Studies claim we no longer trust Social Network Friends

People who blog or read lots of blogs may be familiar with Smartblog.com who recently discussed a trend that trust is shrinking in this article.

I know I normally confine my writing on this blog to photography related topics as it relates to my life. However, for those who don't know me my professional life is also taken up in marketing, ecommerce, advertising, and direct mail. Sub sets of this prepress, printing, commercial photography, typesetting, graphic design, print and paper buying and many other related aspects of producing content for print and online. So this topic is one I follow closely among many other areas of networking and social marketing. Hence the post on my thoughts as to why trust is shrinking that follows...

Friends, Trust, Ethics, and A Mobile Nation

Part of this trust issue is how they define friends. As stated in the article many people in our social networks are not really our friends, often we don't know many of them at all. Why would we trust them? Remove the 2nd or 3rd generation from the research and I bet the trust number would go back up. But it runs deeper than this.

As we become more mobile, move more, change jobs more often and change social groups - more people we may identify as friends often have less time in play to develop trust with us as would be the case years ago. Trust takes time. Even among families trust is down as we spend less time together and rely on family less often for our social needs.

We live in an amoral society at best, greed and selfishness is at all time highs, from politicians to bosses, to companies, and relatives are all proving less loyal, trustworthy and reliable as we become less moral and more "me" focused. It's really no wonder trust is also diminishing. As we trust our leaders less, as our media manipulate us more, and our circle of acquaintances widen it is only natural that our general over-all trust level drops. It take a proven track record to grow trust and that trust is easily broken and very hard to regain.

Social Networks that measure and track authority, trustworthiness, and value can become our trust indicators. Some sites already provide this barometer to earn trust as well as authority. Getting these people to endorse a product or idea holds great value. Successful bloggers and new age media outlets have built their business on this authority trust model, just as many old school media, companies and politicians have lost the public trust because of dishonest behavior, acts of unethical behavior such as the lies we now call spin, or the immoral acts people think are private leaking and getting associated to the business, media, or political platform. A general return to an ethical and moral nation one where a person's word and promise mean something could bring back a future generation of trusting people.

Is all Trust Lost?

No, in fact for those people I do trust I hold them dear, trustworthiness once earned is very sacred. Loyalty to a brand is had to find but strong once established. Look at the most trusted auto maker in the world Toyota, a few poor choices, some cover-up and ignoring of problems and poor public relations and the company will be devastated for years to come. Great if your Ford! It takes all of us years to grow our reputations regardless whether you are a family member, friend, coworker, corporation, politician or government. Even our negative reputations a corporation or government might have taken many years to grow. Sadly but true a good reputation and trust is easily lost and takes a very long time to recover from. Sometimes never. Finding trustworthy sources for marketers is like finding gold, it's hard to do, easily lost, and and can easily become corruptible.