Upheavals

The cult of popularity

I wonder if it’s too easy in these days of Twitter and instant global chat to get drawn into believing that every storm in the social media is a public relations disaster or conversely a proven runaway success.

I wonder whether it’s too simple to look at the massive numbers that happen when the online community swirls around an issue to think that this is now embedded on the collective conscience of millions for years to come – instead of seeing some of it for what it is. Today’s headline, today’s event, today’s centre of attention.

Equally I wonder whether the reverse applies. In which case, it’s not that astonishing that Susan Boyle was a huge hit. She got 15 million hits or however many it was, but they were on YouTube, so no-one had any skin in the game. They could click, watch, rave and then move on, no money down. That doesn’t mean that Susan Boyle necessarily will make it in the music industry, any more than the Domino’s fiasco means that company is in trouble.

A crowd is not a community, even though at times it may believe like one. It’s a group of people drawn together for a specific event at a specific time. It can be very impressive and very sudden. It’s great for the ego, or as scary as hell.

And so many businesses these days it seems to me are chasing that. Popularity has become the new top line. They want a crowd. Or at least they think they do, because they think it must result in sales. This is the dot.com eyeballs argument revisited. The word of caution here is that it is what it is.

Which are you chasing?

POSTED: Thursday, 30 April 2009

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