August 4, 2005
a certain trust mechanism
A friend of mine was recently screwed over by her landlord. Seriously. Screwed. Over.
I don’t know the full story, but it’s bad. She’ll have to go to court, poor thing. She’s already lost her business; if she survives bankruptcy I’ll be surprised.
Neither she or the evil landlord is a blogger. But a wee voice tells me, had they both been bloggers, there’s no way he would’ve done what he did.
Because he’d know other bloggers like you and me would be over him like a rash, telling everybody about what a scumbag he is. And so the next time you searched his name on Google, the front page would be splattered with his scumbag act, his reputation in tatters, and his ability to conduct business damaged forever.
Having a valuable online reputation keeps you honest. Because if you do something squirly, you will pay dearly, and you will pay fast.
And of course, the more this becomes self-evident to me, the harder I find it doing business with non-bloggers. An increasingly essential trust mechanism seems strangely absent.
[BONUS LINK:] What happens if you own a moving company and you’re not very nice to somebody, and that somebody has a blog etc. Illustrates what I’m talking about perfectly. If your still sceptical after reading it, then go here. Thanks to Alan Gutierrez for the link.
Whew, now I’m sure great minds think alike
I blogged on the same point a couple of days ago, though with respect to hiring someone. You’re totally right in a more general sense, and I’m amazed that more people don’t blog for this reason.
You could do all that damage that you’re talking about even though he doesn’t have a blog to defend himself. Not that I’d advocate it… but out of curiosity, what’s stopping you?
What is it about having a blog that would make him more worthy of attack?
Nothing is stopping me per se, but that’s not the point I’m making. My point was, if he was heavily invested in the blogsphere, I doubt he would’ve dared do it in the first place.
Yes, in a small or well-connected world, in a place where everybody knows your name, reputation is everything. My wife and I live in a small town, and when one of our clients racked up a large overdue balance in a short time, an offhand mention of it to another business owner spread like plague. The trust mechanism can be blogs or geography or both.
This is actually a very important point! A lot of work has been done on the future of transactions — how to establish trust, or reputation. It’s becoming ever more important as technology marches forward.
A blog is one method I don’t think anyone’s really thought about.
Unfortunately, many people won’t do blogging, for a huge variety of reasons. These people either break or diminish the “trust via blogosphere” method. Hmmm…
I decided that, moving forward in my career, I’m only going to discuss software publicly for similar reasons.
During the boom here in little Ann Arbor, Michigan, a town that fancies itself a cultural and technological center, there were a bunch of people playing start up.
Often times, during an interview for a position, and they’d have me sign an NDA.
After signing the NDA, they proceed to read me an article out of last month’s Wired.
It was spooky. Signing an NDA, and then having someone show you a web based shopping cart. How entitled do they feel to this idea? If I balked, they’d all joke , about how unenforceable an NDA is. Well, then why have one?
These days, I insist on communication through USENET and blogging, because I don’t want to waste time with people guarding open secrets.
There is always a time and a place for confidence, of course. I simply don’t want to keep secrets for strangers. If you want to get to know me, get to know me out in the open.
A natural weighting exists for this sort of thing.
Heavy weight influence:
- family and friends you know well.
- large groups of people you may not know, but who share the same common view.
- trusted documented facts.
Light weight influence:
- an individual or small group you don’t know well.
- undocumented experiences (especially those contrary to your worldview).
Your friend’s plight, for example, would fall into the “light weight” influence for me:
- I don’t know her.
- I don’t know the details of the story and I can’t imagine details that could explain how a tenant/landlord relationship could cause the tenant to lose their business and face bankruptcy.
Current social-network systems have mechanisms for positive endorsements (LinkedIn for example), but is there an equivalent for the flip side of that coin? Better Business Bureau? People seem motivated to create positive social networks, but negative social networks? When was the last time you reported somebody to the BBB, or investigated somebody through the BBB?
In case you’re wondering, I’m not judging your friend, I’m merely using her case as an example (as you did).
Steve et al. — Has everyone seen the story of Quick Boys Movers?
http://accordionguy.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/7/29/1086759.html
An excellent example of a negative social network is the Google bomb.
