As I am a fairly new user of Twitter myself, I was amazed
that so many people conduct “vanity searches” on themselves. As stated in the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman, “In another use of Twitter, authors
are constantly doing vanity searches on Twitter to determine if people are
talking about them or about their books.”
In the example given in the book, an author even went as far as to
offering a person’s money back if they didn’t enjoy his new book.
I personally was unfamiliar with the term “vanity search”. Wikipedia refers to vanity search as egosurfing,
egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling, or self-googling and defines it as
being the practice of searching one’s own name, pseudonym, or screen mane on a
popular search engine in order to review the results. I would assume that famous people such as
authors, actors, etc. would have a media person who does this type of thing for
them and then reports back with major Tweets and widespread buzz about the
person. However, I guess some famous
folks may enjoy doing this themselves.
google.com images
It is amazing to me with this huge social media world that
we live in today that one post can start a spiraling of negative or positive
information on a person, product, or service that can as they say “make or
break” someone. I honestly do pay
attention to what my friends post and if they say “I would recommend this book,
or don’t buy it because it’s terrible” would influence me one way or
another.
So, more power to famous authors and others conducting these
vanity searches. If I were rich and made
my living off of people buying my product, I would do the same thing.
References:
Qualman, E. (2012). Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business (2nd ed., pp.33). John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, NJ.
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosurfing
References:
Qualman, E. (2012). Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business (2nd ed., pp.33). John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, NJ.
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosurfing
I also have never heard of a vanity search before! Although I find it very interesting and cannot say that if I was a writer that I wouldn't do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that people can make or break a product. For example if the people on I follow on pinterest claim that a product is wonderful I am more than likely to try it. Even sites like trip advisor when people post reviews I take into consideration when I am spending my money on something. Have these opinions been wrong and I have not agreed with the review? Sure but that doesn't happen that often.
At first I thought this was weird/vain but now that I think about it, it's not much different than a company searching SM for comments about themselves - it helps them provide better customer service so why not - if people are saying negative things about them or their work, at least maybe they'll try and fix it.
ReplyDeleteI was not familiar with the term either but I do conduct searches on myself especially when I was conducting job searches. I wanted to make sure everything was in order even though I try to keep things as clean as possible with my social media presence. It is good to make sure everything is okay every once in a while. As far as vanity searches, I think I will be safe from fans and critics.
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