Socialnomics shifts power

The first four chapters of Socialnomics was very eye-opening for one reason: The power of people within media, politics and business have shifted. For media, traditional outlets like NBC and the NYT are becoming outdated and replaced by niche reporters and blogs. For Politics, social media was for the first time, a major contributor for the success of a presidential election. And for business, social media is now the place where many people can be reached and marketed to. It seems that every major area of our lives are (or can be) impacted by social media.

A couple interesting examples of the shifting power towards social media are Barack Obama and the niche reporter from Boise Idaho. It's been said that President Obama won the Democratic Nomination and Presidential Election because of how well he used social media. He reached voters on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter very effectively. With these sites, he raised up to $800 million and also connected with his voters with videos of his personal life (McCain failed to connect with his voters). This was a major reason that Obama was able to make it to the White House.

The niche reporter from Boise Idaho was someone that reported from her home, and reported on something that she enjoyed researching (Idaho Senators). Because of her interest and connections, she was able to report stories more quickly and more thoroughly than major news networks like the New York Times (the example given in the book). This is trouble for the major networks because the niche reporters and bloggers generally pay a low subscription cost to their blog site and do the stories for no cost to their readers. These niche reporters and sites like Wikipedia (mixed with social networks) are redefining the way we get our news (the idea that we no longer find our news; news finds us). The first four chapters of Socialnomics shows us that this shift has happened for better and for worse, and there is no going back to the traditional ways of communicating messages and ideas.