I was on hand Tuesday evening when the Churchill Club served up drinks, dinner, and a panel on “trends in trust and influence” among business leaders. The panel, much like the apricot chicken on skewer, was interesting because of its notable contrasts, sitting side by side:

Richard Edelman (Edelman) spoke about the dramatic shifts in public trust revealed by the 9th annual study, “Edelman Trust Barometer 2008.” He touched on several findings. To paraphrase a few: We trust social peers (”people like me”) the most, followed by NGOs and businesses. People have far less trust in their governments than a year ago, except in Asia. The most trusted media channels are the ones used the most: newspapers, television news, and business magazines. A digital divide exists in trust, tied to differences in emerging and mature industrial economies. He also shared his personal views about how these trends in trust affect advertising, the news business, corporate spokespeople and corporate reputation.

Dr. Robert Cialdini (ASU, Influence At Work) emphasized that trust is a participative sport. Do something about it. Learn how trust works, when it works, how to build it through listening and language. His research indicates that trust is based on a personal history of repeated contact. (This reinforces Edelman’s findings on the most trusted media sources being the most frequently used). Yet, in many situations, we have only moments to establish initial credibility. Learn to master the opportunities.

Chris Kelly (Facebook) and Katie Hafner, (New York Times) each mined their employer’s high profile experiences in breaking faith with loyal audiences for kernels of truth about trust. Both were candid enough to acknowledge that the way forward at their company entails as much trial-and-error as grand design. Mistakes will be made. Both agreed that a rapid, genuine response from the top helps speed the repair work. Hafner was put off by some of Edelman’s advertising and Cialdini’s influence tactics, on the grounds of manipulating trust. She was politely rebuffed, either unable or unwilling to deliver a knock-out punch.

Anastasia Goodstein (Ypulse) spoke to the nature of trust among online youth. Her research finds them less cynical, less fearful, more open, more creative, and more experimental than any other generation online today. They trust popular online environments. For example, they don’t question whether social networking sites, gaming sites, branded content sites, etc. are protecting their personal privacy and the content they post — unless they’ve been burned. She pointed out the need for companies to acknowledge this unique window of trust and act responsibly.

I came away with several conclusions.
1. Each generation judges online reputation differently. What is horrific to one generation may be anecdotal to another.
2. While the specifics about who we trust are constantly evolving, the underlying mechanics of why we trust are fairly constant.
3. Stock and industry analyst reports still have very strong credibility overall as information sources. By contrast, blogs — and most new communications channels — still have very weak credibility overall, except in certain countries.
4. “But” can be a powerful word.

You can order a CD or video of the event from the Churchill Club. Also, check out the Edelman web site, for a free podcast of Richard Edelman and Laurence Evans discussing the report, Edelman Trust Barometer 2008.

What is a blog? How would you define an industry analyst blog? What separates blogs from the other online destinations and channels published by the ICT analyst community? Is a blog still a blog without an RSS feed? comments? Is an analyst blog tied to his or her expertise? Yesterday, I asked ten or so analysts and consultants in the US and UK to share their thoughts on what is a blog. They responded with free-range thinking on that and beyond: what is an analyst blog, why do analysts blog, and why does anyone care. Good stuff. Here’s a rough cut of my notes.

Background

My intent is to overhaul the criteria for the Tekrati analyst blogs directory. Already, the conversation offers a rich perspective on grounds for deciding which blogs are listed and why they might be tossed out down the road.

I queried analysts and consultants that are successful bloggers: each has a track record as an individual blogger, and has earned credibility as a thought leader within a professional community of practice.

The analysts are: Carl Howe of Blackfriars Communications, Mike Gotta of Burton Group, Alan Pelz-Sharpe of CMS Watch, Charlene Li or Josh Bernoff (Josh responded) of Forrester Research, Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics, James Governor of RedMonk, John Blossom of Shore Communications, and Stowe Boyd of The Brannan Street Irregulars.

The consultants are: Jen McClure of the Society for New Communications Research, Jonny Bentwood of Edelman, and Erik SR of Tech for PR.

Again, what follows is a rough cut of the discussion threads. I’m pulling excerpts out of the conversational flow, to make for faster reading. More, and perhaps a little more polished, next week.

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The Tekrati directory of analyst blogs is easier to use, offers more information and is better integrated with its sister directories, on analysts and analyst firms. What’s more, we migrated the OPML to the latest rev and did an extensive housecleaning on the listings. Richard handled the programming effortlessly, as always. I, on the other hand, am still wrestling with a content issue: new rules for separating a blog from any other form of online journal or commentary. I’m asking for help.

You might be thinking that I’m a little slow on the draw, given that I’m just now pondering the universal truths of Blog, some two and half years into publishing a directory of blogs.

Since the 2005 directory debut, my rule has been this: there must be evidence of blog publishing software and/or blog coding and format standards. That’s what split the blogwashers — my term for analysts using web pages that mimic a blog in a cosmetic way — from the bloggers. Only the bloggers that passed this test made it into the directory.

Fast forward to 2007. I’m feeling increasingly self-conscious about this technology-only premise, and that’s not a good thing. More web content seems to be a hybrid, a blend of blog and other content publishing applications. This results in too much dithering on my part. And, I don’t like to guess. Whether a blog is in or out of the directory should be a simple decision. It should not be subjective. (Other elements are subjective, as it is, like who is and who is not an analyst. That’s another conversation.)

What to do? I don’t think that adding more technology to my filtering criteria is the right approach. After all, any kind of page can be turned into an RSS feed, lots of publishing systems allow reader comments, lots of blog templates perform like traditional websites, and lots of analyst blogs don’t accept comments or have feeds that don’t validate.

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