Craig Newmark, writing in the Neiman Foundation’s new report has lots of interesting things to say about how journalism and “citizen journalism” might develop. However I wanted to highlight this almost throwaway comment he makes near the start.
Somehow, the craigslist community—its users and company—has constructed a culture of trust. Basically people feel they should treat others as they want to be treated. Where we start from on craigslist is in trusting people; then we give those who come into our community real power to self-police. We do light management but, mostly, we stay out of the way and let people set the tone of the site. Somehow this approach works.
Sounds like a pretty good definition of facilitation to me.
I’ve been thinking for some time that marketing 2.0 could be more like facilitation. Marketing 1.0 is more like training. So when Hugh says don’t use the blogosphere to push corporate messages, it’s a bit like saying, hey, we’re not here to be trained by you.
Hat tip: David Weinberger
