When did we start trusting strangers?

‘There a fundamental change in the way we search and source and share opinions, and today anyone can wield opinions far beyond their immediate social groups

I’ve just stumbled upon a fantastic research study carried out by Universal McCann aiming at understanding how consumers use, and interact with social media.

Universal McCann surveyed 17,000 active Internet users in 29 countries, making it one of the most wide reaching investigations into the subject of influence and WOM. Every market is representative by age (16-54) and gender.

They identified 3 key trends: the Rise of Social Media, Digital Friends and the Proliferation of Influencer Channels.

Whilst I am not planning of paraphrasing their research report, I’d like to highlight a few figures that I find particularly interesting…

The Rise of Social Media

• Slide 11: There has been a massive growth in the number of Internet users writing blogs, from 28% – 44% from 2006 – 2008, whilst the the number of Internet users has increased from 52% – 78%
• Slide 14: Bloggers are also very active in sharing opinions with 32% who have shared recommended websites, whilst 28% have discussed opinions about products and brands

Digital Friends

• Email is universally used and instant messenger is adopted by more than 80% of users worldwide. What’s interesting is the extent to which social media is beginning to rival its more traditional equivalents, with nearly 58% having joined a network.
• Slide 20: the nature of friendship is changing from voice to text and written word. This is a very significant change in the ability to influence and share opinions as it’s much easier to do in text – communication is more frequent and can include additional information like links, videos or photos

Proliferation of Influencer Channels

We trust strangers online as much as face-to-face

• Slide 29: 44.5% of Internet users use Instant Messenger to share recommendations whilst 42.4% share recommendations by email. This compares to 30.4% of Internet users who have left a comment review on a blog, and 27.5% who have written a review of a product / service on a blog – these figures demonstrate how important Social Media is!
• Slide 33: 51.4% of the respondents interviewed have read a blog by someone they know, 46.6% have read a blog by someone they don’t know, and interestingly, 42.3% have read weblogs managed by a brand / private  company

It’s clear that social and consumer-generated channels regardless of environment are consumed at the same level as professional content – a big development in the growth of the new influencer landscape

This is certainly the most comprehensive study I’ve seen to date on the subject of Social Media consumption, attitudes and behaviours, however I would have liked to see more depths into local usage differences. For instance Facebook is massive in the UK but just starting to become mainstream in France.

If you read this post, I’d love you to leave me a short comment (your email address remains anonymous) to let me know what’s hot (or not!) in your countries.