Customer's New Voice: Extreme Relevancy and Experience through Volunteered Customer Information

CHAPTER 3 Age of Sharing

It is our nature to share. It is as much a part of our survival as a species as it is a central part of our self-actualization as human beings. We share because we have the enabling tools and motivation to share. When we don’t share, either we don’t have the tools or we lack sufficient motivation or safety to share. The following points are the essence of why and how we share:

• Given the right motivation (e.g., make my life easier, save me money, make me feel good as a person)
• Sense of safety (if I share information with you, nothing negative/no harm will come from it)
• Sharing enablers (with mobile phones, tablets, the Internet, wearable technology, and sensors, we have the propensity to share virtually any information with anyone)

Historical Sharing Tools

Sharing personal information is what people do as human beings. It has been the nature of human beings since the beginning of time. Until recent history, sharing was confined to physical one-to-one communication and its content was determined by the level of trust and intimacy. Communication tools evolved because human beings wanted to share more information beyond just words. Human beings’ need to share has driven prolific inventions and has historically shaped our behavior:

• 1814: First photograph
• 1829: Braille (system of reading for the blind)
• 1831: Electric telegraph
• 1835: Morse code
• 1843: First long-distance telegraph line
• 1843: First fax machine
• 1861: Pony Express established
• 1867: Typewriter ...