Some thoughts about social media, Seth Godin, Frank Furedi, thinkers and collaboration

Twitter is a great thing. And I’m not talking about marketing or traffic building or whatever now. It’s a great thing because it allows you to connect with people. Well, we shouldn’t need Twitter or other social media to connect with people around us all the time. But if you live in France and want to connect with someone in India, Guatemala or Australia, it’s kind of handy.

Connecting with people on social media is just the start. Connecting, sending direct messages, etc. is a bit like dating. You gradually get to know each other.

Now, if you just start with Twitter: don’t think you will connect with everyone. If you have 100 followers, you can praise yourself lucky if one of them ultimately becomes a real relationship and seems to be someone you might ultimately want to call a friend or even a soulmate. The important thing is what happens after the connecting.

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Peer-to-peer recommendations and retailer recommendations in social networks

One name to start this post with: Amazon. As you know, Amazon, just like many other online retailers works with a system of recommendations.

You bought 3 books on philosophy, 2 on marketing and 4 on some programming language? Amazon will regularly send you new titles in function of your buying history and show you some cool ads and recommendations when you visit the website.

The ads that consumers see on retailer websites are based on their buying history and what they do on the sites (even from third parties) and what pages they visit (behavioral targeting).

However, many retailers, including Amazon, also offer the possibility to buyers to add comments regarding the products they bought.

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