The context: a major cultural shift going on right now
- A redefinition of the lines between what’s private and what’s not is happening
- A generation grown up on blogging and sharing content instantaneously, 24 x 7, globally knows a good reputation comes from a good online profile
- Consumers are more cynical and rejecting the traditional marketing pitch and have access to more information than ever before to research their buying decisions
- Large corporates are having their reputations dismantled in public on a daily basis, people don’t trust big anymore
- Power is shifting to the individual away from the large corporates, the internet has given a voice to the people via blogs
- Companies need to take a bottom up approach (cluetrain manifesto) to building customer loyalty and reputation, top down messaging doesn’t work anymore
- Social networks and communities are growing at a blistering rate, the wisdom of the crowd is something to be reckoned with
- Many blogs rely on scoops to drive their traffic that digging the dirt has become a sort of mass global hobby
- The blog Spreeblick established its reputation and traffic on the back of the Jamba taking money from kids story
- Sony which put a piece of spyware on music CDs as a secret copy-protection technique, only to wind up in court when bloggers revealed that the code left their computers vulnerable to hackers
- Microsoft offering to pay people to buff up the company’s Wikipedia entry Read the rest of this entry »
