For some time now the social news and media arena has chided users for expressing their opinions. Sites such as Digg and Slashdot say they just want links to the news stories, not links back to the blog where you posted your opinion or review of the story. In essence, they want to be the comment thread from the originating article.
But a new type of social media is emerging. The funny thing is that it is happening on the iPhone right along with the desktop and laptop computers. Why? It is simple, fast, and focused on your opinion. Sites like Floort.com allow users to express their opinions on politics, religion, technology or a variety of other topics. Other users then respond with opinions of their own. This has at least two viable markets that have yet to be cornered:
- Social media for mobile users. Videos and images are too bandwidth-intensive for rapid use of mobile users. It the time it takes to watch one Youtube video. An iPhone user instead could view a dozen Floorts and respond to them. This is symbolic of the rapid mind switching that modern mobile professionals perform. They prefer quick, short bursts of information to 3-5 minutes worth of one topic.
- Commercial opinions. Someone posts a Floort about preferring Alienware to HP computers for gaming. A discussion ensues. The fact that the user posted a debatable opinion stimulates the conversation. If both HP and Alienware are monitoring the threads via RSS (yes, Floort has that) then they receive valuable information about consumer preferences straight from the field. This is far more valuable than any focus group. This is raw opinion and feelings.
While providing a link is an option, it is not required and most users don’t bother. Users can become fans of other users and track just the Floorts of that user. It is a simple, self-correcting mechanism for filtering garbage.
The future is always uncertain, but this trend towards short bursts of information seems to be here for the next go-around. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
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