The Right to Respond Should be a Fundamental Right of the Internet
By Tom Foremski - March 10, 2007
At the Newcomm Forum in Las Vegas this week, I kept hearing a lament that is all too common: how to deal with with negative or incorrect content about a company and its products on search engine results? Especially if those negative links are on the first page of results because most users rarely look at more than one page. The same issue applies to individuals too.
Publishing a response to a critic is not enougth because it is unlikely to be ranked on the first page of search results. Similarly, if a critic were to change their mind about a company, an individual, or product--the search engines could still be serving up the original complaint on that crucial first page of results.
This is a serious problem in terms of reputation management for companies, and it will increasingly affect individuals too as they seek new jobs, new partners, etc.
Companies have large resources and there are ways they can influence the search results. Individuals have far less ability to manage their online reputations.
The Right to Respond
I'm proposing that companies and individuals all should have a level playing field and that a fundamental right of the Internet should be the right to respond to anything that is written, said, or viewed about them.
Readers reading a Right to Respond posting will know that it is likely biased but at least they can make up their own minds.
There should be a tiny Right to Respond widget or link next to any content. The widget is fed by a central Right to Respond.org server. If there is a response filed by a company or individual, it will indicate it, in the same way as my Technorati widget found at the end of each article shows readers if there are other blogs mentioning this post.
- Companies would pay to use this service, individuals would have free access.
- Web site owners/publishers/bloggers, etc would not be forced to provide a Right to Respond link next to their content. But if they did, it would show that they are a respectable and responsible site. Sites that are critical and that won't offer a right to respond will be seen as less credible.
- Offering a Right to Respond link should become the responsible thing to do--especially if a site's reach, such as Google's could potentially and inadvertently cause harm to reputation.
- The New York Times should offer a Right to Respond link next to every story that it publishes. Again, it is the responsible thing to do, because of its reach and influence and potential to harm reputations.
- Local newspapers should offer a Right to Respond link too, because of their influence in each community.
- Search engines should offer a right to respond link next to each search result they publish--even if a right to respond link isn't found on the original web page of a search result. Some web sites are dead and the content only exists in search engine archives, therefore the search engine becomes the "responsible" publisher.
- There is almost no monetary cost to offering a Right to Respond link, it does not cost a web site owner anything extra in servers or bandwidth.
- Web sites could be paid for offering a Right to Respond service from the fees charged to companies. Each time the page is loaded could earn the publisher a micro-payment, something that could be easily tracked by the Right to Respond widget sitting on the publisher's server.
That payment could be further qualified by the influence of a web site. The New York Times gets more money for running a Right to Respond link than less influential sites-- even if traffic volumes for both are the same.
- Only the content publishers get paid to carry a Right to Respond link and not search engines. It is the originator and not the aggregator that collects the payment.
Would some sites publish nasty things about companies or people simply to collect Right to Respond payments? They could, but constantly publishing critical and negative content would undermine their credibility, their influence, and their traffic.
Offering a Right to Respond should become the right and responsible thing to do, imho. Let me know what you think.
Responses:
Todd Defren at Shift Communications: PR Squared: The Right to Respond
By Tom Foremski - March 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comment
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Comments (11)
Tom,
nice idea. Good luck getting companies to play, particularly public ones. The good CC departments already respond to crisis scenarios using their website or mediaroom. The time required to respond constantly to chatter from the public is one of the largest roadblocks to corporate adoption of blogs. They simply don't have time. Using today's existing tools, they can "monitor" but not "respond" to all but the most urgent or critical attacks.
I'm sure NewComm was fun but remember that you were in an echo chamber.
Posted: March 12, 2007 10:50 AM
Dee: This has nothing to do with Newcomm, I didn't mention it there. It is something I've been thinking about for nearly 3 years and I think public companies would gladly pay because it would cost far less than trying to respond through normal publishing. If your response is not on the first page of results then it might as well not be there.
Posted: March 12, 2007 5:50 PM
Tom:
fair enough...thanks for the clarification. Although I respect your idea, I struggle with the same problem faced by SMNR, etc. What is the preferred format? Who is the preferred vendor? How could you possibly develop a "defacto" right to respond technology or server site? You'd face the same things you face with everything else...competition for eyeballs and members. Then...instead of RTR being a good, albeit idealogical concept, it would just be THAT MUCH MORE that we have to monitor in space.
What are your thoughts on overcoming that? .org isn't enough by a long shot.
Posted: March 12, 2007 7:39 PM
Tom,
The "right to respond" is certainly a fundamental that's worth standing up for, and I applaud you for that. It makes sense to level the playing field so individuals have the same access to openly respond compared to larger corporations; but whether those companies will be willing to foot the bill in a world of new rules - it's hard to say. Something needs to change in the economic scheme to keep responsible and well-researched journalism alive and well - a la The New York Times. It would certainly be a useful tool to spread two-way communications on the Net. In the broader scope of things, I'd say that laying the foundation for the new rules of communication deserves more attention today. We've certainly got plenty of discussion on search!
Posted: March 12, 2007 8:45 PM
Dee: The technology to provide a right to respond link is trivial.
Chris: Thanks for the support. I think a right to respond is essential in today's world where search is becoming our main interface to the internet and thus we are all vulnerable to someone else's view of the internet. We can't change the algorithms but we should have the right to respond to any potentially damaging search results dredged up by those algorithms.
Posted: March 13, 2007 3:43 PM
BUt the internet is the wild wid west
Posted: March 14, 2007 10:05 AM
Tom is my new PR/media hero.
I vote for Todd Defren and his great innovation/design team at Shift Communications to set up a template that we can play around with.
I will use it for two of my clients, Computerworld and Podcast Ready if that helps. This could get very interesting.
Cheers! Standing O.
Posted: March 14, 2007 11:37 AM
Question: how is the Right to Respond any different than a company responding individually on blogs via comments, or responding to the bigger shitstorms via their own website.
If they're monitoring the web, which strategically they should be doing, aren't they already making choices about responding vs. not responding? Sure they are. Why would an "officially sanctioned" methodology be any more compelling to companies?
Posted: March 14, 2007 3:54 PM
Dee: Great point and that's exactly what "Right to Respond" is about. It is about linking first page search results with a related "Right to Respond" link directly next to a specific search result (if it is activated.) Otherwise, the company's or individual's response could be many pages deep within a search engine's results and that is as good as invisible since few people venture further than the first page.
Posted: March 14, 2007 7:36 PM
Tom,
Good idea. Sounds like a more prominent form of trackback for primary affected parties mentioned in posts and news stories.
Although comments and trackbacks (and lawyers' letters) already allow for a right to reply, it's just the prominence of the various comments and trackbacks that's not working well.
Wikipedia should do more on this. And how about a right to remove your own comments?
Posted: March 28, 2007 1:18 PM
Thanks for your comment Dominic. Yes, a right to remove your own comments would be great. Right now, everything lives on forever, embedded in the permalink concrete of the Internet. A Wiki-Internet is what we need...!
Posted: March 30, 2007 1:56 PM