Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: trust

  • In tech we trust

    In tech we trust

    “There is a big problem with trust today,” says cable operator Liberty Global’s Micheal T. Fries.

    He was sitting on a fascinating panel at the World Economic Forum this week with Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee looks at the issue of trust in the tech world.

    In a world where everyone wants access to our data, it’s a pertinent and timely discussion from people at the front line of where these issues of ethics and privacy are being dealt with.

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  • Has Facebook peaked?

    Has Facebook peaked?

    Could Facebook have reached its peak? A report in Bloomberg Businessweek suggests the service may have passed it maximum popularity.

    In a survey by consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates, the proportion of 13- to 17-year-old social-media users in the U.S. on Facebook slipped to 88 percent this year from 94 percent in 2013 and 95 percent in 2012.

    What would really concern Facebook are concerns that the service is not safe, “One reason for the decline in teen Facebook usage is due to concerns that the service may not be trustworthy. Just 9 percent of those surveyed described the website as “safe” or “trustworthy,” while almost 30 percent of people said they would use those words to describe Pinterest.”

    For Facebook that loss of trust among younger users is it’s biggest threat. Once you lose the trust of a generation, you’ve lost your business. This trend is one that Facebook will need to address quickly.

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  • Hiding Hollywood

    Hiding Hollywood

    What it comes maps, trust is everything. If you’re uncertain about what a map tells you then it’s pretty close to useless.

    Gizmodo has an interesting story of how tourism and residents clash underneath the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles with the resultant changes to Google Maps and Garmin GPS systems.

    It’s surprising that Google, Garmin and other mapping services have agreed to create misleading maps as this devalues the trust in their services.

    That’s their business choice though, although in the long term this going to deeply hurt trust in their maps.

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  • Burning user trust

    Burning user trust

    The Guardian today has a stunning expose on the Whisper social media network and its practice of tracking users.

    In trying to sell its services to the Guardian, the company showed that it was betraying their promises of anonymity to its users.

    Whisper’s behaviour is particularly disgraceful given the service’s promise of user confidentiality and their changing of their terms of service only shows the company’s struggle to understand ethics.

    No social media service can afford to burn user trust in the way Whisper has.

    If you’re going to promise users anonymity and security then you better deliver. Whisper has failed

     

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  • A land of grace and favors

    A land of grace and favors

    Yesterday the Search Engine Land website broke the news that Google Authorship is dead.

    The quiet abandonment of Google Authorship once again shows why businesses and creative workers shouldn’t trust online services to reward their work.

    Google Authorship was a subset of the company’s Google Plus service that let writers and journalist claim their work.

    For authors Google Authorship was a useful tool in the battle against the verminous ‘content scrapers’ whose business lies in stealing other peoples’work. It was also a good way of building an online portfolio.

    Google benefited from a huge improvement in the quality of its data as its algorithms authorship made it easier for the algorithm to identify original sources.

    Using Google’s Authorship tool wasn’t easy, like many of the company’s services it was cumbersome to setup, opaque and subject to arbitrary rules.

    Many journalists, bloggers and writers went through the process however as they saw the benefits and trusted Google to maintain the service.

    Trusting Google to maintain any service is risky with the company’s well deserved reputation of axing services the moment management’s attention turns to the next shiny thing.

    Which is exactly what’s happened to those who’ve invested their time in Google Authorship and they join the disillusioned masses who’ve been burned by the company previously with services like Google Wave.

    The lessons from Google’s dropping of Authorship shouldn’t be lost on those working hard to build Google Plus profiles.

    Right now, despite the propaganda for those with a lot invested in the service, Google Plus is not travelling well and it’s in a dangerous zone within the company with the departure of its internal management champion Vic Gundotra earlier this year.

    The risk of investing too much time on Google Plus is clear, however it would be unfair to single Google out as being alone in presenting this risk.

    Every social media service and publishing platform carries the same risk.

    Those spending hours creating Facebook communities or carefully crafting LinkedIn or Medium posts need to remember they are only their by the grace and favor of the service.

    Nothing replaces your own website as an online property. Your mission is to drive as much traffic to it as possible. Social media platforms can help you do this, but they are not your friends or business partners.

    Don’t forget this.

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