Revise the history books! Forget all you once thought was true! There is a new website to right some of the grossest wrongs of our time. ICorrect, set up by the entrepreneur David Tang, was launched last Thursday and gives celebrities a chance to put straight "lies, misinformation and misrepresentation". And they do: Bianca Jagger has never been on a date with Billy Joel, Anouska Hempel is not known to her friends as "Nou-Nou", Michael Caine has never uttered the words "not many people know that", and entrepreneur Richard Caring's tan is not fake. And it is an exaggeration, writes Tang, to say, as the Mail on Sunday once did, that he is a "creep".
"So much of what fills cyberspace is hearsay," he says. "I felt that those who were written about should have a chance to state their case."
While its users might come across as thin-skinned and self-absorbed – and in the era of Twitter, when celebrities can correct rubbish written about them in an instant, it may prove superfluous – online reputation management is a serious issue. "It's a cliche to say that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and an instant to ruin it, but it's true," says Will Critchlow, founder of Distilled, a search engine optimisation (SEO) company that helps businesses get to the top of web search results and also "cleans" clients' online reputations, whether they are a celebrity or a business. The market has taken off in the last few years, with some firms, especially those in the US, employed by people who aren't even in the public eye but who are worried that a trail of online information could affect their jobs.
"The top priority [to protect a reputation] is to fix the underlying problem," says Critchlow. For instance, where businesses have had allegations of poor customer service, there is often an element of truth. Then reputation management companies use SEO tactics to make sure the sites that come up on the first page of a Google search are relatively glowing, or at least neutral. "That means getting rid of untruths, and making sure the truth is a story you want out there." Can you bury negative stories? "In principle you can, but it can stoke the flames if it's obvious that is what you're doing."
Which is why companies or people – Kate Moss is rumoured to have used it – won't admit to employing someone to launder their reputation. "The coverup becomes the second story, which is no good for anyone."
