Easily Distracted?

As a culture we have become distracted by information sources, queries, and commercial suitors that have little or no personal connections with us. The more information we are confronted with the more faceless and impersonal most of our daily lives seem. Apart from any value judgment about this state of things, it is revealing that a very human movement like social media would react to it and reclaim a little community spirit. Connecting on social media is providing an outlet to consumers for a building urge to have more than just information sources occupying their minds. Millions of people have flocked to social media to share something primal and basic to human need even when the content posted may be shallow or mundane. Most often social media content is quite meaningful to those posting it and usually to those following it. But the true value of social media at the present stage is its effect on the social conscience. Anonymity is disappearing. Lonely people are finding friends and community. A fragmented society is slowly reconnecting and grassroots people are unwittingly preparing to reclaim their role as the major force for change in society.

Change takes place when one person recommends to another a company’s service, not because of the high style of the company’s advertisement but because a service rep went out of his way to be helpful. A consumer responding to good service is nothing new, of course. What is new in the Recommendation Age is that one recommendation from one person can result in thousands or even millions of impressions. This is not theory. It’s happening right now and it is changing society and, very quickly, the way companies do business.

The Recommendation Age phenomenon is expanding mostly through hundreds of online social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, YouTube, LinkedIn, and thousands of smart phone apps that allow anyone to log in and comment or enter a rating about anything. For instance, there is a smart phone app called My Net Diary through which you can find specific nutrient, calorie, and additive information about, not just food types, but many of even the most obscure name brand products from actual consumers who have inputted that information along with a scan of the bar code. Fellow users can then scan the bar code of a product they are considering or the name of a specific variety of raw produce and instantly see more information about the product posted by other users. My Net Diary users are just everyday consumers who are only interested in tapping into resources they feel they can trust more than advertisers and to which they themselves can contribute. That last aspect is the important part that pulls people in. I will discuss examples in Part Three of companies tapping into the consumer urge to be interactive participants in commercial dialog. But you can begin to understand the power of this aspect of social media by understanding one principle: People will be more devoted to that which they help to build.

(Excerpt from my new book, The Recommendation Age)