I have noticed an interesting tendency in websites and blog/social media sites recently. Many, from credible people and organizations, no longer provide a physical mailing address or location. Some are no longer providing a phone number; though they provide all sorts of email, messaging, web-form, Facebook, or other alternatives. Some don't even provide profiles of the principals behind the company.
Perhaps, I'm a little old fashioned, but somehow I'm not quite ready to trust something that is only on the web, in the ether. When I'm looking to buy something, or establish some sort of relationship with an individual or organization, I do a lot of research. I look at their website, I "Google" them, I look at sites like LinkedIn, and I try to find trusted references. I do whatever I can to gain a better understanding of the individual or organization.
Everyone, from the smallest through largest organizations, operate virtually. I operate very virtually, while I have an office in my home, 85% of the time, I'm somewhere else in the world. People who know me well, when they message or phone me, the first question they ask is where are you today? Sometimes it's Beijing, or Copenhagen, or New York, Cairo, it can be anywhere. As long as I have my computer and my phone, I am always connected. I get "virtual," I think most business professional do, as well.
However, I don't get this "fully social." Good people and companies that only exist in social media. Organizations whose only channels of communication are through social media. There's something in me that wonders "are they for real." Somehow, while I know I can tweet them and get a response, I'm uncomfortable that I don't know how to telephone them, even though much of my preferred mode of communication is through messaging or email. Somehow, it makes me uncomfortable not to have a physical address to reach them-even a PO Box. It doesn't matter that I probably won't use it, but to me the physical addresses or phone numbers are the kind of the "safeties." If I have those, I know I can always reach them.
Somehow these things, an address or phone number, are tied, at least in my mind, to a "physical presence." They are more real. From that, I make the leap that they are potentially more trustworthy. Not having those make me very uncomfortable.
Is it just me? Am I not ready, as much as I might pretend to be, to be fully social? Is this a trend and we have to learn how to establish trust, lacking some of the traditional mechanisms that started us down the path of developing trust?