Who's In Charge?

There seems to be a shift in the nature of authority that is sweeping the web as people look to find someone in charge they can relate to and trust. If you asked people they would have difficulty in identifying who they thought was in charge. The need for this authority is caused by the avalanche of content and attention required to find what you are looking for from a creditable source. Steve Rubel of Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman, in a recent Mashable seminar discussed authority on the web and used the short history of the web to reach his conclusion. He pointed out the three main web timelines from early commercialisation, where businesses ruled web pages, through to democratisation where social sites rule to finally arriving at the validation stage requiring authority and getting away from what he called the "friending arms race" pervading our online activity today.

With too much content and only the same amount of time and eyes and ears as before the avalanche, we find ourselves looking for authority figures of trust, who we know more than just as a Facebook connection. With the New Oxford Dictionary's word of 2010 being "unfriend" we see a shaking out of the collective collection. Validation relies on trust and Edelman, who publish a yearly trust barometer of attitudes towards trust in business, media and government in 23 countries, shows a trend towards academics, thought leaders and technical experts becoming the most trusted source.

The authority of peers, long the domain of the Facebook and Trip Advisor generation has seen a notable decline in the last two years. It's this shift in authority that Rubel sees as the validation stage and people are looking for the light at the end of the content tunnel and wish to hang onto the people and sources that matter most to them. This is the beginning of small niche networks where people are closer aligned in thinking, caring and agreement on knowledge based on and passed on by figures of authority. The people that used to know everything and who we had the most trust in used to be Mum and Dad. When was the last time you asked your Mum for advice?

A lot of the authority figures can be seen in the analogy of a curator, who decides what's best seen, read, heard and validated for the group. Becoming curators and thought leaders is available to companies as well as for individuals, as long as they are willing to lead on behalf of their clients. Curating becomes as important as creating when you look at some of the web statistics today. According to Rubel and Edelman, we read 20% of a webpage before moving on; 57% of us never come back to that page; and we spend 15-20 seconds on a webpage before we move on. We are a global planet of fruit flies and the best way to keep our attention, is to give us platforms of engagement, trust and credibility, with maybe a lot less writing and more pictures.

So who are your web authorities? Who would you trust with your decisions? Who do you trust to curate and then disseminate information that matters to you? Who does it for you without an agenda other than being the right person in the right place for you?
All questions people are asking themselves as they look to "unfriend" themselves from the crowd and find relevance in their online lives.