Network effects
As people increasingly connect and communicate online, they become an influential force in marketing that can work for us or against us.
Network effects are a somewhat technical concept, but effectively mean that there is a significantly non-linear growth in impact as the number of participants increases. Learn more about network effects.
In the opinion of former Microsoft blogging guru Robert Scoble, with a Technorati authority of over 6,000, can have a great deal of impact on how a company and its products are perceived.
<Scoble img from Technorati>
Not everyone online is as influential as Scoble, but the point is, as your customers begin to connect and communicate with each other more and more online, through blogs, social networks such as Facebook and a whole host of other online tools, information flows increasingly freely and unpredictably.
For companies, more than ever before, what we do, what we make, and what we stand for will be scrutinised more than ever before. The old advertising adage has never been truer: good advertising for a bad product will just be a faster way go out of business.