It is unreal how much social networking sites have grown, to the point where consumers believe what they hear online. Because people mostly interact with ‘friends’ and ‘friends of friends’, there is a small amount of trust there already, which is how social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, have become dominant in influencing people. Henry Stern, senior security researcher for Cisco in Canada, quotes “there is an excess of trust in social networking”.
About a week ago, someone posted on Twitter how Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan had passed away. That became a ‘hot topic’ on Twitter, which led to people talking about it and passing on the rumor, basing it on what they read on Twitter. Fortunately for the actor, his official online network retweeted, “Jackie is alive and well. He did not suffer a heart attack and die, as was reported on many social networking sites and in online news reports”. Due to the amount of time people, and especially the young generation, spend online, a trusted relationship has been formed between the consumer and the site, which leads them to believe what they read on the particular site without feeling the need to search into the topic further for reassurance. The chart below shows how much online consumers trust each of the information sources. Social networking sites are on 43%, which is relevantly high. Perhaps the online sphere has lead people to be more open into trusting sources.
Just to prove how influential social networking sites can be, the Jackie Chan rumor is all over Google, so when you start typing Jackie Chan into the search box, the first thing that comes under his name is ‘Jackie Chan dead’ followed by ‘Jackie Chan died’.
The online public sphere is a sector that keeps unstoppably expanding with fast rates. As the Internet, and especially with the development on Web 2.0, is such a big part of people’s lives now in all aspects, from social to work, it will be interesting to see how the online generation evolves over the next 10 years.
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