Social Mediation of Trust

Two differing points of view - Jemima Kiss in The Grauniad*:

At a tech breakfast meeting this morning, American 'social media-ist' Jeff Pulver spoke briefly about the humanity of social media, describing how real personalities, people and exchanges make for a more trustworthy environment - not just for advertisers, as we often hear, but for all of us.

It's a world of understanding away from that lazy assumption that social media replaces real-world communication, and he is absolutely right when he says that social media encourages positive connections between people who might not have met otherwise.

Contrast this with recent news that many people use ghost writers on Twitter (Fakin Whuffie), and with guest writer Mrinal Desai's piece today in TechCrunch:

I am beginning to question if Twitter is turning into MySpace. Here are five parallels just off the top of my head:

• There is a competition for followers similar to collecting “friends” on MySpace
• Anonymity is normal on both Twitter and Myspace, unlike Facebook
• Fake profiles are proliferating
• Real celebrity profiles are also proliferating, but they are often maintained by someone else for marketing, leading to spam
• Finally, the one most evident visually—services like Twitback, Twitterbacks and Twitterimage help you customize your profiles.

So who is right - is the Pulver view just touchingly naive, or are the naysayers just curmudgeons who don't grok it at all?

Our hypothesis is this - Jeff Pulver is right IF you can ensure trusted environments, and that is typically easier to do in early days and small communities. As systems and communities grow, as they become gamed and attract spamsters, scamsters, snake oil salesmen, marketeers and other pond life, then it becomes far harder to ensure trust and the utopian environment disappears into dystopii.

The question thus becomes how to create and maintain trust in much larger systems, and we don't think Social Media has cracked that at all yet, so the Desai view is in my opinion the more likely occurence down the road until Trust can become better socially mediated..

Doing that is probably one of the big challenges of the future 3rd Generation Social Nets, judging from some of the issues aired at SXSW (see Jemima's article on a key session there)

Update - prima facie evidence that the Desai view is the likely outcome - here is the wham, bam, thank you ma'am guide to seducing unsuspecting social media virgins with your marketing massage from Social Media guy Chris Brogan. The idea is that social media is a picnic, and you bring wine to it to get the poor little things giddy, and then seduce em - but first, play nice:

10 Ways to Build Relationships Before You Ask for Anything

1. Comment on and reply to other people’s observations, posts, and ideas. (Sometimes, just retweeting someone’s status message in Twitter is a gesture that matters to people.)
2. Share good information freely, such as pointing to great blog posts or articles.
3. Make virtual introductions when you see obvious like-minded people who could do to know each other.
4. Create useful media like blog posts or ebooks or videos that help people.
5. Find mutual interest points and talk about them. (Bonus points to you if they’re off-topic from your business needs, like talking about the Red Sox or Barbecue.)
6. Remember things about the other person, such as whether they have a big meeting on Thursday, and ask them about it on Friday.
7. Help when someone is promoting their thing. Spread information for other people liberally.
8. Find causes and nonprofit experiences to help out. Showing that you’re not just a capitalist pig goes a long way.
9. Reply to people and build conversations.
10. Thank people when they’re helpful.

In other words, you pretend to be a good friend, get em tipsy, and then punch the suckers after they've drunk of the wine of your company - yes, you launch into.....

Launching Your Promotion

After accomplishing the above - and it’s a process, so don’t pat yourself on the back after being at this for a few days. You’ve really got to earn your place at the picnic. After accomplishing the above, it’s likely that you can promote things.

Trust? You think they'll trust you after you pretend to be a friend to flack 'em? Some of the people, some of the time etc.....

* The Graudian article is mainly about the birth of a son to Tuttle-ite Christian Payne, to which we say congratulations!