Stanford Magazine - March/April 2012

even if you have no money. An individual
with limited time—perhaps no money—can
still have a significant influence within the
organization and outside the organization.

If you look at [online shoe retailer] Zappos, many point to that organization as a good story around employees feeling empowered to tweet on the part of Zappos. The CEO famously has a very large Twitter following and talks a lot about moments of happiness. Not just product, or not just coupons or deals for Zappos, but talks about things that he’s seeing, funny observations; and in that process people feel like they get to know him, and similarly they feel like they get to know employees. And what you’re seeing right now in business is, the greater the degree to which a company feels like it has a human face, the more people feel it’s authentic, the more they feel they can trust the company.

You’re seeing increasing amounts of
distrust of for-profits, an increasing amount
of distrust of nonprofits even—like, where
is our money is going?—and an increase
of distrust of government. And it’s in that
context, where there’s a significant trust
deficit, that we as a culture are increasingly
thirsty for human authenticity, a feeling
like, I get why this company is doing what
it’s doing. What Facebook, Twitter, You Tube
and these other tools and channels have
given to companies is the ability to have a
human interface with a larger public.

There must be a downside in terms
of the potential for distortion or
manipulation.
There are significant negative unintended
consequences associated with social media.
One is this distortion, or
this ability for very extreme
arguments to have more
voice or gather more atten-
tion. A second downside is
the fact that a lot of private
conversations are becoming inadvertently
very public, at perhaps a stage where they
weren’t supposed to be. There’s a time
when conversations should be private and
thoughts should be morphed in a smaller
environment. And increasingly we’re
finding that it’s hard to find those private
moments [in] business, government or
creating movements.

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