What is Honestly.com?

Honestly.com, formerly Unvarnished, is a platform for people to anonymously review their bosses and coworkers. This professional networking site is different than other services, like LinkedIn, because it seeks to create a candid summary of an individual's work ethic and skills. It also offers more social interaction than other similar services. Anyone with a Facebook profile can create reviews, profiles, or claim his or her own profile. 1 By allowing one to claim their own profile, Honestly states that they are allowing one to build and spread one's reputation. To help ensure that the reviews are honest and accurate, the community of reviewers can rate each review. These ratings are combined into a reliability number, called a Reviewer Authority score.

Concerns

• One cannot take off one's profile. While comments can be made in response to possible slandering, the statements cannot be taken down, so the potential damage is uncontrollable. 2
• While the site is designed to be professional and trustworthy, there are no safeguards against angry former employees or significant others attacking individuals on the website.
• One may not know that a profile exists for them, so there is no way to monitor the reputation Honestly.com could be creating for current and potential bosses and employees.

Where can I Learn More?

• This article gives a good summary of Honestly.com and what its creators hope to see in the future.

• Read this review to understand more about the concerns of the service.

• Here is an article with more information about the future of reputation services online, including the possible positives.