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Bill: You bring up an interesting point that I noodled on a bit. As you said, for those of us who know each other, we trust, but may not agree with each other (but we’ll often give each other the benefit of the doubt to talk about it a bit more).

Wouldn’t the opposite hold true? For all of that ‘lack of trust’, might they still not agree with what’s being said? And, as you pointed out, why else would they be wasting their time reading the stuff — unless they like being set into a tizzy?

Thanks for also making very clear that the answers are only as good as questions are framed. One of the key reasons that surveys are such terrible mechanisms is that there are so few people who are good at writing the questions to elicit ‘clean data’.

I know that when I read the report it raised more questions than it answered.

Do I trust a random blogger or blog post that I stumble across? Silly question!

Do I trust someone whose thinking I’ve come to know over a period of time and who has maintained a consistent presence over time? What better way is there?

There’s no lack of superficial commentary trying to disguise itself as analysis. To me, one of the most powerful arguments in favor of the potential trustworthiness of blogging in general is that it attaches your name to your thinking and keeps them pretty tightly linked. Years ago, Warren McFarlan, one of my teachers at the Harvard Business School, made a point about academic publishing that applies even more strongly to blogging. His point was that “every dumb idea i’ve ever had is still out there in the public record.” Bloggers who stick with it (both inside and outside of organizations) are building their credibility and trustworthiness one post at a time.

What Jim said …

Paula, Jim, and Jon - Thanks for comments. You are all bloggers that I have been fortunate to meet at Fast 08 but I respected your views even before then. Now I have a richer context. Jim, you were right to point out the transparency. It leads to greater accountability both inside and outside the enterprise. Bill

I trust bloggers , more or less …

It’s just so easy to establish credibility. One can easily establish a blogger’s reputation, just look at the number of readers, quality of the conversations attached to each blog, how many people have linked to this blog,how many comments this blogger has made on other people ’s blogs .

I think traditional news sources are in trouble…

You are quite right to point out the mode in which several bloggers here and “out there” arrive at comfort/trust levels with one another, and a conference is clearly a place where that sort of interaction can and does progress. At the same time, it’s fair to say that the FAST name at the top of this blog is not quite the same thing as transparency. Perhaps some statement of the relation of bloggers to blog to blogged would be not entirely out of order.

I think you are spot on by raising the value of trust. One of the most popular people on YouTube, a community still populated largely by younger people is a man called “Geriatric 1927″. He was born in 1927 but is very popular (46,000+ subscribers, over two million site visits). A quick scan of the comments on his posts indicate that his subscribers keep coming back is that they trust him AND, equally important, he treats them with trust and respect. This mutual trust is what has created a community around Geriatric 1927.

Trust created by competence and honesty have always been part of commerce. However, in the past trust was primarily a one way street - customers trust a business or person and then they by the product. Satisfaction surveys, help desks and/or customer support were the only way customers could communicate back to the business. I don’t know about you but when I have called help desks I never got the feeling that they TRUSTED me. Quite the contrary, the experience most typically left me feeling incompetent at best and in some cases made me feel like a lazy cheat - “Why do you expect us to do something for you that you could do for yourself if you just read the manual and completed our lovely training videos.”

The model of customer as consumer of commodities may be coming to a close. Marketing is becoming more about building communities not attracting customers. Trust is the glue that holds communities together…not just you trusting me BUT me trusting you as well. Communities create value together (how many hours of video content does YouTube receive free each hour?). Social “networkers” who can create communities based on trust may the true marketers of the future. Rather than the brand being a single corporate entity (a la Microsoft) it may be a community of mutually trusting members (a la Facebook). To paraphrase the purple prose of Barnie the dinosaur - “I trust you. You trust me. We’re a happy community.”

Peace

Tom
I tried to cover the Fast relationship at the end of the post. We do not work for Fast. We are given total editorial freedom with no suggestions about what to write about except to cover enterprise 2.0. No one reads the posts before we put them up. Does this cover your suggestion?
Bill

Tom, I was going to respond, quickly, with a pointer to the about section of the sidebar (which states clearly that the blog is sponsored by FAST, as well as points on to a greater explication of its sponsorship and our general policy) but in looking to the sidebar I noted that this section has unintentionally slid far down the outermost sidebar (below the white paper plug).

I’ve now corrected this and hope you’ll accept that this was not an attempt to obscure FAST’s participation but rather an outcome of too many items vying for attention above the fold. As you’ll see, it now sits atop the inner sidebar and we’ll also considering including a link in to the about and policy section from an even more prominent place, e.g., the navigation or header area, to ensure this is made absolutely clear.

