Authenticity

We've always thought that authenticity was a key attribute of a successful web service. We define authenticity as that intangible feeling you get when you come across a service that does exactly what it is supposed to do, is novel, true to itself, etc. Digg, Delicious, Flickr, and Craigslist are all authentic services and have remained so.

Last night I wondered whether you can fake authenticity. I think not, but certainly many have tried. What do you think?

Comments

[Jeff]

Of course you can fake authenticity! Cheney's been doing it since the 1970s. Oh, wait - you mean web services. Nevermind.

[Seamus McCauley]

Sounds to me like a "can you fool all of the people all of the time?" question. To which the answer is, of course, "no", but with the caveat that you don't have to. Or that it depends what you're trying to fake the authenticity for.

If you can fake authenticity for long enough to, e.g., attract some users and some investment, perhaps that'll do. Or if you're running a phishing scam, then of course many people will realise and they'll all realise eventually (once the money has gone) - but that doesn't matter, because all you're going for is authentic enough to catch out a few of them. Take this fake PayPal site for example: http://qurl.com/fbrv2. Of course it's not authentic - you know it, I know it. But if it's authentic enough to fool, oh, a thousand people, so what?

[evbart]

I don't think you can fake authenticity either. It would come across in some part of the experience with the users of your service, no matter how small symptoms.

In today's hyper-connected hyper-marketed world people (the cutting edge trend setters in particular) crave authenticity, and have to develop equally sophisticated mechanisms to help sniff it out. Everywhere you turn (offline and offline) people and companies are trying to fake authenticity, and I feel that the this pushes consumers away. Hence, blogs being such a big hit when they are directly and authentically communicating with their readers.

Though, when it comes to the main stream, with the likes of Nysnc, Britney Spears, network television, etc. I don't know if authenticity is as big a concern to the producers or the consumers.

[Alan Rimm-Kaufman]

Not a shot. Fake authenticity sends off subtle signals -- they just "feel" wrong -- hard to detect by machine, but easy for humans. Perhaps the results of thousands of years of human evolution -- we're trained to pick up tiny signals that things aren't quite as they should be?

[CoryS]

Like saying that an artist has to be "real" to be successful, then you hear that some artists only play that way on stage and they are quite different personally.

Authenticity is an interesting problem as it relates to the growing interaction of web services being provided by individuals in a community setting. I like the idea VeriSign has a Personal Identity Provider service that is an interesting concept (introduced here: http://blogs.verisign.com/infrablog/2006/05/introducing_the_verisign_perso_1.php ).

Is VeriSign authentic enough to credibly sign off on a person's identity? Probably. When a person has to be who they say they are (on a community site) or for a site that relies on credibility in its members, I find it interesting to think that there could be ways to forge credibility not just of the web hosting site, but of its community members.

[JayR]

Not sure if you can fake authenticity. You can certainly co-opt and corrupt it, though.

[Andy]

My guess is that only naive men like us would think that authenticity cannot be faked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ikmCmk3LIY

[Erik Schwartz]

I agree with what Jay said.

I've certainly seen people without a bone of authenticity in their bodies try to co-opt and corrupt authentic ideas.

The danger is in the excitement and energy of creating something new those people can sometimes slide through on the authenticity of others. To the trained observer however, their motivations stain the entire team and product

[RBA]

I don't think you can fake authenticity - not in a generalized way so that everyone "buys it".

But how about when you think you "see" something wrong somewhere but it is your own prejudice making te judgement and in fact you're actually seeing something that, given the opportunity, it will prove very real.

Things do pass by us because we didn't feel they were right at the beginning. So rather than questioning whether we have an eye to spot someone faking authenticity, the biggest challenge may well be to spot true authenticity where others didn't see it.

Does that make sense to you?

[Jason Chervokas]

Fred-

You know I've spent a lot of time thinking about the issue of authenticity particularly w/ respect to the history of American popular culture.

In essence my conclusion is that there is no such thing as innate authenticity. In fact, authenticity is a derived characteristic, one bestowed on something or someone by the concensus of the audience. Daddy Rice's Jim Crow act in the mid 19th century was an enormous, international hit. It was a blackface song and dance comedy routine based very abstractly on the music of Kentucky corn shuckings and on black vernacular comedy but it was hardly "authentic" in any literal sense. Yet even Fredrick Douglas referred to as authenic.

We make our own authenticity. More instructive for you purposes, perhaps, might be an attempt to catalog the characteristics you find in these web services that make you consider them authentic.

[Brian]

Authenticity is evaluated by the consumer. I’m not sure if a brand has the power to fake it. If users believe the brand is authentic than it is. If they stop believing in the brand then it ceases to be authentic. I don’t think it is sustainable for a company to deliberately try to fool their users into thinking they are authentic.

ESPN’s brand remains authentic to sports fans (this is arguable but as a sports fanatic ESPN is the definition and barometer for sports to me). I don’t think they care about the interest of the community as much as the companies you mentioned in your post and this might mean they are faking it. If so, I guess they got me.

Thanks for the thought provoking post.

[Vijay]

Fred:
Who determines what is authentic ;).

[Squasher98]

It depends on what you mean by "authenticity," but certainly iPod was not the first mp3 player. Google was not the first search engine. Did they use innovative designs and differentiators; sure, but it doesn't mean they were authentic. People love brands, not necessarily caring for how authentic they are. It's all about perception

My blog: http://www.IntelliGrad.com/Blog

[Phil Veal]

If it's fake, it ain't authentic. At least that's what some in the reality-based community might say.

