Craig Newmark: Exec with a Clue About the Public Conversation

Earlier this afternoon, I posted to Contentious (one of my other weblogs) about how I wished more media execs would regularly converse directly with their customer base/audience and become less cynical in general. Personally, I think cynicism is the bane of mainstream media companies -- especially news organizations. Cynicism could be one of the main reasons why media execs don't often deign to directly converse with their audiences, or the public.

This train of thought was inspired by a quote from Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, which appeared in this Guardian interview today. I'll recite that quote in a sec, but first I want to tell you about something else cool.

Within a few minutes of my Contentious posting, Craig Newmark chimed in with a quick comment. Now there's a media executive who's got a clue about monitoring and joining the public conversation!

Here's our exchange...

The Guardian interview offered this quip from Newmark:

“Describing himself as ‘customer service representative first, founder second,’ Newmark maintains diligent communication with as many of the 10 million monthly users of his site as possible. ‘It’s enabled me to see that people around the world share the same values, and the best thing you can do is simply help other people out. Forgive me -- I’m seriously trying to be more cynical -- but there’s this 'do unto others' vibe in the Craigslist community which seems to be pretty universal.’”

I included that excerpt in my Contentious post, and expanded on a related theme.

A few minutes later, Newmark submitted this comment to Contentious:

"I might have been exaggerating the cynicism for comic effect."

To which I replied:

"LOL, thanks, Craig. I realize you might have had your tongue firmly planted in your cheek with that quip, but it’s still a great point. I’m sure you’re cynical sometimes. We all are. So don’t worry, you didn’t completely undermine your business credibility with that remark "

It was just a brief exchange, pretty innocuous. Still, it indicates that Craig Newmark understands and cares about the public conversation -- especially the parts of it that pertain directly to him.

He probably has a search feed for his name set up in Technorati or some similar service. Or perhaps he has an assistant monitoring such a feed and notifying him of any items of possible significance or amusement that show up there. This enables him to respond promptly, and it also enhances his reputation for being involved, not aloof.

This simple technique can not only provide executives from any kind of company with valuable context, but also aid their reputation. When prominent individuals participate constructively in the public conversation, they appear more human and approachable. This may, I think, encourage at least their online audience to cut them a little slack when controversies arise.

...Just a guess there, but think it over and tell me what you think about that possible benefit.

(Incidentally, I also posted about the media cynicism theme over at Poynter's E-Media Tidbits weblog. It hasn't appeared there yet, but it should be there later today or early tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see whether/how that audience of news biz pros reacts to my cynicism complaint.)

Comments

[Craig Newmark]

thanks! and it's bloglines.com, just happens to be the first one I checked out.

Craig

[Kent Newsome]

I am also impressed that Craig would respond at all, and particularly in such a timely manner.

Another great exec who does that sort of thing is Dave Sifry of Technorati. Back in December I started having some problems getting Newsome.Org properly indexed. I posted about it and in less than an hour I had a comment from Dave himself saying he'd look into it and then a follow-up comment saying he'd had the problem fixed.

As I said then, that was the 99 yard pass of tech support, and it created all kinds of goodwill towards Technorati.