The value of information, and the cost of misinformation

Information is currency. Those who offer the highest quality, most timely, and relevant information gain status. That’s the idea behind mastering social networks, and working out the calculations to quantify this is what makes services like Klout interesting.

Klout is still working on the formulas; it’s fun and interesting to see this evolve. It’s not perfect, but it’s not expected to be perfect either (yet). Which brings me to my point, if you set the expectation to be perfect, then you should be pretty darn close to that all the time. Or, you need to simply reset expectations when appropriate.

Losing clout

In Boston, the MBTA runs all our trains and buses. They offer real time information about the status of the service. Train such and such is running 7 mintues late. Bus line such and such is using the snow emergency route today. That sort of thing. It’s offerred up on their website, via an automated phone line, and they even have text updates. The trouble is, when you expect this information to be near perfect – accurate, timely, and relevant, the dissapointment is significant when it’s not.

Promises, Promises

When it seems like the organization promising real time information has access to all the data, the tools to collect it, and the tools to distribute it to you in real time, you expect it to be near perfect. So, when it’s far off, very far off like it was for me today (yes, this is actually a rant about my commute), it costs the organization. The value I place on the organization, the trust I place in future promises, and the credibility I give to future information streams goes down.

Be Real

If they didn’t have the information, on a day when it was particularly valuable (we just had a big blizzard here in the Boston area), it would have been better to reset expectations than to give the wrong information. I would have appreciated the update saying that under today’s conditions, with all hands on deck with tons of extra work and with a volume of issues to contend with that is orders of magnitude higher than a typical day, it’s just not possible to provide up-to-the-minute information on every aspect of the system today. This would be enormously more useful than updates that vacillate between various statuses that purport to be accurate, but which were all proven false.

Photo credit: discoodoni

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