The power behind social media

The power behind social media is not the tools. It’s not the hash tag, the update, the Zuckerberg or the follow. It is the evolving way we are approaching collaboration.

eBay created trust mechanisms such as public feedback that played an important role in its growth. But fundamental to its success, and the success of all sorts of crowd purchasing platforms is the diminishing trust of big brands to offer a fair deal, and consumers own self interest driving them to collaborate in groups with people they largely know nothing about.

Self interest is driving us to work together to achieve a better deal. Not solving our community's needs, although for some of us that is an important outcome. Adam Smith understood this in 1776, Ricardo in 1809 and more recently encapsulated in popular culture with Gordon Gheko's proclamation that 'greed is good.'

We know inherently that the crowd is wiser than us, that's why we naturally follow it. But we follow it for us, not for the crowd's sake. Social media and the commerce that has become associated with it comes from our own self interest. Which when you think about about it, and the language social media 'experts' use, that is quite an irony.