsored ads are full of phrases like ‘Remove Bad Information’, ‘Fight Negative Publicity’ and ‘Defend Your Reputation’.

The organic listings within that search contain content from many seasoned Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) ad Search Engine Marketing (SEM) experts and there are a few respected and familiar names I recognise there like Lee Odden and Andy Beal, who has also written ‘Radically Transparent‘. However, there are also a lot of links to those who are clearly doing their best to game Google’s search results, and offer to do the same for you, in a fairly cynical ‘digital dirty laundry cleaner’ approach.

Now, that’s a fair enough business model, and good luck to those seeking to take advantage of a new opportunity… Read more…