Your Virtual Persona Won't Cut It...

Have you ever wondered how many of your virtual friends can be your BBQ buddies? They are on your Yahoo’s friend list. You spend a few hours to chat with them every day and overtime you may share a secret or two with them. You also have seen a few of their photos on Facebook. They send you incessant tweets on Twitter. Why not physically hang around with them? At the end of the day, John is funny in the chatrooms and Janet sends very thoughtful tweets. Does that make John good for parties and Janet suitable for an intellectual conversation?

I can safely say that not that many people are willing to meet their online buddies unless there are very strong shared interests. The reason for this reluctance is the nature of the Internet itself. As a medium, it has enabled us – and others - to impersonate, intentionally or subconsciously. While our social persona acts as a mask to cover our weaknesses and insecurities, the virtual persona is the potion we always needed to transform ourselves into our role models. In the chatrooms you can be Elvis flirting with other women; In your blog, you can be an investment banker fighting over proposed economic plans.

What does that have to with reputation? I don’t think someone who establishes a solid reputation in the virtual world can easily carry it outside of the Internet. Well, some Internet pioneers did it during the Internet bubble. Some are still trying this using the hype for social networking. But at the end of the day, the people in the brick-and-mortar world, who are comfortable with dealing with you based on your “real” persona, will think twice to build a relationship solely based on your virtual reputation. Your virtual reputation might get you to their doors, but as soon as you knock, it will become obsolete and you need to present your “real” you. That means for building a holistic reputation, whether as an individual or business, one needs to simultaneously fight two battles: real and virtual.


Reza Sabernia