Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms The Way We Live and Do Business

Chapter 5. I Care More about What My Neighbor Thinks than What Google Thinks

Socialommerce is upon us. What is socialommerce exactly? It is a term that encompasses the transactional, search, and marketing components of social media. Socialommerce harnesses the simple idea that people value the opinion of other people. What this truly means is that in the future we will no longer seek products and services, rather they will find us. Nielsen reports 78 percent of people trust their peers' opinions.^[73] This is neither a new concept, nor new to the Web (e.g., epinions.com, complaints.com, angieslist.com).

What is new is that social networks make it so much easier to disseminate information. As the success of social media proves, people like disseminating information. This explains the popularity of Twitter and other microblogging tools. These tools/products enable users to inform their friends what they are doing every minute of the day (I'm having an ice cream cone, check out this great article, listening to keynote speaker, etc.). Microblogging's popularity was originally relegated to teens, but then it quickly gained popularity with adults and businesses. It also played an important role in the 2008 presidential election.

	Social media is creating something that I think eventually is going to be very healthy for our economy, and that is institutional brand integrity.
	--John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer, Young & Rubicam[74]

The most popular feature of Facebook and LinkedIn is status ...