I just read a post called ‘Trust is the new vertical search‘ on SearchAnyway. The topic was a new venture called WeTrust, which is, in their words, “a safe shopping search and directory for web sites that have secure shopping facilities.”

1. Your site must have a secure server with valid digital certificate so it can encrypt all customer personal information, including credit card information.

   By having a secure server, your site will be using technologies such as SSL (Secure Socket Layer) or SET (Secure Electronic Transmission) ensuring that sensitive information such as personal details passed between your customer’s computer and your computer cannot be read by a third party.

   Visitors to your site should be able to see that this technology is in place by seeing the locked padlock when reaching the order page, as illustrated below:

   

2. Visitors should be able to see “https” at the start of the address bar on their browser when completing your order form page. The "s" in "https" stands for secure.

So basically, if you’ve got a valid Thawte certificate or equivalent, and pay them ?99 a year, you can be on this directory. I was moved to leave the following comment:

While I applaud the idea of pre-vetted shopping sites that are trustworthy, it seems to me that having a secure server with a valid digital certificate is a pretty minor requirement. Just because data is safe while in transit doesn’t mean that a site won’t then do something unscrupulous with it.

I think your post brings a bigger issue to light, though. I love the title ‘Trust is the new vertical search’. Wouldn’t it also be fair to take that a step further? Something like, ‘Trust is the new e-currency’? People are fearful of Google’s personalization efforts, they’re worried that they’re getting biased info on Wikipedia, and you just can’t find a good deposed Nigerian ambassador to invest in anymore. Trust is worth more than gold online these days. In fact, I’m going to write a post about this… I think it’s that important!

So here I am… living up to my word by writing this post. And I do think it’s important, so I’m going to say it again, in bold:

In a world with few boundaries, trust is the only currency worth having.

Why is trust so important? Other than the obvious, feel-good, look-I’ll-count-to-three-then-fall-back-and-you-catch-me sort of team-building aspect of it?

Because trust is not a touchy-feely, airy-fairy commodity. Trust is what drives the world economy, and without it, our entire financial system would collapse.

I’ve been reading a lot about the demise of various financial institutions thanks to Marc Andreessen’s accessible commentary; we’ve had five investment companies go under in the past three months here in New Zealand. Yes, many poor decisions were made. Yes, the economics of it didn’t work. Yes, the people who ran the funds really screwed things up. But the only reason these funds were able to operate in the first place was because people trusted them, and the reason they are going under now is because people don’t trust them.

Trust me (hah!)—if every American went to the ATM right now and withdrew their money, the banks would collapse, followed closely by everyone else. Trust is the lifeblood of any economic system.

I had the interesting experience as a child of visiting Argentina several years in a row during one of their hyperinflationary runs. The first year I went, the exchange rate was 14 Australes to the US dollar. The second year, it was 1,400. The third year, 2,500, and the fourth year it hit 10,000 and they changed to the peso.

Living in an economy where there’s no trust in the currency is a different way of life. There were no price tags on anything in the shop—there were codes, and the shop assistant looked up your item on an intricate matrix that included the most up-to-the-minute exchange rate. As soon as you made a purchase, the shop would close so the attendant could run to the bank and exchange the cash for dollars; if they waited until the end of the day, they could lose 30%.

So the economy is one thing that’s utterly dependent on a bedrock of trust. Online, though, you could say that your wealth is defined by the trust you engender.

If you want to sell something on eBay, you better have a trustworthy profile. If you want to be a power user on Digg, you have to build up trust. If you want to have a blog that people care about (I do, I do!), then you have to earn people’s trust and keep earning it.

If someone said to me, “Look, I’ve got a blog and a bunch of money,” that wouldn’t be very interesting. But if someone said, “Look, I’ve got a blog and 50,000 loyal visitors who trust what I say,” then I would perk right up. Online, it doesn’t matter where you are, what kind of accent you have, whether you’re male or female, or how much money you’ve got in the bank. What matters is how much people trust you.

Do you agree? Or do you think traffic trumps trust? And how do you decide who you’re going to trust on the Internet? I’d really like to hear from you.

Spotted on the Google blog…

Repeated on the Google.org blog…

Sustainably-minded entrepreneurs, here’s your chance! Google.org has issued a $10 million Request for Proposals to advance sustainable transportation solutions. You can see the complete RFP here.

