Comments on: How do you reconcile openness and secrecy?

By: jlbraaten

jlbraaten — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:29:45 +0000

At this point I'm just happy to share the things I'm learning with others. Sharing can both build relationships with folks you don't know as well as establish credibility. You'd be surprised who you might be able to teach. I know of one USF Internet Marketing course professor that moved to bit.ly because of a conversation we had.

By: jlbraaten

jlbraaten — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:29:45 +0000

By: jlbraaten

jlbraaten — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:29:45 +0000

By: Stuart Foster

Stuart Foster — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:13:05 +0000

Extremely interesting Chris. I'm damn fascinated by this even…mainly because it plays to your strengths of explaining economic concepts/tenets to marketing/pr people like myself. I actually get what you are talking about (trust me that's a win).

By: Christian Jacobsen

Christian Jacobsen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:24:54 +0000

Secrets really don't exist. There are "things that most people don't know yet" and "things that are well known". Everything in the first column moves rapidly and inexorably into the second column.

So spending any time on protecting secrets is a waste of time.

Using your WoW auctions example, would it be more beneficial to you to capitalize on your "secret" knowledge of the auction trick until it was rendered useless because too many people know it? Or, would it be better to tell 200 friends about the trick in exchange for 200 other tricks?

Like glecharles says in his comment, secrets are ideas. Ideas are information. And information wants to be free.

Being open and honest should pay bigger results over time, and I expect that would prove true using any measuring stick you choose.

By: Stuartfoster

Stuartfoster — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:13:05 +0000

By: Vlad Vacariu

Vlad Vacariu — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:06:56 +0000

I would only reveal the secrets to certain people I trust not to tell everyone. If I tell the secret to people who go and tell everyone they know then the secret's value decreases significantly. If I tell only certain trusted people and they only tell certain people then the secret's value will not decrease as much. By the time the value decreases so much that it is useless I will discover another secret which I might not tell anyone. Only certain secrets I will reveal to certain people but I will not reveal all.

By: Christian Jacobsen

Christian Jacobsen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:24:54 +0000

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:03:49 +0000

Secrets, in this context, are like ideas; the real value lies in what you do with them, the execution. Even in your zero-sum examples, it still comes down to execution. In social media, as in many other areas of life, I believe openness definitely trumps secrecy.

By: Vlad Vacariu

Vlad Vacariu — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:06:56 +0000