How much is your reputation worth?

Rocketboomer founder Andrew Baron is making techie headlines today with his plight to sell his Twitter account and its 1,500 followers. Baron listed the account for sale on eBay.Bloggers expect Baron's stunt will spark some debate about online credibility and privacy, and that Twitter will almost certainly delete the account once it's been sold.

Twitter is an application that enables people to follow others as they give short, 140-character updates about what they are doing, where they are, what they are reading, etc.Some early adopters have found Twitter useful in keeping in touch with others at large events like SXSW. Others have used it to form social niches around particular industries, places or topics.Quite a few real estate agents have been using Twitter to share information about new services, technologies, the market and other issues relevant to their colleagues.

"I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven't been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven't been able to utilize the medium the way I want to," Baron wrote in the details of his eBay posting.

Baron's quest to sell his Twitter account is interesting because it's one of the first examples of someone trying to put a value on an online reputation. The trouble is, how valuable is that reputation once followers recognize they are no longer following the person they intended to follow? Twitter makes it pretty easy to unsubscribe from a person's updates.

Here's what bloggers at TechCrunch and AlwaysOn had to say. 

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Submitted by on April 14, 2008 - 2:26pm.

The answer to the title question, "How much is your reputation worth?" is, it is priceless.

Will selling a Twitter account damage the seller's on-line reputation? I don't know.

But it seems rather silly. More silly would be buying someones Twitter account.

If someone I follow on Twitter sells, I'll just unfollow them.

Looks like a pure publicity stunt to me. And probably effective from that perspective. Stupid, but effective.

Jay Thompson
Broker / Owner
Thompson's Realty

Blog: www.PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com

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Submitted by on April 15, 2008 - 12:31pm.

Andrew Baron blew his cred when he fired Amanda Congdon.

 
Submitted by on April 15, 2008 - 2:14pm.

Twitter is a waste of time anyhow. JMO.

Joe
Harris Ridge Real Estate | Balcones Real Estate

 
Submitted by on April 28, 2008 - 10:17pm.

This is like selling your "trick or treat" candy.

It doesn't taste as good to those who may buy it; and those who sell it are out the enjoyment of whatever experiences they had in making new friends in their "neighborhood of similar interests".

No one 'tweets' with transients.