I don't get out much, at least haven't much lately. So I had some fun participating on the Social Networking panel at Drexel University on Friday. It was also interesting. Although there were some students in the audience (of about 150) the audience skewed mostly older. I found two questions the most interesting and will relate them and both my response, and responses of others on the panel and audience.
1. How do you gain trust online? I wish I was quick enough to give the same answer I got from Chris Colton, who works with me operating our marine communities (www.sailnet.com, www.speedwake.com and ecommerce site www.marine.com), when I related the question to him. Which was, essentially, the same way you gain trust offline. Tell the truth! My answer was slightly longer: be massively transparent and tell the truth. The most interesting response from another member of our panel was that "marketing can build trust." I politely disagreed by agreeing that marketing can help to build a trustworthy image, but that keeping trust can only be accomplished through truth and transparancy.
2. The second question of note was really more of a comment. One of the older members of the audience got up to state that he read The Wall Street Journal and New York Times editorial pages every day and that bloggers will never write blogs of the same quality as those editorials. Wow! After waiting for any comment from the panel, which remained silent (maybe dumbstruck?), I offered that "I couldn't disagree more." First of all, many of the same people writing those editorials are also blogging. Secondly, I totally disagreed with the elitist undertone of his statement. Just because someone hadn't chosen "journalist" as a carreer, didn't mean that person wasn't potentially an even better journalist than some professional journalists. There are millions of top-quality writers in the world, who before the reach of the Internet, had silent voices. Now they can be heard. It's obvious to anyone under 30. What was surprising to me is how incomprehensible that idea is to - still - a large segment of the population. But citizen journalism is coming of age, and quickly.
