A while back, watching the U.S. game show -Million Dollar Money Drop - there was a question asking, "Who was chosen as Time Magazine's "Most Trusted Man in News for 2009"?" Of all the choices, the answer was comedian Jon Stewart. In my opinion, his comedic take on headline news is a breadth of fresh air to the usual negative stories that seem to take top slot on the local evening news. What happened to the local kid who won the spelling bee or saved the cat out of the tree? Well, I suppose I will give credit to the world coverage of the Royal Wedding as a jolly event. I just prefer to avoid the negative evening news in favor of keeping tabs on the Trending twitter-sphere. The trouble with Internet stories, as I tell my mother, is to double check the facts and look for signs of Photoshop editing. Not everything you read on the Web is true. (she asks... "Really???" - LOL)
I am taking liberty on a comment Jon mentioned during an interview with Chris Wallis, about laziness. The Internet has made it easy to pass along "news" without verifying facts and thus propagating inaccuracies. Forwarding a tweet or email without verification is tantamount to the childhood game of whispering a word to your neighbor and seeing what becomes of it as it makes it's way around the circle - it is usually quite different from the original.
Corporations are not immune to this phenomenon either. The game players usually laugh at the morphed results, but it's not so funny when it happens in real life. Take for example the recent situation in Scott Bowen's blog "Check the Facts" regarding an inaccurate post by an independent analyst firm. As an employee of OpenText, I can confirm we are continuing to develop new features for Web Site Management as shown in recent case studies - like Lone Star College - showcasing their success with the product.
If we were playing the whisper game, what might have returned from its travel around the social circle, is not that WSM is in a "Death Spiral" but rather it has a "Great Future".
Death Spiral
Death Spira
Heath Spire
Heat Stire
Geat Sture
Great Suture
Great Future
