Trust Agents |

Just finished this book today in a train and have to say that it was worth reading.

“Imagine that your web presence is a store and that those pageviews are potential customers. Does it matter how many people are walking around your store if they are not buying anything?”

“Create five times as much free value as you do for the parts where you charge.”

“Comment: This isn’t very measurable.
Back to you: Neither is networking.”

–Trust Agents

This is a book where Chris and Julien describe the things that get you forward with the whole social media or the [oh so forgotten term] Web 2.0.

I like how they do it by introducing the thoughts behind the whole thing, but in the same time give hands-on advices how to behave and act in the digital world without getting beaten by the natives, or the potential customers.

There are good tips and pointers which vary from networking to how to communicate in the Web, but there’s also information that can feel a bit basic to those already embracing the social Web as their own. This sometimes made me wonder who’s the target group of the book?

Well, overall a very nice read, though. Would recommend it to people who want to know more about the whole social media scene and get better understanding of it.

Not so heavy as Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody or Erik Qualman’s Socialnomics. A bit lighter and more hands-on approach to the issue, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Read it yourself and see what you get from it.

This post is written because of two things made me think about trust:

I’m currently reading a book called Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith,
And I’m also going to join a community of entrepreneurs in The Hub concept, which is based on an idea of trust and open working environment. In every meeting we’ve had someone in the audience questioning the aspect called trust.

I tend to trust people, maybe even a bit more than average, and it makes me feel a bit sad when people who are thinking of joining this kind of community start questioning trust and how it is even possible to achieve in places like The Hub.

In a way I believe this is the same thing that you have with faith: Tell me there’s God and I have faith. The idea behind the so called blind faith is that it’s blind faith.

I consider the same thing with trust. After all it’s even simpler than faith: Just start trusting. It derives from you, not from what others may or may not do.

There are still people who seem to question trust and take it lightly or as something Utopian. To those, I have to throw an idea or a question: how do you believe it affects trust if you know someone and have the power to tell everyone about him and that this information could remain visible forever?

If I scam you, you have dozens of ways of spreading the message that this guy isn’t right – this channel is called the Web, if you didn’t guess already.

So, what do you think about trust now?