B2B communities crave transparency and trust

Following on from our discussion about B2B as a passion community, we’ve come across VendorCity, a B2B word of mouth referral service with accompanying Twitter feed and private LinkedIn group. What’s particularly interesting is their emphasis on quality over quantity, which led to them reviewing and moderating entries to safeguard ethics and reliability:

“Our goal is not to have the most reviews; instead we strive to have the best and most trusted word-of-mouth B2B referrals on the planet…[we] review each and every recommendation before it is posted to our community of users…If we are not certain that the review is valid, we will contact the two parties (the client and the vendor) to determine if there is indeed a relationship between them. If we cannot verify it that they did business together, we will not post that vendor review.”

As long as their mods don’t prevent the painful truth from also coming through, VendorCity have made a good move. Self-moderation works well for many online communities, but it’s doubtless that when you’re making B2B decisions, proven transparency and trust are key.

Brought into the world on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 and filed under Uncategorized.