Two Cents: The evolution of sharing

There has been a lot written about the power of peer recommendation. In any modern day communications presentation you are bound to see it plastered over slides left, right and centre.

And for good reason! If I see an ad on TV for The Amazing Spiderman, I might think to myself, “Yeah that looks alright, I should go and see that”. But if my mate Benny says to me, “Bro I saw The Amazing Spiderman yesterday, it was f***ing awesome”, I think “OK ... how do I get out of going to dinner with my girlfriend's parents so I can see The Amazing Spiderman IMMEDIATELY”.

There is no platform that has attempted to harness the power of peer recommendation more than digital.  “Likes”, “+1”, “Check-ins”, you name it – the mechanics we have developed are countless, and why not? These are environments where people are already talking to their friends and usually looking for interesting content that is relevant to them and their preferences. A perfect place to capitalise on the strength of peer recommendation. However, more recently things have taken an abrupt turn for the worst.

Social networking applications such as Viddy, Chill, SocialCam, hell even The Guardian now force users to automatically share all the content they consume. This means that once I have allowed this app (usually in order to view one specific piece of content), everything I view through it will then be shared directly with my friends.

This has far bigger ramifications than simply clogging up peoples newsfeeds; it has completely devalued peer recommendation in the social space.

Essentially, these apps remove the very filter that places value to anything that is shared - the act of recommendation itself. Previously if someone saw something that they thought was of value or interest to their peers, they would share it. Now, with the invention of these insidious applications, people are now simply sharing everything they are watching.

There is no filter, and therefore no value.

To bring it back to the original analogy of seeing a movie, it would be like a friend saying to me, “I just saw The Amazing Spiderman” ... and that would be the end of the conversation. Without telling me what they actually thought of the film, I am no more predisposed to seeing it than I was originally.

These apps are horribly annoying and with any luck, they will disappear as quickly as they appeared. If not we may lose one of the most powerful tools of influence at our disposal in marketing; peer recommendation. So please, for the sake of everyone, do as I do and boycott them. If I shared with my Facebook friends every video I watched on the internet I’d probably be arrested.