Craig Newmark is the Internet-pioneer and creator of Craigslist. He was one of the first people to see the profitability of the Internet and put it to good use. Gigaom.com did an interview with Mr. Newmark and were able to get him on an incredible interesting and pertinent topic: The question of who to trust online.

He talked about “reputation and trust ruling the web, just the way it does in real life,” and how he was looking to big players such as Google, Facebook and Amazon as the kinds of entities that would have the scale to handle such a distributed trust or reputation management network.

That’s certainly an eye for the future, but I’m not sure it’s something we’re going to see anytime soon. We have no reputation counter in real life, why would we need it online? Still–the idea of a network of trust is appealing, especially for those who have had contact with online scammers and the like. It seems like search engines handle web libel problems just fine to me.

http://gigaom.com/2010/03/18/craig-newmark-on-the-webs-next-big-problem/?utm_source=gigaom&utm_medium=navigation

Every month we get new numbers from ComScore and Hitwise concerning the direction and momentum of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and all of the other major search engines. Well the new numbers are in, and it seems that in February Bing made steady gains while Yahoo slipped. Depending on whether you depend upon ComScore or Hitwise’s numbers, Google either gained slightly or held steady.

Hitwise’s data should give Google execs plenty to ponder. Microsoft’s massive marketing push for Bing appears to be paying off. There’s no reason to assume that Bing’s advance will stall, particularly if Redmond succeeds in its aggressive foray into mobile search.

This could have a massive effect on the brand reputation management industry, which may have to start contending with more than one dominant search engine. If Bing becomes competitive with Google, and uses formulas which are very different for determining search rankings, the job will be made that much more difficult for those in the industry.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/191237/bing_gains_again_should_google_worry.html

Ford Motor Company has been struggling to stay competitive in the automotive market for many years now. One can trace their decline back to a corresponding rise for General Motors. For the first time, though, since 1998, Ford Motor Company is beating General Motors in monthly sales.

Ford deliveries jumped 43 percent to 142,285 vehicles compared with 141,951 for GM. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company hadn’t topped GM in domestic sales since a strike idled the biggest U.S. automaker almost 12 years ago, and the last time before that was during a 1970 walkout, based on Ford data.

Ford beating GM for only the third time since 1970 is pretty sad. Especially when we consider the fact that the 1970 victory was caused by a GM walkout and this month was likely the result of backlash against GM being taken over by the U.S. Treasury. GM will need to combat this newest story and frame it not as a trend, but as an anomaly. A competent corporate brand reputation campaign could help.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-02/ford-u-s-sales-win-is-first-since-1998-as-gm-shuffles-leaders.html