In the Manipulators, Seth Godin notes that:
"If you only need to influence 500 people (or 10 people pretending to be 50 different people each) in order to show up on the screens of tens of thousands people... that's too tempting for most capitalists to ignore (politicians are next, for sure)."
"......As the 'bestseller' lists on YouTube and Reddit and other places become more and more important, they're also going to become less useful. Less useful because the manipulators are way more focused and earnest than the typical consumer, and they'll figure out a way to get under whatever radar gets installed.
At some point, it's going to come down to who we trust. We didn't trust Beechnut after we find out they put water in the apple juice. We didn't trust Audi for a decade, even though there wasn't anything actually wrong with their car. And we won't trust Enron, Worldcom or Adelphia with our money for a long time to come."
I'm seeing this too ..... people gaming the system left and right, people using Digg and Reddit to generate traffic to their blogs, people using Digg Gangs to inflate their traffic for short periods of time, people doing all kinds of things to get traffic except doing something traffic worthy and remarkable.
I know it's too much to expect people, as Seth Godin would like, to Be Remarkable, it's a great idea but you can expect marketers and agencies under a lot of pressure to be Remarkable too.....I'm a realist.
But it's also realistic that only brands that do not misuse trust and confidence will survive in the long run:
"And the upside? The upside is that individuals (and organizations) that don't stoop, that manage to figure out how to have influence without trying to profit from it, those brands are the ones that will last, that will thrive and that will bring the rarest commodity--trust--to the table."
Well, why call "trust" a commodity...I don't think it should be called a commodity as most commodities are not well valued. I think of trust more like a gem, or pot of gold.
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