Social Networks
Bloggers More Trusted Than Friends
Who do you trust: bloggers or friends? A new study says bloggers.
Half of all those surveyed who identify as “blog readers” (people who read more than one blog per month, a fifth of total survey respondents) say that blogs are important to them when it comes to making purchasing decisions. But they don’t necessarily find them to be all that reliable: only 15 percent of blog readers, and five percent of all those surveyed said that in the past year they had trusted a blog to help them make a purchase decision.
That’s still higher than the number of people who said they used social-network recommendations, though: ten percent of “blog readers,” and four percent of all those surveyed.
Results of the survey are similar when it comes to advertising: a quarter of “blog readers” say they trust ads on blogs that they read (versus 43 percent on “familiar” or mainstream media sites), but a slightly lower 19 percent say they trust the ads on social networks.
I, for one, put more stock in blog posts than MySpace updates. Who do you trust?
Six Degrees of Separation Now Three
Technology is making the world a smaller and smaller place. A new study commissioned by European telco O2 says the traditional six degrees of separation have been reduced to three. A whopping 98% of the respondents bridged the gap through the Internet or their mobile phones.
Congratulations. You are now three degrees closer to Kevin Bacon.
(Via JC Cuneta.)
