Consumers have no reason to trust you, so it is you who must open the relationship by placing your trust in them.
Collin Douma sums up radical trust for companies so well in this infographic. We’ll have to get him out to the next VizThink.
tags: business, marketing, transparency
If you know someone who is trying to figure out what this whole “online community” thing is all about, send them to register for CommunityNext. On February 10th at Stanford University, the people I’ve learned from will be laying down the truth on how to do it right. If you want to get your brand in front of a small group of influential online gatekeepers and tastemakers, may I suggest sponsorship.
I’ve been to enough conferences to have a pretty good idea ahead of time when one is going to be really special. I’m even considering paying out of my own pocket to go, if this blog post doesn’t convince a few of you to sign up or sponsor and tell em Will Pate sent you.
It’s no surprise to me that such a conference is being run by my friend Noah Kagan, who was part of the early Facebook team, after stints at Intel and Microsoft. Noah’s putting on the exact conference, with the same speakers that I’d want to put on if I was in his shoes.
Hope I see you there 
technorati tags:communitynext, community, conference
I took some pictures of the Wikinomics book launch in Toronto this evening. For a book about collaboration, the presentation was a missed opportunity to demonstrate some of the ideas, but nonetheless accessible for the audience. Never before have so many people in suits gathered in one room to hear about wikis, perhaps only the Web 2.0 Conference could rival it.
I’ve heard rumbles of discontent amongst the people who work in these spaces about the author Don Tapscott making a mint off their ideas without him having any citizenship in the culture, but I think he serves a vital role in explaining technology trends to the business world. He’s a translator and a diplomat, roles I understand well.
It was interesting to overhear Tom credit the early strong sales of this book to the buzz about it on blogs. That would be a perfect story for CaseCamp.
technorati tags:photography, wikinomics, dontapscott, booklaunch, book, books, toronto, wiki, wikis
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Quite a few companies might want to rethink their MySpace startegy for 2007. If users have to change their behavior in a way that takes away the value of the service, just to avoid what they see as spam, you can bet they are going to put their guard way up. Frankly, who can blame them? The “MySpace Generation” is the most advertised to and cynical about marketing ever, and it’s not going to change until companies get more human in their approach.
MySpace has turned into a massive zit full of marketing puss. Most teens don’t mind advertising but when things look more like spam than advertising, you’re in deep shit. Every PR organization and marketing arm is leeching onto MySpace like a blood thirsty vampire. Problem is that vampires kill their prey. Teens who wanna hang with friends are mostly protecting themselves by privatizing their profile (more cuz of the marketing predators than thesexual ones) but this quickly loses the luster, particularly when it’s fundamentally hard to do what you want to communicate with your friends.
apophenia: some thoughts on 2007 (advertising, bullying, and mobile)
technorati tags:myspace, marketing, pr, advertising
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