A Few Thoughts On Trust Vs. Influence

10 Aug 2010

Who Are Your Friends (Really) A few weeks ago, Paul Adams of Google put out a truly insightful analysis of our online social spheres. He explores how our online connections differ from our offline ones, how we identify friends (as opposed to connections), who we are truly able to keep tabs on, and how all of these things collide in the online space. He argues that targeting people based on perceived influence ignores that we are most connected with roughly 3-10 people who we truly trust. Based on this, it could better serve brands to focus on the breadth of marketing messages, and not individual influencer outreach, to actually impact the end consumer. And Do You Listen to Them? This is a scenario that is somewhat contrary to the way we build connections on Twitter. Twitter is not comprised of our inner circle. We are likely to have multiple degrees of…

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