Credibility…

Dave Warnock recently posted an article linking to the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility. He doesn’t agree with many of the points mentioned in that report, and neither do I.

The web may be bigger than it ever has been, it may be growing at an exponential rate, but (as far as I see it) many netizens know each other. That may be through personal relationships, regular contact through message boards or mailing lists, or just the occasional email. This is a networked community we’re part of.

Heck, I feel I “know” a lot of people, just because I’ve used something they’ve written. People may find that strange. I suppose it’s like saying I feel like I “know” George Cadbury just because I’ve eaten a lot of his chocolate bars.

But on the web it’s different. After all, I can’t speak to Mr Cadbury, he died a long time ago. And chatting to someone in the Cadbury factory may be difficult as well – who do I speak to if I want to know something about their chocolate? To the un-web-oriented mind, saying that millions of people who have never met are a community is ludicrous. But to the people in the circle (we could call it a clique, I suppose), it makes perfect sense. If I wanted to speak to Shaun Inman, he’s just an email away.

Credibility, for me at least, is built through these networked relationships. Word of mouth is pretty much all that we have on the internet. So we tend to trust what we’re told by a friend – for good or bad. That’s why a virus email that comes from a name you recognise is much more likely to get through your defences than one from a name you don’t recognise. Many netizens have only two modes when it comes to belief – complete suspicion, or complete acceptance.

What credibility does is give you that acceptance. If you are credible, you are accepted. If you are accepted, you are credible. The two go hand-in-hand, and there are many people who have become – for want of a better phrase – internet celebrities, simply because they have had good things said about them. Links to your website tend to multiply very quickly once you get a little bit known in some circles. And, because we’re in such a worldwide networked environment, those links can quickly come from all over the world, and from many different types of people and sites.

What I’m trying to say is what Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are saying in their new book. If you want to become credible and be trusted, you need to integrate yourself in the web community. That means you need to have a voice (a blog), and a way for people to easily contact you in a transparent way (comments on your blog). You need to be responsible for your words (an archive), and be honest about your mistakes (no false marketing spiel). And, above all, you need to be there regularly. A press release every three months doesn’t make you come across like a communicative person or company.

So, credibility. It’s more about who you are than what you do.

Web authoring statistics…

If you wanted to run a survey on the way that web pages are put together – number of img elements, amount that rel=”nofollow” is used etc. – how would you do it? Ask your webby chums? Write a program to read through a few sites automatically? Or use Google web authoring statistics? Probably the latter, I would guess.

It’s on the brain-numbing side of nerdy, but there are some fascinating snippets of information in there. There are also some frightening things – particularly the number of Microsoft Office psuedo-HTML elements. It takes me back to my days wrestling with Frontpage *shudder*.

Web 2.0, and the art of charging…

One of the few web applications I was actually waiting eagerly for is FeedLounge, a new feed reader, which I thought may be a much better interface to use instead of my old trusty Bloglines. I’ve found Bloglines to be clunky, and not full enough of Web 2.0 goodness (read: AJAX) for me to be impressed each time I use it.

However, and this is a major problem, FeedLounge requires payment. I know these guys have a need for a wage, but $5 per month? Hmm, a bit too much, I think. Especially when there are plenty of free web-based feed readers out there.

I’m not against paying for web applications (after all, I paid for Mint just the other day), but there’s a very thin line to tread when it comes to charging for a website. Even a very nice looking website that does a lot.

Some companies get it right, realising that giving something away for free can actually be a good business idea. What 37 Signals have given away is a very limited online project management system – only one project can be managed for free. But that’s fine, it gives people a taster of what is to come.

Actually, as an aside, I would prefer to have been able to manage 2 or 3 projects for free in Basecamp, that way I could have seen how multiple projects are displayed and handled. Of course, my project management system will be better. But I would say that, wouldn’t I?

So, pricing. It’s a big problem, especially when you’re trying to sell services on to of something that is essentially free like RSS feeds. But I suppose there are people that will pay for these things. But, unfortunately for the FeedLounge crew, I’m not one of them.