The Economics of Credibility

Everyone who is popular gains detractors along the way. And detractors tend to flock together and vote for other people who share their opinions. That trend virtually guarantees any valuable brand will have dirt ranking somewhere in the search results. The more valuable the brand gets the more people who will gun to unearth the dirt.

With so much competition for attention, many publishers believe they need to offer bold predictions quickly in order to be remarkable. And when those predictions go wrong people are creating documentaries about how wrong you are. Jim Cramer recently mentioned that Bear Stearns was fine right and talked about how unsophisticated the naysayers were (and how they never did their homework)

Days after Jim said Bear Stearns was fine, they were bought out for pennies on the dollar. Not only does Comedy Central offer their take, but other mini-documentaries and flames have appeared

The Daily Show

Fox Business Ad

If you are a publisher and your business model requires you to find new customers every day then you need to keep competing for attention. In many markets that will put you in a Jim Cramer-like position where you end up making some bad calls that cost you a lot of money in the long run.