As I think about what makes econtent different from traditional content and what's happening in the Internet landscape these days, one topic comes to the fore: trust.
We're learning to distrust so much associated with the Internet, and I'm not just talking about hoaxes, spoofs, and error-laden content—none of these is unique to digital content. I mean spam, scams, viruses, worms, and most of all phishing and spyware, which are activities that use the nature of the Internet to betray our trust, invade our privacy, and even drain our bank accounts.
Trust (or a loss of it) impacts a variety of industries—not just econtent sites. Knowledgeable users, suppliers, and partners operate at a continuous level of paranoia and distrust; those who haven't already learned to distrust will before long. In a trust-building effort, let's look at some aspects of trust and the questions your users and partners will ask when regarding your site.
Who Are You?
Visitors will ask, "Who am I dealing with at this site," or suppliers will wonder, "Who's on the other side of the transaction?" If a visitor is looking for econtent on a topic, they'll think, "What reason do I have to believe that this site is a trustworthy resource?"
If the site in question is solely econtent with no traditional arm, the name alone will have little meaning. "Bestcamerainfo.com" claims that it's a trustworthy source for information on cameras, but provides no credentials to back that claim. Savvy users will try a WhoIs Search (www.internic.net/whois.html) and other techniques to see who's really behind a site. Knowledgeable users will distrust any site with an odd or meaningless domain owner or one that lacks verifiable "About us" information.
The fastest way for a user to establish site trust is by checking with traditional media and reliable links. If I read in Consumer Reports that www.choicetrust.com is a trustworthy place to order a Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) report on insurability, I'll assume I can use my credit card at ChoiceTrust without negative consequences. On the other hand, if I get email that purports to be from a consumer magazine or a site that looks a lot like Consumer Reports but just doesn't quite seem right that says, "Go to cheaperclue.com for a cheaper CLUE report," I'm unlikely to trust the recommendation. How can the user really be sure a site is who it purports to be? A trusted friend tells me to check HotPCs for the best in new personal computer offerings. So I find a site with HotPC in the domain name, but how do I know it's the trustworthy HotPC site my friend suggested and not just some shady company with a similar URL?
From the site-builder's perspective, this is an odd new aspect of trust: Finding ways to assure people that they are where they think they are. Unfortunately for legitimate sites, it is easy for the bad guys to copy the source code for a site's home page, make some underlying changes, and post it at a similarly named URL. If the spoofed site is a big company with alert Web folks, the spoofers will get shut down fairly soon (I'd guess amazoom.com wouldn't last a week without a cease-and-desist order from the big bookseller), but there are still loads of smaller reputable organizations and companies to take advantage of. Even experienced users may forget that, for example, paypal.verification.com is probably not part of PayPal, and newbies are wide open to such betrayals of trust. A site called Choicetrust.ws might happily take my $10 with a promise of an insurance report. The collaborators on that site (which, as far as I know, doesn't really exist) might also harvest that credit card number for another $10,000 in good living. Recognizing a brand name is one thing, but users want to be sure they can trust that the name they see is in fact who's really running the site.
Trusted Partners
Should I trust the content on a site? That trust may come from trust in the site itself, combined with clear information on where that site gets its content. But the where part is tricky on the Web as the name on a report may not mean much. A news report from Reuters is unlikely to be maliciously false or misleading. But what about worldnetdaily.net, or was that worldnewsdaily.net, and do you know which is which? Is material on Slashdot trustworthy just because Google News includes it?
Trust has to do with credentials, which can operate at several levels for econtent. If it's a site I believe to be trustworthy and the content is exclusively provided by that site's owners, then the site's credentials imply some level of trustworthiness for the content. But if the site contains aggregated and syndicated content, then readers need to look deeper: Is the original source trustworthy, and am I satisfied it's the source it claims to be?
Lesser-known sites gain trust by partnering with trustworthy sites; lesser-known writers gain credibility by appearing on trustworthy sites. Working with trusted partners benefits all concerned. When I find a link at the site of a trusted source I'm inclined to trust the site at that link, and so on. To the extent that I'm trustworthy as a writer, my credibility has been built at least in part because my columns appear in trustworthy publications.
Trusted Actions
You want me to verify account information on your paid site? Sure, you can send me email asking for that verification—but don't even think about providing a link to any site other than your original one that I've already bookmarked. That's a sure sign of phishing and I have every reason to assume that the email doesn't come from you at all.
I established a PayPal account last summer so I could receive donations for my Cites & Insights newsletter. Within two days I started getting email asking me to verify certain credit information or take other account-related actions, always with a convenient link. I sent one or two to PayPal's phishing unit; as expected, they verified that they were scams. Emails continued, one every other day, for a month or so. Once it was clear that I was part of the 97% that wouldn't bite, they became much less frequent.
No reputable emerchant ever asks for account information to be returned via email. These days, no reputable site includes a link for account information in email unless that link is secure or to the Web site the user already associates with a company. And even with the latter approach, firms might be better off taking the slightly less convenient route of asking the user to check their account next time they're on the site.
Keep the Faith
Gaining trust becomes more difficult as increasingly clever Internet fraud makes us all less trusting. Losing trust is easy, so you should be judicious in your choice to employ syndicated material. Never use syndicated material if you're not wholly confident of the source. Pick up a truly bad article, one you'd never allow from your own sources, and readers will lose a little trust in all of your content.
Watch how you ask users to provide sensitive information, especially for payments. Only use an external link for credit-card handling if you are absolutely certain it is secure. You'll lose trust fast with knowledgeable users if you release personal data.
It's one thing to lose trust. It's another to betray it. If you deposit spyware on my computer when I visit your site, you've betrayed my trust. If you gather information on me and provide it to third parties without a clear opt-in provision, you've betrayed my trust. Once lost, trust is hard to regain. Once betrayed, trust may never return.
Many EContent readers are concerned with commercial econtent, but as I've often discussed, there's much more to the Web. I call it the circle of gifts—lists, zines, blogs, and millions of high-value sites provided with neither charge nor advertising. Keep in mind that if trust is tough within commercial econtent sites, it's even tougher for the circle of gifts. People in that circle don't have the resources to do multiple domain purchases to safeguard alternative versions. Nor do these sites have lawyers to stomp out spoofs; in fact, most don't even have employees to track the possibility of such spoofs.
Yet, like commercial content providers, those in the circle rely on quality partners to establish trust. The stakes are different, but the issues are similar. Unfortunately, Web abuses are teaching us to distrust one another. Unfortunate but true. In this environment, content providers need to place issues of trust at the fore as sites, partnerships, and trust are built.