Friend-Power

How important are your friends in influencing what decisions you make, what you like, don't like, who you like and where you go? Do your 'friends' influence everything you do in life? And why?

Should we listen to our friends or make our own decisions for ourselves? One example of 'friend-power' is shown here with regard to the use of Second Life.

Workzmarter TGIF

Workzmarter
 
London in Second Life recently held our weekly TGIF with Workzmarter. In this meeting, we had a few relatively new, yet established, users. So we posed some relevant questions to them. One was, “How did you learn about Second Life?”

An interesting question, which made people stop and consider for a while. This question was also important because how people learn about things affects how they think about them and whether they value them or not.

People at TGIF mainly learned about Second Life through the press, mostly television programs, and they wanted to know more, so created an account and logged on. Others already used virtual worlds and wanted to compare the world they used with Second Life. I was curious and wanted to see if this was the case with most people.



Survey Results

So, Virtually Linked did a survey on this interesting topic to find out if this was typical across the board. It was not.

From our preliminary research we found that 60% of people learned about Second Life through their friends or word of mouth, that is – from another person they knew and trusted in the real world, not through the media and certainly not online. 

Traditional media accounted for just 23% of people who joined Second Life, while the greatly praised and lauded New Media (which includes Social Media and also includes all Web searches and web page links) came in at just 20% of all respondents, still lagging behind traditional media such as television, radio, newspapers, books etc.
 
From this research it would appear that friends are the greatest influencers in our lives. However this comes with a warning notice on the package. Friends want us to be just like them, they don't want us to stray or make too many new friends, in case we leave them behind. There is a study in psychology called In-group and out-group and some of the most shocking research has been done by Philip Zimbardo on this topic. Many prejudices and fears are born of friendship.

This said, friends were indeed the most common reason for people to join Second Life.


So what is this telling us?

One interpretation could be that people listen and take note of what their friends say over and above all other forms of communication. That people trust their friends. But it seems – not online friends. People appear to be sceptical about communications through new media and the Internet, and favour influences and recommendations from people they know and have learned to trust in their real lives.

Word of mouth here includes parents, friends, and other acquaintances too, not related to Internet based communication.

What does this say about how the way that something is learned influences what someone does and feels about it?

Our attitude changes towards something if it comes from what we feel to be a credible source. That new media avenues, including web sites, search engines and online communities are given less credibility than traditional media and people we know. Familiarity does not breed contempt, it makes us feel safe.

If our friends have a positive experience with something they will tell us about it and excite us too. If we like it (in this case, Second Life) we can influence our other friends to like it too. We as individuals are still more powerful influencers than all the media out there (Traditional and New Media combined still only accounted for 43% of people who started an account with Second Life, compared to 57% getting recommendation from people and organisations they knew already). 


What If This Is Wrong? 

What I do wonder though, is that if Second Life did more marketing through traditional means, would it gain more users?

I see very little, if any advertising by Second Life through traditional mechanisms such as newspapers, or new media. Therefore, another interpretation of this data may be that Linden Lab relies on word of mouth to spread its message about Second Life. If more media coverage took place in the form of advertising – would these figures show a different result?

This data is taken from the preliminary analysis of a survey done by Virtually Linked Limited.