Can you trust the web? The story of Spikey Reed

Last weekend a friendly neighbour offered us the opportunity to adopt a pet - an Australian lizard known as a Bearded Dragon. Of course my two young boys leapt at the chance and immediately named him Spikey. I was equally thrilled until forking out over $250 for a tank, lights, hiding log, sand, and various live critters for Spikey to eat.

Within 48 hours we had a problem...Spikey was off his food and looking stressed and so I searched online for additional information that might help me. Turns out there is a lot - 460,000 results according to Google!

And here lies the biggest problem. Almost all the information was contradictory with various "experts" claiming different solutions to my care problem. Indeed when talking to the local Reptile pet experts they immediately said "don't trust the web there's loads of crap out there".

Now this applies to almost every category of 'product'. Type in a search and thousands of experts will give you opinions, many without any of the real depth required to make truly informed decisions. This is only made worse by blogger sites which typically include the rather disparate views of fans on one side and detractors on the other.

The bottom line is who, in this age of information freedom, do we trust? Who's opinions are valid and how do you know where trusted resources lie? One might argue that's what you get from recognized publishers and trained journalists. Given the corporate responsibility to try to maintain quality controls, one would imagine they should vet more closely the content they provide...but do they?

What has been emphasised is the reality of the web's advice on any subject, especially when that information is provided via social media forums. In the B2B space this is critical and highlights how important the balance of social verses traditional emphasis will remain in the future as regards buying decisions.

Oh and Spikey is currently on holiday at the reptile store being encouraged to feed with a little professional coaching and therapy. The free gift has been one of the most expensive I've ever received but we can't wait to get him home - it already feels empty without him.

IDC Directions- anything new?

Last week I attended the IDC Directions event in San Jose to see what the anaylst community are telling technology marketers.

I guess I was hoping as always to learn something ground breaking. Sadly there was not much new, just an emphasis on the more obvious which apparently still challenges the tech market.

First in the list is the blindingly obvious disconnect between Sales and Markting. Rich Vancil reckons that only about 20% of what marketing produces is actually used by sales which sounds about right. It got me thinking. I have to say that in ten years of working on campaigns I have yet to observe a single case where a senior sales person was directly involved in meetings discussing the plans. I have to hope that my regular requests to get feedback from sales have been genuinely transmitted through the organization. I've always believed that Marketing efforts which are not well publicised internally fail the first test - that is to be internal promotions and motivations.

Second on the list was the requirement for tech companies to follow what is said about them in the social media environments. There is still considerable confusion about this and how it can be done. I heard one frustrated marketing professional asking whether it was sensible to respond to a blogger circulating misleading and incorrect information - the concern being that to do so would give that blogger increased credibility. Thankfully the advice given - to have a CTO/CIO respond rather than marketing or PR was spot on. However when I pressed IDC specialist Clare Gillan admitted that only 10% of IT pro's currently use blogs when assessing tech buys.

Otherwise I found the event somewhat quiet compared to previous years. Strange given the possibility of tightening budgets and the likelyhood that marketers will be required to be even more productive in the future.