Back in 2002, I wrote:

One of the ways that it’s possible to decide what sites are worth visiting often, for example, what sites provide a broad, filtered range of new content and what sites provide an interpretation of content on the web based on specialized expertise, is to develop a set of trusted sources. Trusted sources may be people who share the same interests you do and who link to and recommend sites that you find generally interesting and useful. A trusted source may also be an expert in a particular field. One way to locate trusted experts is to find someone that you personally know or that you have located through a personal chain of experts, peers or colleagues.

The criteria for judging trusted sources on the web are the same as those for selecting friends and trusted experts face to face. Who is this person? What do I know about them? What kind of information are they presenting? How does the information fit with other things I know? How reliable has past information been? Key factors for evaluating trusted sources include: credentials, references, usefulness of the information they filter, recommendations from others, strong, clear writing, and personal glimpses of the person behind the information. This last factor is increasingly critical.

Corporate voice helps to add to the information that’s available, but it doesn’t help us evaluate what information we should use to make decisions. We need to know the people behind the web site, we need to know who they are and how they think in order to help us evaluate the specific usefulness of the information they’re presenting us. We need particularly to hear their individual voice before we can give them trusted source status. And we need sites that are built by ‘this-expert-we-trust’ as well as sites that contain a range of published resources from a large organization.

Who do we trust online? It'd be nice if we trusted Extension because Extension has a 100 year history of providing unbiased, research based informaiton, of educating people in practical ways that make their lives better, of developing leadership and community. But every Extension agent and specialist I've ever met has said at one time or another, "Extension is the best-kept secret in our state."

We can develop trust with new audiences when they can find us (Reason one), when we're willing to interact with them (Reason two), and when we do so as individuals with our own knowledge, personal attributes, and connections to others.