Klaus-M. Schremser is the Chief Marketing Officer of Gentics, a Software Company producing Enterprise Solutions for Content Management and Portals.
He is an expert in 2.0 Marketing and our author of this weeks expert statement on trust in online media.

Three questions on Trust

Whom do we trust online?

• Huge institutions which have a certain publicity, ie. Online Banking - Erste Bank, Telekom Austria, etc.
• Institutions which are mentioned by people we trust (i.e. godaddy.com, ...)
• Institutions or services which are mentioned more than once in news, blogs, offline media and used by hundred thousand ++ users (i.e. twitter, facebook, ...)
• People we know in reality and have already met in person (sometimes)
• People who have a certain reputation (Andrew McAfee, ...)
• People who help us online without demanding money (sometimes)
• Sometimes you have to trust other institutions, people, services without other choices

What is our trust built on?

• communication and interaction with others
• If other people show trust, then you follow If the risk is lower than the consequences.
• Reputation, positive experiences of myself or others
• If you know somebody well.
• laws (government), rules, contracts, regulations, possible actions in case of mistrust
• security methods (SSL)
• insurances (Visa-insurance in case of misuse of your creditcard in the web)
• regular maintance (your car! - same for software)
• certifications, education of others (pilot of your holiday-airplane)

What difference does trust make?

• we buy or we do not buy :)
• business or not business (I won't register for a service without trust)
• we offer information or not
• more followers on facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.
• you dare to drive on streets :)
• online-commerce (e-shops)
• we shift our daily work in the web (online banking or not)
• to use google mail or not - we have to cope with trust
• I use google calendar for business usage (this is trust!)
• all services in the cloud are based on trust (use dropbox a genius online storage system - but would you save your creditcard-information there?)

Trust Exchange Research

Read all about the research on trust in online media on our background pages.
Don't miss anything by following the Tag "trustex" on themashazine.com