Reputations are increasingly made or lost on the Web. It's the channel of choice when looking for information, so that makes sense. In this arena, Google search has dominated the IT world for the last few years. Phenomenal growth. Incredibly good at finding the stuff I want. Fast. But that paradigm is coming to an end.
Why?
Because it's a much lower quality than the second generation of 'trusted' search. Using the people I know and respect. Version 1.5 of that search paradigm is the reviews you see on Amazon. They're definitely better than search results which have been SEO'd to the max - but they're still pretty anonymous. Unless I take the time and make the effort to find out more about what else 'bill99' (or whoever) has reviewed, I'm mainly just working on numbers. Average 4 stars from 50 reviewers. Cool. I'll buy it. In actual fact it may make economic sense for the author of the book to buy his own publication 50 times, under 50 aliases.
So, where to now?
Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. That's where. If I start using the people I follow, my friends, my business contacts as trusted sources of information, a lot more of my decisions become no-brainers. The bigger, and the higher quality, my network, the better my results. It's my own personalised search engine. Built to my exact specifications.
The implications of this for business are enormous. It's no longer a one-way street from marketing department to customer / prospective customer. Customers can be acquired and lost without any regard for the formal customer acquisition process. Reputations are subject to the power and speed of the Web - so manage yours carefully. Inside and outside of the traditional marketing space.
