I wanted to replace the smashed screen of a white MacBook, and found what seemed like a very good price from Wegener. The new screen arrived very quickly, and was exactly as described. But when I started to strip down the MacBook, I discovered I had ordered the wrong screen. It’s surprisingly easy to do.

So, I sent an email to Wegener and quickly got a reply, followed by a phone call. The support person said they are happy to send me the right screen, for which I have to pay a little more because it’s a more expensive part. They’re sending it even before I return the old one. So far, the experience has been terrific: Quick responses, friendly people, good return policy.

Then they told me that in the carton for the replacement part I’ll find a postage paid mailing label. I reminded them that the problem was entirely my fault, and thus there’s no reason for them to pay for shipping. Yikes, that’s some good customer service! (I went ahead and returned the first screen on my own dime.)

It’s amazing how powerful an experience it is to be treated like a human being by a business.

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HumbleBundle is a fantastic way to sell indie games and music. You name your own price, you can divvy it up among the creators and among charities, and today I got a message that they’ve added more songs for free for anyone who purchased the most recent bundle.

Yo, Humbles, I already bought the product. You don’t have to entice me any more. On the other hand: You’ve made me love you even more, and you’ve helped some musicians spread their music just a little wider.

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I thought it had been 6 months since my last dental check up. Since I now routinely multiply any past intervals by two, I figured, correctly, that it’s really been a year. Usually, the hygienist has to put on waders and go at me with a pickaxe and a trowel. This was the first time in my life that a dental hygienist has marveled at my teeth. Gums are strong. No tartar, except for a little around a couple of teeth. Some healing of a couple of “pockets.”

There’s been one major variable that I know of: I switched from a Braun electric toothbrush to a Philips SoniCare.Why? Because the Internet told me to. I believe that the correlation is not accidental (see what I did there?), but of course it is just one data point.

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Is it just me, or are we in a period when new distribution models are burgeoning? For example:

1. Kickstarter, of course, but not just for startups trying to kickstart their business. For example, Amanda Palmer joined the Louis CK club a couple of days ago by raising more than a million bucks there for her new album. (She got my $5 :) As AFP has explained, she is able to get this type of support from her fans because she treats her fans honestly, frankly, with respect, and most of all, with trust.

2. At VODO, you can get your indie movie distributed via bittorrent. If it starts taking off, VODO may feature it. VODO also works with sponsors to support you. From my point of view as a user, I torrented “E11,” a movie about rock climbing, for free, or I could have paid $5 to stream it for 10 days with the ability to share the deal with two other people. VODO may be thinking that bittorrenting is scary enough to many people that they’ll prefer to get it the easy way by paying $5. VODO tells you where your money is going (70% goes to the artist), and treats us with respect and trust.

3. I love Humble Bundle as a way of distributing indie games. Periodically the site offers a bundled set of five games for as much as you want to pay. When you check out, you’re given sliders so you can divvy up the amount as you want among the game developers, including sending some or all to two designated charities. If you pay more than the average (currently $7.82), you get a sixth game. Each Bundle is available for two weeks. They’ve sold 331,000 bundles in the past three days, which Mr. Calculator says comes to $2,588,420. All the games are all un-copy-protected and run on PCs and Macs. Buying a Humble Bundle is a great experience. You’re treated with respect. You are trusted. You have an opportunity to do some good by buying these games. And that’s very cool, since usually sites trying to sell you stuff act as if buying that stuff is the most important thing in the world.

4. I’m hardly the first to notice that Steam has what may be the best distribution system around for mass market entertainment. They’re getting users to pay for $60 games that they otherwise might have pirated by making it so easy to buy them, and by seeming to be on the customer’s side. You buy your PC game at their site, download it from them, and start it up from there. They frequently run crazy sales on popular games for a couple of days, and the game makers report that there is enough price elasticity that they make out well. If I were Valve (the owners of Steam), I’d be branching out into the delivery of mainstream movies.

There’s of course much much more going on. But that’s my point: We seem to be figuring out how to manage digital distribution in new and successful ways. The common threads seem to be: Treat your customers with respect. Trust them. Make it easy for them to do what they want to do with the content. Have a sense of perspective about what you’re doing. Let the artists and the fans communicate. Be on your customers’ side.