Bill, gauging the credibility of a voice, whether it’s a newspaper, a blog, a novel, or a bit of conversation at a conference, is a complex judgment that factors a variety of elements and contextual cues in hopes of estimating reliability. Over time, that estimate is recalibrated as the voice is experienced and its mode of delivery, its method of articulation, and its “messages” offer more fodder for examination.

Rich Contextuality: In a traditional media channel, there’s usually a given understanding of the relationship of editorial to revenue streams, and those revenue streams in turn to larger economic, business and social interests. Readers have to decide if and to what extent a particular news organization is living up to its stated journalistic principles. The recent scrutiny of the Wall St. Journal (changes in personnel, in areas of front page coverage, etc.) in light of the News Corp. acquisition is a case in point.

I’d suggest that innovative, loosely joined modes of media such as this group of bloggers present a more complex case to readers, in part because of the novelty of the model. I had not seen the “blog policy” statement, but am glad it is there, because it signals that Corante clearly had anticipated some of the questions readers coming to this blog doubtless bring with them:

The blog includes postings by independent bloggers/experts, who are paid and whose travel expenses for the event are covered, as well as by FAST employees, and may include interviews and profiles of individuals in the field who are not paid.

With regard to blogs and trust, we’ve all heard (ad nauseam) the arguments on both sides:

Either:

1. Blogs have greater credibility than traditional journalism/media because they are detached from the agendas/economic needs of corporate media,

or,

2. Blogs have less credibility because they do not submit to the collective rigor of a publication whose economic fate depends upon handling these matters responsibly.

Whichever side you choose, the critical concerns go deeper than matters of accuracy and factual reliability and ultimately require a determination that involves a sense that a voice – these voices – earn their listeners’ trust by speaking ably, knowledgeably, and independently. The more intimately and prominently that blogs approach the responsibilities and challenges of corporate representation, observation and critique,. the more necessary, I’d argue, is consideration of the perplexities of the reader. One place to begin is by anticipating the cloudier issues that arise in new models of new media examining new business phenomena.

Dale

It is great to hear from you and that you are reading this blog. I agree with all that you wrote. (For everyone else, dale and I used to work together for a large consulting company and were part of a group that looked at issues like trust.) It seems an update of some of what we discussed a number of years ago. Your call center experience resonates well with mine. Although I find the financial services calls centers worse than the tech support ones and the health insurance the absolute worst. They are sure you are trying to trick them into giving up some of their money. I think blogs and online communities can be used to build or destroy trust but they are a new channel with new potential.

Bill

Tom

I certainly agree with the complexity of the issue and with your last post. You can make an argument for either of the positions on blogs. There are many examples that support either side. In writing the original post I was not attempting to get to deep into this particular blog but I did open the issue so let me add some more to what you said. This blog is operating between journalism and individual blogs. The Fast bloggers are writing op-eds, interviews, and stories from a personal perspective. It is like a blog in that we are all writing as individuals with no editorial control or policy. We are free to write whatever we want as long as it relates to the topic of enterprise 2.0. No one approves what we write before it is published and we write from a personal perspective in an informal style. We are like journalists in that we are paid to do this blogging. My allegiance is to the audience to provide something that is useful and/or interesting and, as far as I know, truthful. However, on my own blog I am not limited to the topic and no one pays me so there is a bit more freedom on the topics I write about. I cover a wider range of topics but that is really the major difference since my own blog is also a business blog for my enterprise of one and I am very aware of the points Jim McGee raised about transparency and accountability in his comment above. I have a long policy statement on my own blog.

Bill, and Tom, Hylton, Paula, et. al.

It’s great to see this thread develop. One of the many things we here at FAST like about the ongoing experiment of this blog is that in standing out of the way, we have the opportunity to both build and leverage the “trust capital,” if you will, of all participants. We are very partial to the way Tim O’Reilly not long ago described the goals and the core of his media businesses. On stage at the 2007 FASTforward conference, Tim explained: “We try to find interesting people and interesting stories and tell them to the world. We try to help companies learn about the future.”

In deceptively simple form we recognize the two core elements: the content creators and the audience with interest in this content. The FASTforward Blog hopes to offer a platform for contributors and stories to rise to the surface and generate network effects that give value in the “2.0 world.” Many people in the enterprises that are interested in FAST and search are also trying to grope toward understanding “2.0” and toward participating in it. The blog is continuously building the story of what’s happening and how thoughtful people are responding; it’s intentionally done in the medium that currently offers the best practice in capturing the rhythm of emergent conversations.

It is our belief that aggregating the commentary of a range of individuals engaged in analyzing the user revolution and 2.0 dynamics provides a platform for more layers of trust to develop around this conversation. It helps our customers, partners, and other people interested in FAST to learn about the future. We are alert to accomplishing that in a way that is consistent, persistent, thoughtful, and respectful of both authors’ and readers’ standards of what constitutes responsible commentary.

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