Google.org is seeking companies with technologies, products and services that will accelerate widespread commercialization in the following fields:

• Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)
• Electric vehicles (EVs)
• Vehicle-to-grid solutions (V2G)

Some examples of companies or individuals that might want to apply:

• An early stage technology venture coming out of a university or lab looking to develop and commercialize a product (a new type of battery, for example)
• An innovative services business that can play a key role in the widespread adoption of PHEVs, EVs and/or V2G solutions
• A company focused on one of these markets which can use additional investment capital to scale up adoption of its products
• A company active in the automotive or power space that could modify an existing product that addresses a key need in one of these markets

Good luck, those of you who are in that space! I recently watched ‘Who Killed the Electric Car‘—what an eye-opener. There’s a market for green transportation, fo sho.

One of my big mantras is that we shouldn’t indulge in technology for technology’s sake — that we have to think of the users and the ultimate purpose the technology will serve. But Brian Hayes recently forwarded me a terrific piece from Time on handheld electronic devices—and the very first paragraph shows me that sometimes you might need to embrace technology for technology’s sake if you want to reach a level of development that actually can serve people:

The first electronic dictionaries and spell checkers were gizmos that came into being not because they were needed but because they were possible. The electronic brains in early models were so puny and sluggish that people thumbing through real dictionaries often took less time than the computers to find the right words; and sometimes the machines failed to find them at all.

Thanks for that…

… that I can’t show you! Actually, ‘I’m not willing to show it to you,’ is more accurate. I emailed United Media for permission to reprint this Dilbert comic but they wanted to charge me $100 a year. It’s a good comic, but not worth the hassle. So here’s the link to it:

On another inefficiency note, I need your help. Now that I’ve got the ‘Most Popular Posts’ feature enabled, I can’t help but notice what a self-fulfilling prophecy it is. The most popular piece has consistently been ‘An Intelligent Alternative‘, which is okay, but perhaps not my best ever, and which, I suspect, is only at the top of the heap because it’s got a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, and for which I continually get links to from people Googling ‘Terminator’, which just goes to show you how irrelevant search results can be sometimes.

So here’s what I need you to do: let me know a post you liked. Leave a comment or send me an email to kaila @ vortexdna . com. I’ll then put up a post with the top five, and ask everyone to link to them. Let’s boot Arnie and ‘An Intelligent Alternative’ off the scoreboard!

I am sicko, that is!

Been asleep on and off for about two days now with a disgusting flu… feeling so poorly that I can’t even write about my favorite topics!

The good news is that in our house we have lots and lots of couches. You can lie down pretty much anywhere. And the best couches, the ones in the living room, in front of the TV, are modular ones that you can pull together into a bed.

My sick bed

This is highly useful for watching middle-of-the-night or early morning sporting events, as well as for having the flu.

Feeling a bit better today… hope to be back in form tomorrow or the next… wish me luck!

I received an email the other day from someone asking me to recommend them on LinkedIn. This person could easily have recommended me, and didn’t. So why, I ask, should I be inclined to recommend someone who evidently doesn’t think I’m worthwhile?

David Berkowitz wrote about this in his piece The Dos and Don’ts of LinkedIn:

Do more acts of kindness ? bring people together, write testimonials, pass on relevant messages ? than others do for you. If most people follow this one rule, we?ll all be growing the value of our networks.

So I suppose I could follow David’s rule and recommend this person. But the truth is that I’m just not inclined to do it. Anyway, this is an excellent opportunity for me to make a point:

Etiquette, as a general rule, is straightforward.

1. Be genuine.
   If you’re not, people will know right away. Anyway, what’s the fun of not being genuine? It’s a lot of work and you need a good memory.
2. Be interested in others.
   This is so self-evident I’m a little embarrassed to even write it. It’s pretty basic maths: if everyone is concerned about their own products, services, and status, by definition nobody will care about you. Reciprocity makes the world go ’round.
3. Seek the positive.
   Do you find yourself continually pointing out author errors in your blog comments? Ask yourself how endearing that particular trait must be to the author. Note that I’m not suggesting you always agree, or kiss a** (I’m such a Puritan! Okay, only on my blog), or otherwise fail to be genuine. (See Point 1.) I’m always delighted when people comment with the exact opposite perspective from my own. I’m just saying don’t tear people down just for the sake of it.
4. Be generous.Link. Acknowledge. Support. Show gratitude. None of us (not even Sir Tim Berners-Lee) got here on our own.

These are not guidelines for online etiquette. They are just good human behavior. The same goes for David’s Dos and Don’ts. Just treat people honorably!

One of the most applicable books I’ve ever read is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I strongly recommend it, but you’ll probably find that what’s in it is just common sense.

Are there any online behaviors that tick you off? What are they?