Put them all together and what do you have? Treat us like people who care about the works we’re buying, the artists who made them, about one another, and about the world beyond the sale.

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A few days ago I pointed to Elizabeth ‘s thread at Reddit where she engaged with the public in a way that everyone who manages customer support, PR, or marketing ought to learn from.

Today, Amanda Palmer posted about her current Kickstarter project, which has raised $855,000 with eight days yet to run. Her goal was $100,000…except in her post she responds with complete frankness (she’s AFP, after all) about what her real expectations were. The post is both an explanation and a demonstration of how musicians and theandir audiences can love and support each other.

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I’ve got a post at the Harvard Business Review site about what I’m calling (not too seriously) The Gettysburg Principles. The point is that you can keep your customers buying from you if your business is of your customers, by your customers, and for your customers. “Of” means that your business is made up of people like your customers. “By” means that your customers are contributing to the creation of your product. “For” your customers means you put them first. These three terms give a handy way of analyzing why customers stick with some businesses even if they have to pay a bit more or make some other adjustments.

Anyway, there’s more over at HBR…

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Today is the official launch of Too Big to Know. Yay!

Marketplace Tech ran a 4 minute interview with me about it this morning. More interviews etc. are coming up, including on WNPR (Connecticut public radio) with Colin McEnroe at 1 pm today.

I will, alas, be noting media/marketing stuff on this blog over the next few weeks.

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A Cisco study finds that when deciding on job offers, a startlingly high number of college students and recently employed grads value access to social media at work more than salary. And an article by Ann Bednarz at Network World finds that “[e]ven some of the most buttoned-down institutions are rethinking bans and relaxing access to social networks and social media sites.”

So, it looks like everyone should be happy for a change.

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Miriam Meckel is giving a Berkman lunchtime talk on “Communicating Trustworthiness: Drivers of Online Trust.” She will present research she has been doing at U. of St. Gallen along with government and some businesses. She’s investigating how trustworthiness is communicated, and what the initial drivers and cues are. She’s going to look at the changing conditions, some basic ideas on initial trust formation, then her study, and then the cues identified in initial trust formation.

NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other people’s ideas and words. You are warned, people.

Users’ willingness to provide data about themselves depends on some sort of trust. There’s been much discussion about this, including the importance of preserving privacy. For example, Facebook restricted info about users to the user’s schoolmates, but over time it has become far more permissive. (See here for article and diagram.) Both Facebook and Google have said things indicating they believe our attitude towards privacy has changed. E.g., Eric Schmidt: “If you have something you don;’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.”

What is trust? Miriam provides three definitions, each of which involves vulnerability. When we trust someone online, we understand we are making ourselves vulnerable in various ways. Trust enables us to manage the complexity of our social world, reduces the cost of negotiations, facilitates the adoption of new technologies, and reduces perceived risks. Initial trust is especially important since you can lose a customer forever by screwing it up.

In her study, they interviewed 23 online businesses active in Germany. They also did in-depth interviews with 43 users representing a range of socio-demographic sections. From this they derived a model of nine trust drivers: Reciprocity and exchange, proactive communications, user control, brand, third party endorsements, design of user interface, offline presence, technology, and customer service. Then they did a quantitative survey of German users to find out how the different factors are applied to diff business models. 11,000 users from across socio-demographic segments were invited to participate in an online survey for a little money, with a response rate of 12%.

She goes through the nine components of trust:

Reciprocity explains about 35% of the variance of the data. The mutual relationship of customer and organization is crucial. Users are willing to hand over personal info, if they know what they gain from it, if it is transparent, and if both sides benefit.

Brand and reputation: A well-known, establish brand helps build trust. If it has a large customer base, it is perceived as more reputable. You also need a professional feel for the web site.

User control: Users want to know who will have access to their data. Ask permission.

Proactive communications. [missed it. sorry]

Customer service: Multiple ways to reach a person. Provision of different payment methods.

Offline presence: The existence of physical stores helps build trust. Show a photo on your web of your brick and mortar store.

Technological reliability. This can be an issue when your service involves third parties.

