Trust is a spectrum, but about 260 are what I would call “high trust”.

What percentage of the members of Ryze, or ecademy or LinkedIn can offer up a hard (as in something the bank manager will recognize as consideration toward their mortgage) benefit of membership such as those you cited?

Of the total membership? Probably around 10%. Of the active members? Probably around 30-40%. It doesn’t matter one single bit that it’s not the majority – that’s no reflection on the sites. The majority of people don’t have the skills to be effective at it. That’s not a plug for my business – that’s why I chose my current business! Consider that the typical 40-year old businessperson has spent probably about 200,000 hours interacting with people face-to-face, but probably only about 4,000-5,000 hours communicating with people electronically. It’s unreasonable for us to expect that we would be naturally good at it! It’s all well and good to talk about adapting the tool better to people, but the reality is that people who really master a tool also significantly adapt their behavior to the tool.

Consider this – how many people are “natural” at golf? Seems easy enough, right? You just swing a stick and hit a stationary target – how hard can that be? Yet people spend hours and hours (and dollars and euros) adapting their behavior to the tool. Why? Because your swing is more important than the club. Tiger Woods will drive farther and straighter with my 30-year-old Wilsons than I will with a Big Bertha.

Like most participants in these organizations, I *want* them work as business tools….but after investing a great deal of time in them, I’m coming up short of hard results. Sure, you have to work it, but at some point most of us have to show a quantifyable return on the investment of our time.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “Don’t confuse activity with progress.” When you buy your Big Bertha and it’s not working, do you throw it away and go back to your 3-wood? Or work on your swing? ;-)