As Social Interactions Move Online, Influence Goes With It

The nature of social interaction is changing, away from the physical and toward the virtual-- the online -- the "social media" sites like MySpace. This further saps the influence traditional media once had as people connect with each about shared interests, not about shared reactions to last night's hit TV show or nightly news item.

Two recent articles got me thinking about this:

1. Bolt Media's study that says one-third of people under age 34 can't name any the four TV networks. Dave Evans' reaction is his ClickZ column was a great summation: "Why would anyone who's grown up with millions of independent channels -- the blogosphere, MySpace profiles, and YouTube -- even care what a network is, much less be able to name some arbitrary subset of them?"
2. This NY Times article about Digital Chocolate, a company that creates games and applications for mobile phones,that are "designed to foster conversation, flirting and...a little friendly trash talking." CEO Trip Hawkins explained further: Because it's when you're mobile, you're the most socially needy and vulnerable and insecure, and that when the one platform you have is the mobile, wireless platform."

Anyone who knew my work at Forrester will know I am a huge skeptic about mobile media and advertising. But mostly because the models have relied on traditional intrusive, interruptive models, the classic walking-down-the-street-and-get-a-Starbucks-coupon-on-your-phone scenario while the idea of doing anything on a 2-inch or smaller screen strikes me as far-fetched (maybe it is just because I'm turning 50 this summer...)

Mr. Hawkins observes, "If you're going to really establish something as a new medium, you can't do that with content that is derivative and a second-class version of another medium." Finally, someone with a vision I can believe in about the mobile platform! I've always said that the phone is and always will be primarily a communication device and it will be an enormous change for consumers to view it as an entertainment device. Mr. Hawkins is saying the social interaction is the entertainment.

What does this have to do with the Bolt Media study? Back in the "old" days, those social interactions were greased by the network TV hit shows. "Did you see (fill in name of hit show) last night?" used to be common water cooler question, giving co-workers with little else in common, safe ground to build the relationships that helped get the work done; with hit shows' Nielsen ratings in the single digits, this rarely happens now. The old saw is "you can't choose your family" and you pretty much can't choose your co-workers. But social networks like MySpace, Gather.com, and the MomNetwork give people the choice not to find common ground with those in physical proximity to them, but with far-flung people who share particular interests.

I believe this is an important dynamic in how marketers need to think about building campaigns that influence their target. Not only has fragmentation made it harder and harder to assemble the target audience you want, but now those social interactions, in which people slip in a question about some purchase they want advice on, don't even occur in those conversations. If a mom wants advice about the right car seat, is she going to ask someone at work when they happen to be chatting at the water cooler or will she ask her MomNetwork virtual friends? The network TV advertising may still get a larger audience, probably even higher TRPs (target rating points) than a social network, sow maybe it will still be effective to raise awareness. But where is the real influence taking place?

social media social networking consumer-generated media mobile advertising