Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: networks of trust

Showing posts with label networks of trust. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Trust can't be broadcast

Trust in the banks is down. I believe the expression is 'no shit, sherlock?'

Much more interesting than the bleeding obvious to me is the accelerating collapse in trust in advertising and traditional mass media.

(Image courtesy.)

This from Edelman's 2009 Trust Barometer release:

Trust in nearly every type of news outlet and spokesperson is down from last year.
Trust in business magazines and stock or industry analyst reports—last year’s leaders— decreased from 57% to 44% and from 56% to 47%, respectively.
Only 13% trust corporate or product advertising—down from last year’s low of 20%.

Let's say that again. Only 13% of people trust the ads now. That's assuming they are still accepting the interruptions.

Even more staggering, the figure for the UK is down to JUST 5%!

So let's assume you overcome our studied ignorance of ads in social media. Those whose attention is snared by them (remember folks, it's a 0.01% click-thru rate), of these, only 13% (5% in the UK) trust what they see, hear and read. So they're hardly likely to act on them.

Peer-to-peer recommendation however, of the kind we see inspiring purchases of products and services every day in social networks, in conversations between friends, is not interruptive and it is trustworthy.

Britain trusts media less than any other of the 20 countries surveyed (30%)
Traditional sources of information are on the wane and at an all-time low
Newspapers down 10 points at 19%;
Radio news down 20 at 33%
There is a Trust Bust in conventional Corporate Comms
Only 5%trust corporate/ product advertising; 15% for corporate website, press releases, live speeches - Edelman Trust Barometer, UK

More reason to explore models like this.

Trust in banking and business is down because of some very unusual economic factors.

Trust in mass media is down because of something much more fundamental. We've found ways to connect one to another - there is a new model which places trust in new places - in each other, in the edge - not the centre.

Trust can't be broadcast.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

News: Where trust is a two-way street

I was on my way home last night on the train when news of the events in Mumbai reached me.

It wasn't via print, radio, tv, rss or search. It came via Twitter.

This is not the first time that Twitter has beaten the mainstream media to the news - at least to news that matters to me..

And it certainly trumps the mainstream for depth.

When I read the first tweets, I rattled over to the BBC site for more. And what I found was less: Sterile, seen-from-the-centre, one-size-fits-all, mass media.

Twitter not only wins for speed and depth, but also for humanity. (Image courtesy)

Twitter presents us with the human face of events. It does this by going beyond the best efforts of the BBC et al to personalize the story by giving us one human version of events (ie this is Mustapha's story, he's an 11-yr-old refugee etc). It presents everyone's story - witnesses, actors, worried friends and relatives.

A rich complex tapestry of news emerges, one much more like human stories than broadcast news. A mainline, unfiltered connection to reality.

News is now information that is relevant to you. The people you trust are great at sharing with you what you need to know. And now we have the tools for communities of purpose to gel globally, and in real time. Like twitter.

Can the likes of the BBC remain one of the 'people' we trust. Of course. But they have to understand trust is a two-way street. If you want us to trust you, you need to trust us.

For example the BBC could have rapidly assembled an rss output from a twitter search (summize.com as we used to call it) of relevant terms in respect of the Mumbai attacks and streamed that on their site. But of course, that would mean they'd have to trust the great US (We, not the U.S.).

And that seems such a struggle for the centre. They can stick to their guns. They can stick to their old ways.

And they will, quite literally, become an irrelevance when compared to the real-time relevance provided by communities of purpose worldwide - the eighth mass media.

I want to thank my good friend Mike Leis for prompting me on this post. He has a great take on what twitter means for news and more, here.

Update Nov 27, 2008, 4pm. Daily Telegraph; Last Night The Social Web Came of Age.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Resources

Got any to share? Please add as a comment, complete with url.

Monday, March 10, 2008

50 most powerful ways to provoke the blogosphere

I was merrily following gapingvoid on twitter when he pointed us at this (50 most powerful blogs in the blogosphere). Hugh was gently crowing (no doubt with tongue firmly stuck in cheek) that his blog was included while superstar blogger Robert Scoble's was not.

My response was "Most powerful blogs? Contradiction in terms, surely?"

When blogs become large enough in 'reach' to turn up as 'hits' on lists, I worry there is a real risk that their agenda will change to meet new needs, and a further risk that what makes a blog a blog is at risk. They will start to serve an audience of consumers rather than a community of contributors.

They face the risk of becoming a microniche, on-the-cheap broadcast.

In this context too much attention could be worse than too little because if all that attention means you can't/don't/become unwilling to engage in conversation, the heart of the blog is gone.

