Web 2.0 Is Gaining Wider Acceptance and Trust with Consumers

Web 2.0 is on the rise but sometimes it is hard to find research that provides conclusive numbers with which to measure this by. This survey looks at the change in behaviour over a period of 2 years.

• 34% visit a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, compared with 13% two years ago
• 78% have recently voted or rated something online, compared with 47% two years ago.
• 63% have recently uploaded photographs or videos; 40% had two years ago.
• 44% have recently commented on a forum or blog; 23% had two years ago.
• 28% have recently written a product or book review: 15% had two years ago.
• 16% now maintain a blog; 9% were maintaining a blog two years ago.

What is more interesting to me are the results around trust.

• 36% of respondents said they “highly trust” information they receive from friends and acquaintances on social networking sites.
• This jumps to 90% if you include those that said they “moderately trust” this information.
• This compares to just 4% who said they “highly trust” content from advertisers

It is not surprising that people trust friends over advertisers, but it does highlight why sites like Facebook offer such an enormous opportunity to marketers. Don’t think about advertising, think about high you get your customers to recommend or review your product/service to their friends. We all know word of mouth business it the best kind, and there is now the ability for your message propagate across these networks at an amazing speed.

Think about how many friends you could realistically stay in touch with frequently even 5 years ago. For me, I would have been able to count the number on my fingers. Now, it is not uncommon for people to have over 100 friends on their social network. Those 100 friends might also have 100+ friends each…you get the point. I don’t want to call it viral, as it is an awful word, and it just makes me think of stupid videos being emailed around as a way to trick the consumer into thinking your brand is cool. The opportunity is word of mouth business in a highly efficient, scalable, networked way.