April 1, 2007 :: 11:52 AM

What the Web Is

I ran across this great video about what the web is, and I just have to share. The guy is spot on. In some ways, everything we know is wrong. In other ways, we’re back to the beginning. Watch it and be inspired.

On a similar topic, I’ve recently been listening to the panel podcasts from SXSW 2007 (since I wasn’t fortunate enough to attend). One of them is all about the future of the web, and a segment of particular interest is a discussion about personal transparency online. Citing things like blogging, Twitter, YouTube, and other services whose primary purpose is to make the usually private (or at least privileged) details of our lives visible to anyone who cares to look, panelists posited that a generation of web users (the younger ones, mostly) are very accustomed to living in the open. And it’s true - things you once might not have told anyone but your closest confidant are now published, syndicated, and circulated - not only available for anyone to know, but for anyone to comment on.

It’s a shame more businesses aren’t embracing the idea of transparency, at least a little. Consumer confidence is at an all time low, and it’s harder than ever to get consumers to believe that companies have any goal other than making money. We don’t believe in the perfect faces companies present us with. According to the Edelman Annual Trust Barometer, “…more than 80% say they would refuse to buy goods or services from a company they do not trust, and more than 70% will ‘criticize them to people they know,’ with one-third sharing their opinions and experiences of a distrusted company on the Web.” According to a iCrossing study, “88% of adults who purchase items online conduct some sort of online research at least sometimes prior to completing their purchase,” and “67% of U.S. adults who research online before making a purchase decision use search engines as a research tool.”

If one third of the customers who aren’t happy with a company are publishing their experiences on the web, and 88% of adults are doing online research before they buy from a company, what is the impact on a company’s bottom line? Can they even measure the number of people who chose not to buy from them because of a blog post about a bad experience or a negative review on one of the myriad consumer review sites? And with 67% of U.S. adults using search engines as a tool for researching purchases, is it any wonder that the SEO business is booming? Is the biggest threat to a company in this arena a competitor, or is it the voice of unhappy customers willing to tell the world about their dissatisfaction? More than one company has approached the digital marketing firm I work for with the express goal of getting ahead of bad consumer reviews in search rankings.

Transparency is already affecting businesses everywhere, whether they embrace it or not.

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