It’s after 5 p.m. on an early October evening, and on the second floor of the Florida Innovation Hub at UF in downtown Gainesville, the four-person, full-time team behind NetClarify is calmly working. The one-roomed office is void of the high level of stress one may expect just days before a company launch.
“It’s been more than two years since our initial conversations about this company,” said Adam Gross, co-founder and CEO. “Starting a company is a steady, drawn-out process. It’s not something you can get overly emotional about.”
The ability to remain even-keeled, in addition to Gross’ experience starting several other companies, has aided him through the process of moving NetClarify from concept to marketplace.
Seeing the Need
Protecting individuals’ privacy in the digital age has been a longtime concern for Jon Mills, dean emeritus of the University of Florida Levin College of Law and author of Privacy: The Lost Right (Oxford University Press, 2008). In June 2010, Mills met Gross to discuss the concept that eventually became NetClarify.
“Privacy became an intensely personal issue for me when I represented the families of victims of the Gainesville murders in 1990,” said Mills, co-founder and chairman of the company. “We were able to keep horrible images from becoming public. I saw the pain that an intrusion would cause. Since then, I represented other families such as Dale Earnhardt’s, to protect their privacy. What I learned was that the internet and modern technology could hurt people badly.”
When Mills wanted to make the idea of helping people with their online reputation a reality, he contacted Arnold “Arnie” Heggestad, Ph.D., emeritus professor of finance and entrepreneurship at UF. It was Heggestad who suggested Mills meet Gross, one of his brightest students.
Originally from Long Island, N.Y., Gross studied industrial and labor relations at Cornell University and worked on Wall Street for seven years before moving to Gainesville in 2010 to pursue a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in competitive strategy at UF.
Finding the Solution
According to Kaplan Test Prep’s 2011 survey of college admissions officers, nearly a quarter of respondents have visited an applicant’s Facebook or other social networking page, and 20 percent have Googled them. The same is true in the employment sector. According to Jobvite’s 2012 Social Recruiting Survey, 92 percent of recruiters use, or plan to use, social media to make hiring decisions.
Unlike many start-ups or university spinoffs that start with technology and identify a problem it can solve, NetClarify first identified the rising problem faced by students entering the job market or applying to academic institutions and developed a solution for them to improve it, said Heggestad, co-founder and vice chairman.
Throughout the final year of Gross’ MBA program, he worked with Mills and Heggestad to fine-tune NetClarify’s service. The initial plan to utilize paralegals working directly with individuals to improve online privacy infractions evolved into an automated process. Gross said the technology is outsourced so the staff can focus on marketing and distribution.
The end product provides potential clients a free report that includes a snapshot of one’s online persona. The full report costs $49.95 and includes results from a search of more than 100 social media sites (like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), a sentiment analysis, a word cloud of frequently used terms, and results of where the individual is mentioned online, including digital criminal, property and public records.
NetClarify’s results will also show clients who they may be mistaken for—an equally important aspect of protecting one’s online reputation. “When I applied for a license for this building, I alerted them that when they run a background check they would find information about another Adam Gross in Florida who jumped probation,” Gross said. “I explained that if they noted the height difference and eye color they could confirm it is not me.”
So how can clients remedy their questionable content or inaccurate information posted about them? Within the full report, NetClarify offers direct links for users to reference their questionable social media posts and delete them if chosen. Users are also advised on how to request incorrect information be removed from others’ sites. And, if those steps fail, users have access to a bank of letters targeted to internet privacy issues that were created by NetClarify’s six-member board of directors, which includes four attorneys.
What’s Next?
As NetClarify officially launches, Gross said it will spend the rest of the year focusing on placing independent student contractors on 24 college campuses nationwide. With a presence on 14 campuses already, it is off to a good start.
Image Assessment
You work hard to make a good first impression, so why not put as much effort into molding your online reputation? Adam Gross, co-founder and CEO of Gainesville-based NetClarify, offers these tips:
- Be aware of how your online image portrays you.
- Proactively respond to correcting areas of that image you are unhappy with.
- Differentiate yourself from others with a similar name by using your middle name.
- Participate on social sites such as blogs that will allow you to display your professional skill or knowledge.
- Aim for consistency and professional self-branding across all social network platforms.
Consider the Numbers
Don’t think employers monitor your online image and conduct specialized searches of individuals before hiring? Think again. Jobvite’s 2012 Social Recruiting Survey of hiring managers found that:
- 92 percent use or plan to use social media to make hiring decisions.
- 80 percent reacted positively to seeing memberships of professional organizations.
- 61 percent view profanity on social media profiles negatively.
- 54 percent view spelling and grammar errors on social media negatively.
- 47 percent reacted negatively to posts about alcohol consumption.