Inside Conversation

From 2008 to 2010 I tried my hand at independent consulting. Let’s just say it was a great learning experience and that I have now returned to the corporate world full-time with Cisco.

I need to tell the story of one last lesson learned from the experience of starting my own company.

As with any commercial venture these days, you have to start with a web presence, which I did. When I decided to shutter the operation, I also decided to pull down the web site. It could be debated whether that decision was good or bad. But what has clearly turned out to be a horrible decision was to relinquish the rights to my former company domain name!

It seems that shortly after I let it go, it was picked up by the sort of web site that, shall we say ,is NSFW. Oops!

I have been scrambling all morning erasing every link I can find to that address. The problem is Google and its rather long memory. Search for my old company and you find … NSFW.

I decided that in the spirit of openness and transparency, to make this situation public and a matter of record. So should anyone happen across that site and connect it with me, at least I can say and show that I did my best to break that connection.

So the big takeaway: NEVER RELINQUISH RIGHTS TO ANY DOMAIN NAME THAT YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO BE REDIRECTED TO AN EMBARRASSING DESTINATION!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: reputation, reputation management |