I love the quote above, it's from a piece in the New York Times about how young people are spreading political news, particulary in the Obama camp (no surprise, right?). They're not relying on mainstream media to get the news. More and more they expect that if something is interesting, cool, or noteworthy, they'll hear about it.
This is a great example of what Stowe Boyd might point to as an example of how we shouldn't necessarily stress about being bombarded with too much information. One of the main ways that we are adapting is distributing the allocation of attention across our network. If I need to hear about something, I probably will.
The example from the New York Times article is Obama's response to the State of the Union address given by George Bush. The response was briefly covered on mainstream television, but it's distribution continues to accelerate through social media. Interestingly, the transcript of the speech, rather than professional journalists' commentary of it, ranked higher on the New York Times "most e-mailed" listing. They not only value friends and our network to hear about something, they also value the real thing or primary source over interpretation. That's a whole layer of intermediation losing important influence.
While this is not news, I think it's important to remember that the ability to simply pass things on to our network/social graph/friends is critical in social media. It may not be the sexiest, but it's the bread and butter. The technology is all there to be able to do this, it couldn't be easier. The hard part is actually being interesting and relevant enough.
(That's why I'm so wary of anyone selling "social media" services, or promising to build word of mouth for brands, people, or anything for that matter. Instead of paying to "activate" social media, it might be better to spend more time thinking of how to be interesting. The rest should take care of itself ;)
Love that last point Dino. So true.
Posted by: neilperkin | April 01, 2008 at 04:13 PM