Third party endorsements: Not only are seals of approval helpful, but so is having a high search ranking for third parties.

The next step is how these factors are differentiated by B2C business models. Only four factors turn out to be relevant across the board: reciprocity, third party endorsements, user control, and technological reliability. Miriam looks at online shopping, online banking, etc., to see which factors are relevant [but I can’t keep up with my typing. sorry] It seems that for building trust-based relationships with potential clients, you have to have fair communication, mutual benefits signaled, privacy and security policies being displayed, clear T&C’s, engage in issues mgt to follow what is being said about you on the Web, explain the business model and data needs, explain the flow of info to third parties and what the policies are, communicate third party endorsements, engage, peer groups and communities, bring in your offline reputation, and consistently apply corporate design with good design.

Some implications: 1. Users are more willing to trust large, well-established and popular online services. High search-engine ranking can be considered a trust measure.

2. The visual appearance counts.

3. Reciprocity is very relevant in all online transactions.

4. Offline presence, technical reliability and customer service have barely been researched yet.

5. Organizations need a strategic approach for communicating trust to their stakeholders. Take an integrated communication approach, including issues and risk management. They should communicate proactively, in a conversational tone, and transparently.

What not to do? Don’t be Facebook asking Burson Marsteller to find bloggers who would attack Google.

Q: [me] Customer ratings? And the presence of customized trust mechanisms as at eBay and Amazon?
A: Third party endorsements include customer ratings. But we surveyed a represented group of German users, not ones as sophisticated as others, plus there may be cultural differences.

Q: Is your work ethical? An evil company can read your work and figure out how to appear to be ethical. Also, Germany has stronger regulatory protection, which change the signals
A: Yes, companies could fake being trustworthy.

Q: How about SSL?
A: The awareness of the need for SSL is frighteningly low.
Q: Anyone care about authentication certs?
A: [general laughter]

Q: Would the same trust drivers be applicable in news sites and other such non-sales sites?
A: Just in parts. [I can’t read her table because I’m too far back :( ]

When you look at the erosion of privacy caused just be clicking on opt-ins, you get to a point where you just accept whatever the terms are and however they’re changed.
A: People don’t read privacy policies when they’re changed.
Q: Maybe it’s that when the privacy policy looks impressive, it’s a signal of the quality of the service. But, the key question is whether people who say privacy policies are a trust driver actually read them.
Q: There’s some survey support that most people mean think that a privacy policy is there to protect your privacy. [general laughter]

Q: [me] To me, third party endorsement means you get celebrities or associations or other companies to endorse you. But the real trust-driver for me frequently is peer endorsement. Maybe it would be worthwhile to separate those two, especially since businesses need to do different things to gather other companies’ endorsements and to gain a good reputation among peers.
A: Yes, that would be interesting.

Q: What supersedes trust?
A: There may be the desire to be “in” as opposed to “out.”
Q: There are network effects are. How many of friends have to join before I throw away my privacy cBerkman

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Foursquare’s general manager, Evan Cohen, is giving a talk at the ILM conference I just spoke at.

NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other people’s ideas and words. You are warned, people.

He says there have been 381,000,000 check-ins so far. In every single country. The last country to check in was North Korea. The biggest single event was the Rally to Restore Sanity. “The most basic user experience is simply when friends check-in to their current location to find their friends.” “We help engineer serendipity” in which you discover a friend is nearby.

Their value proposition: Discovery, encouragement, and loyalty.

Discovery: They want to push people out into the real world. They’ve just launched an “explore” tag, a recommendation engine. It uses info about what your friends like to do, what people like you like to do, what people are saying in the “tips” review feature, etc. “We want to be like that best friend who knows every cool bar in Chicago, or every restaurant…”

Encouragement: Use gaming mechanics to get people to do what they wouldn’t have done otherwise. The mayor races have become really competitive. If someone loses it, they’ll go back to the place over and over. Their badges also encourage people to go out. E.g., go out to the gym a few times a week and you’ll get the gym rat badge. They have also improved their leader board. The Ambassador program enables users to bring merchants onto Foursquare.