I had another thought or two. Positive social networks are created and grow naturally because the nodes on the network achieve mutual benefit. The nodes attract. In negative social networks the nodes repulse each other and naturally want to decay. I’m not sure how you’d protect a negative social network from decaying. Most people don’t hold grudges for very long.
Steve — I liked that last point so much, I made I little post out of it. I agree that negative networks are not that powerful. Unless you do something completely awful, incidents pass.
Jeff Jarvis’ experience bad with Dell is recorded. Jeff gets sick of Dell. He moves away from Dell. He stops writing about Dell because he has no longer owns a Dell.
He has a Powerbook now. He’s going to be writing about that Powerbook for years to come.
Oops, here’s an aside:
Blogging angry is folly. Viewers don’t follow the links. They simply see the venom. Venom stains your blog.
Not sure where that came from.
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it. At this point in time, the odds of shit-talk about a landlord hitting the eyeballs of anyone with even a remote possibility or renting from him, or ever interacting with him (even via referral) are slim to none.
A very limited segment reacting to a very limited market. There will still be loads of people lined up to buy/rent who have no exposure to the “evil done”.
The people who even throw around the description of their community as the “blogosphere”, in my opinion, vastly overestimate their influence in the real world. Out of the 50 or so people who make up my family and coworkers, maybe one or two regularly read blogs. And by that I mean the easy shit, like boingboing, not the guys like English Cut, Lincoln Sign Co., and especially not MyLandlordSucks.com.
They don’t really give a crap what some Joe Public with an internet connection thinks about various aspects of the world. They don’t have the time to worry, even if they had the net-savvy to be exposed to the fellow’s site in the first place.
A two-bit landlord has no relatively audience (that matters to his business). And even if the story was picked via the victims side (if said victim was popular in the blogosphere) no one will care, as the odds of anyone being A) ready to move to a new place and B) considering a place in this landlord’s neighborhood, are basically none. Nill. Irrelevant.
Human nature is still selfish, and if it won’t really influence their lives, they won’t care. For instance: this may seem callous, but since I don’t know your friend, I am not intrigued by, nor do I care how the story of her troubles go. I’m sure she’s going through a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but if you published the name of the landlord, I would not care one bit, even if I lived around the corner from him. It’s all irrelevant to me.
For awhile longer, at least, a bad landlord or his tenant blogging are pretty irrelevant.
Agree with Scott. Last time I looked, the world of commerce, and just about everthing else, happened outside the self-important, drop-in-the-ocean blogsphere.
I do feel sorry for your friend.
But let’s say a landlord was blogging? (BTW: I’m a landlord and I have a blog) What if his side of the story made him out to be the victim? Would a blog really solve the issue of who-to-believe? What about slander?
No! No! Scott and Pete, the Blogosphere is The Truth and The Way!
Seriously though, my point was more about trust mechansims and their behavior, not “the almighty power of blogging” etc.
The chances of other people finding out about your actions does affect your behavior. You are less likely to rip somebody off if you think third parties will find out about it, quickly.
The influence of the blogosphere is big and growing. People get onto the internet and they find us, the bloggers. We are generating the content that other people seek. (There really is an opportunity now to punch above your weight in influence.)
So the “web surfer” “logs on” to the World Wide Web and uses a search engine, probably Google, to answer a question. They get answers, from bloggers.
Where’s that link about Jeff and the Dell?
http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2005/07/memo_to_dell_je.html
You know, stuff like that.
Does it matter in the case of a smaller business transaction, between small firms or individuals? It matters a little now. But it will matter a lot more in the future. People are going to learn to search this running commentary first.
You’ve got to be careful. Those links are perma.
Is this the economics idea of Perfect Information at work?
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information;
In economics, a state of perfect information is required for a completely free market to function. That is, assuming that all actors are rational and have perfect information, they will choose the best products, and the market will reward those who make the best products with higher sales.
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In essence, you could look at the blogosphere as a way of getting closer to perfect information, taking us closer to more efficient markets.
(BTW, I know too little about economics to defend or really even endorse the idea, but mebbe someone else out there can add some info?)