But as it happens, the “who else” might include some interested corporations. Tom Ewing uses social media sites to research customers’ views for a market research company which sells on the findings to retailers. The main benefit, he says, is not needing to pay for opinions.“The general assumption in market research is that to get people to tell you stuff, you need to offer them something. Then social networking came along, and people started telling stuff for free. It’s enormously exciting but also scary - because you never really know if someone is the person they say they are.”
This is wrong about my job FWIW but I work for a company that does do some opinion monitoring work so while the phrasing makes me sound a bit of a cowboy I’m not upset by it. I’m a bit more annoyed that the scene-setting preamble bit of the long chat I had - the stuff which would have been interesting in 2000 but is now completely basic - is the only part that made it in. And the repetition of “stuff” makes me sound really inarticulate. Interviews, eh?
Oh, also worth pointing out re: “The main benefit, he says, is not needing to pay for opinions.” is not something I actually said - it’s a misleading gloss on a bunch of other stuff I said, including the fact that spontaneous generation of opinions is as much a DANGER for research as an opportunity, since it opens the possibility of disintermediating researchers.
(Sorry to those who’ve already seen this on my other tumblr - just thought it was worth putting out there as a bit of personal brand management.)