Loyalty: They encourage merchants to offer rewards of various types. They’ve relaunched this part of the platform: easier for merchants, for users, and new “specials” types. They’re now offering “flash specials” to drive traffic when the place is under-utilized. Not all specials are discounts. “It’s an experience.” They also have a “friends special” that only works if you show up with some number of friends. Over 250,000 venues have verified on the merchant platform. Merchants have done creative things with Foursquare. Even when Starbucks offered a mere $1 off a frappucino to the local mayors, checkins jumped by 50%. “It’s about the experience and recognition as much as anything.”

They have a full and easy API, modeled on Twitter’s.

[I find Foursquare fascinating. To the users it’s a game. To the merchants, it’s a form of marketing. And as a blending of the virtual, the real, gaming, and marketing, it’s amazing.]

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Well, here’s an application of some of the ideas in Everything is Miscellaneous that I wasn’t expecting: The US GAAP Taxonomy. A post at the XBRL Business Information Exchange says:

The US GAAP Taxonomy was built by the accounting standards setter, the FASB. It was built by accountants. It is a consensus-based product. Not one SEC XBRL filer uses the US GAAP Taxonomy as is to file with the SEC. Every SEC reorganizes the US GAAP Taxonomy.

But the US GAAP Taxonomy is not built to be reorganized. The structure of the taxonomy is more like a book. Can the US GAAP Taxonomy be reorganized? Of course it can. But it is certainly not optimized to allow for reorganization and reorganization is not even mentioned in the design characteristics. As such, it will cost more and be harder to create and maintain these reorganizations.

So how do you make it easier to reorganize? Many smaller pieces which can be put together as needed is vastly easier for a computer to deal with than having one large piece and trying to break that piece apart. That is one example of what can be done. Another is communicating the metadata which exists in the taxonomy, for example the information modeling patterns employed. A third is to make the existing metadata real metadata, rather than burying it in the labels of the concepts. Another is to add more metadata.

The post points out that it’s not that everything about that taxonomy should thrown into a big pile. There are key data points required by law and to achieve financial integrity. Still, this is not a place I would have thought miscellanizing would help. It seems, however, that I may well be happily wrong.

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Pew Internet reports that 65% of American Net users (75% of the people they contacted) have paid for online, digital content. Ever. And there’s no category of goods in which more than one third of the respondents have ever paid for content.

The content could include articles, music, software, or anything else in digital form. Here are the results for the fifteen different types of content Pew asked about:

• 33% of internet users have paid for digital music online

• 33% have paid for software

• 21% have paid for apps for their cell phones or tablet computers

• 19% have paid for digital games

• 18% have paid for digital newspaper, magazine, or journal articles or reports

• 16% have paid for videos, movies, or TV shows

• 15% have paid for ringtones

• 12% have paid for digital photos

• 11% have paid for members-only premium content from a website that has other free material on it

• 10% have paid for e-books

• 7% have paid for podcasts

• 5% have paid for tools or materials to use in video or computer games

• 5% have paid for “cheats or codes” to help them in video games

• 5% have paid to access particular websites such as online dating sites or services

• 2% have paid for adult content

The first three are way lower than I would have expected. That 15% have paid for ringtones I find bewildering and just a little depressing. That 2% report having paid for “adult content” I take as meaning 2% actually responded, “Yeah, I pay for porn. You gotta problem with that?”

Overall, there are a number of different conclusions we could draw:

1. The survey was flawed. (The survey questions are here [pdf]). But Pew is a reputable group, and not in service of some other group with an agenda.

2. There is such a wealth of goodness on the Net that in no single category do a majority of people have to use money to get what they want.

3. This a sign of disease: So few people are paying for anything that entire categories of goods-provisioning are going to die, taking the abundances with them.

4. This is a sign of health: New business models based on minority participation are and will emerge that will keep the categories alive, and, indeed, flourishing.

5. Most of what’s available on the Net sucks so much that we won’t pay for it.

6. We are just so over paying for things, dude.

FWIW, I find I’m willing to pay for more content these days, in part out of a sense of responsibility, in part because the payment mechanisms have gotten easier, and always if I can sense the human behind the transaction. (This is a self-report, not a principled stand.)

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