[Aren]

I highly recommend the book "Authentic Happiness" by M. Seligman. Granted the subject is more happiness than authenticity, there are nuggets there that are very worthwhile. What challenges me in your statement is the notion that a company is authentic. My sense is that it is always PEOPLE that are authentic. You meet an entrepreneur and you know by their walk, talk and handshake that they either are or are not "the real deal." I suppose the same thing can be said for a web company--- you get to the site, you go through the first few pages and you know or don't know. But my guess is that for VCs, the REAL test is meeting the founders and gauging their sincerity, committment and authenticity. BS is BS, whether it is manifest in the person in front of you or in the crazy product they are trying to sell.

[ashkan karbasfroosha]

Your definition of authentic implies subjectiveness... so it's hard to have a black or white answer.

While I do not think you can fake authenticity forever, you can certainly create a [false] sense of authenticity amongst a portion of the broad population, but often times, the specific target market you are trying to reach might see through it sooner or later.

But, as examples in music, politics, art - and business - show, if you can pull off the sense of authenticity for long enough, you don't care in the end.

Why?

The reason is that as artists, entrepreneurs etc., we initially want credibility with / amongst our peers (then the early adopters), but in the end, it's the greater population that we care about.

More here:
http://www.watchmojo.com/web/blog/?p=943

[Erik Schwartz]

I don't think it has anything to do with being first. It has everything to do with your motivations for wanting to do it in the first place.

If you're doing something because the status quo pisses you off and you know it can be better, then you're authentic.

If you're doing something because you think it will appeal to google and you want to flip it, you're not being authentic.

[tomo]

You/we can fake authenticity but that doesn't mean the fake is authentic. it simply mean you were able to trick someone. conventional wisdom would lead me to believe that duping a large community would be more difficult that an individual and in theory it is because you must dupe each individual member of the community. So much for my take on that....the digg dupe proved that it really only takes a few people who are trusted to be duped and since they are trusted by others in the community they are the defacto community proxy and members follow their lead whether it be for digging a submition on digg or for moral boundaries. Perhaps the inhabitants of online communities will find themselves in civil wars sooner than later :)

[HLMorgan]

I am reminded of the old acting adage "What makes a great actor is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've go it made." Yes, you can fake authenticity, but not forever, since it takes effort. Or, as Brett Maverick said "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, and those are pretty good odds.:

[Brooks Jordan]

37signals (http://www.37signals.com) and all of their products (Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, and so on) certainly belong on any list of authentic companies with Web-based services.

[Rik]

Hi fred, good point. I was recently thinking about just the same thing. You can find my opinion right here: http://www.trythisonforsize.net/2006/11/13/authentic/
(i know, i shouldn't plug this, but it feels silly to copy paste as well).

[Josh]

Of course you can fake authenticity. Does the name Alex Rodriguez ring a bell?

[terrycojones]

Although you might prefer or otherwise be tempted to believe authenticity can't be faked, there are strong logical arguments that it can.

Firstly, consider the equivalent alternate question: could you _ever_ make the mistake of thinking that something is authentic when it is not? The alternate question immediately brings the question down to the level of the individual, and I think most individuals would admit that yes, they might occasionally be mistaken. So there's your answer. It's more interesting to ask for how long you can be fooled.

I don't buy arguments that you can't be faked out because humans have a good nose for the real versus the authentic, or good taste, etc. Humans are consummate social actors. We all possess highly evolved and sophisticated bullshit detectors, along with a correspondingly highly evolved and sophisticated ability to bullshit. Arguing that one or the other definitively has the upper hand is bound to be wrong. As with all evolutionary arms races, this sort of thing goes back and forth, and it always will. Arguing that we humans are somehow different in our abilities holds no water, and tends to ignore billions of years of evolutionary history during which we weren't doing much talking, reasoning, or web app building, but we were sure as hell deeply into deception and detecting deception.

So sure, you can mistake the fake for the authentic. The evidence is all around us. One might even argue that you're more prone to do it in a new environment like the web or assessing start-up companies etc., simply because we have little history in doing that. I wouldn't go that far though - I think the generalized bullshit detectors are pretty good, and balanced with the ability to generate it (and there's a flip side to that claim: that we're similarly impaired in faking it in the new medium).

The collective deluded beliefs (mine included, of course) of a bunch of peculiarly-motivated, and apparently polite, honest, well-intentioned, and rich humans surfing a VC blog shouldn't cut much ice. Do I need to add a smiley here?

Traveling or doing business in a foreign culture can be a brutally interesting way to discover just how easy it is to be completely faked out.

[Leigh]

Remember when authentic used to be so easy? You had a crappy product but got a great Ad Agency, PR Team and build a slammin' TV commercial?

You built equities in your brand that even you laughed at night about at how gullible the world was to believe you....and you made millions doing it....

Ah, authentic isn't as easy as it used to be. Just ask Martha...you might make millions, but in the end you lose billions and possibly destroy your reputation in the process.

(and no i don't think a bad reality show counts as a come back...)

[TheRealist]

Of course you can fake it. MySpace was created by a bunch of spammers from a company called eUniverse. If that isn't fake authenticity I don't know what is.