Anyone who's tried to engage in a conversation on a 'hit' blog will know what I mean. I won't name names, but some of you are pretty poor at joining in the conversations you set out to provoke.
Blogs (as I've posted before)

In the process of blogging, one blogger linking to the work of another, new value emerges, for example:

Two-way flows of information.
The creation of trust, validation and reputation
Decentralised, self-forming adhoc communities of interest
Zero hierarchy or silo restrictions.

Too much harm is done to 1, with the knock on risks to 2,3 and 4 when you become a 'hit' blogger.

So, genuinely, I really would prefer to be famous for 15 people, than 15 minutes. Careful what I wish for, hey?

What is certain is that if you want to stir up the blogosphere there is one sure-fire way: publish a list of the 'best/top/most-powerful blogs. The 50 on it will say thanks very much.

The 80,000,000 (-50) that aren't, are likely to point out the above in their own sweet ways (resulting in a bubbling of activity pointing back at that very top 50. Just as this does.)

Thursday, February 28, 2008

The edifice of the trusted expert takes another hit

Hard on the heels of all that Blue Peter cat naming chaos, dodgy phone votes and competitions, comes news that Maxim (in the US) has published a review of a CD its reviewer hadn't actually listened to (via the BBC... careful now, people in glasshouses etc etc).

Media brands have long known that trust is among our most precious possessions. At least we say we do - and then keep doing things like the above. Yet there are still those who struggle to understand how inevitable the decline of mass media becomes in these circumstances.

In specialist, consumer media (my world - and that of Maxim) we like to believe that our experts have something more to offer than our communities. Often that comes down to access. That's what makes the Maxim thing so wrong - it faked the access. They pretended they had got to hear the new Black Crowes album before you did. And they hadn't. And as a result the opinion was fake. It was a lie. Even the position of authority Maxim could claim from getting this access was bogus - because the access was never there.

THIS UPDATE: (made me laugh outloud!). "Rapper Nas, whose hits include Hip Hop Is Dead and If I Ruled The World, told the New York Post that he was surprised that Maxim had reviewed his album - because he hadn't finished recording it yet. The magazine called his album "radio friendly" and gave it a rating of 2.5 stars out of five."

Guess what all this does to trust...

No wonder people are making use of the power of the network to create their own networks of trust and to set their own definitions of quality (step forward tripadvisor et al). Relevance over quality folks. Live (or die) by it.

There is still a (potentially lucrative) role for trusted reviewers to give you a tip in the right direction, to start a marketing ball rolling in a believable direction. Trust them and you start to believe the reviewer even without direct experience of the product yourself (it's a core part of Dave Balter's thinking, an idea which permeates his book Grapevine, and the activities of his word-of-mouth marketing company BzzAgent).

I'll be keen to hear what Dave thinks about the regularity with which 'expert' opinion is being revealed as untrustworthy when we meet for lunch in London next month, and the impact of trust being created by networks rather than from the centre.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The proof of the new marketing is in the conversation

I'm a bit of a sucker for conversation (I even draw graphs). That, combined with the fact that I'm speaking alongside Joseph Jaffe at Digital Marketing Briefing in March has proved enough for me to join in an experiment Joseph is running to promote his latest book: Join the Conversation.
His idea is to try to prove his particular pudding by giving bloggers a taste (or Using New Marketing To Prove New Marketing... UNM2PNM if you must).

The idea is that bloggers tell Joseph they'd like a free copy and they get sent one. Deal is you write a review, good bad or indifferent.

The powerful play of course is that you only discover the offer if you already happen to be part of the community of purpose/interest. What I mean is, if I didn't read Joseph's blog - or got introduced to the idea via someone else I trust (or someone else's blog I trust) it's unlikely I'd know about the offer.

It's therefore likely Joseph's message will fall on receptive ears.

But that's not to say everything HAS to be rosey - after all bloggers can be an egotistical bunch and if they think they have better ideas and know where Joseph has it all wrong, they're going to say so. Hold me to that when I write my review!

What Joseph clearly appreciates is that informed debate of his ideas can do nothing but good for both his reputation and sales of his book. Upside - fawning advocates selling the book as hard as they can, worst case, savvy people granting Joseph the level of respect required to give serious consideration to his ideas. Even if they do end up rejecting them they introduce them to their own network of trust.

Is there anyone in new marketing who doesn't market their work this way?

I see just one potential fly in the ointment. The amazon affiliate link Joseph has asked reviewers to include points to the US Amazon site - which can put off many buying in other parts of the world or in other currencies. Pity, because Joseph is donating revenues earned in this way to charity.