You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.
A few months ago I let Noah crash at my apartment. It was the second time we'd met in person and I allowed him to sleep on my couch for a week.
Strangely enough I wasn't bothered by this. Actually, I was more bothered by the fact that I wasn't bothered at all (sorry to get all meta ya'). I found it incredibly odd that I was totally cool with this stranger staying in my home. I kept asking myself why I trusted him.
The more I thought about it, the more his website came up. Noah's homepage has his cellphone number. He writes about his mom and dad. He exposes how many RSS readers he has to the world. That's some serious controlled exposure (or radical transparency if you prefer Chris Anderson's naming schema).
After cataloging all these things I realized that I was allowing him to use his reputation as a form of collateral in our trust exchange. By combining Okdork.com with the fact that we traveled in similar circles and have shared acquaintances, I was willing to give him my trust. I guess I felt like someone wouldn't risk an, albeit micro, empire to do something bad to me.
And I turned out completely correct.
So looking back, what were the big lessons of this experience? (And I'm sure my buddies at trustmojo would have much more to say.)
I'm sure there are more, but it's getting late and I'm tired. I also hoped to get to how this relates to brands, but I'm going to have to put that off to another day. Unless you all want to help . . .
Update (12/21/06): Thinking about it again this morning, the most interesting part of this for me is the trust process. Transparency helps build reputation which can be used as colatteral in a trust exchange. This is possible because reputation has real value and can be used in lieu of things like diamonds or money. Not that I wouldn't have accepted either of those.