What Will Be the Next Big Thing? Whatever We Make the Next Big Thing…

There are two factors at play in the king-making process of social media. Network externality and GMOOTs.

Network externality is the effect that a user of a service has on all other users of a service. A social network with only one user is pretty useless. Add another user and suddenly there is some value. Add additional users and the value of the system increases exponentially. At a certain point a system or platform becomes king, not because of its features or any technical achievement, but simply because “everyone is there.” En mass movements will occur, but only with significant change. No one is going to dump Facebook for something that is 10% better. A platform needs to be twice that of the entrenched player if it has any hopes of overcoming the pull of ‘everyone is there’.

GMOOTs: also known as the cry of, “Get me one of those!” This is the order many of us dread, but know is inevitable. It is the directive based not on strategy but on novelty. How many initiatives get the green light because someone at the top reads an in-flight article on ‘the next big thing’? How many pitches for blogs were bypassed in order to establish the brand Facebook page or Twitter account? Anyone remember the cavalcade of brands and organizations that went plunging head-first into Second Life, not based on any strategic notion, but because the novelty of the platform caught headlines?

When we combine the role of network externality in making platforms king with the arbitrary selection process of the GMOOT, we get a dangerous feedback loop that should be heeded.

Marketing and communications can make a platform succeed simply through our collective belief that the platform will succeed. This trend will only accelerate as more budgets are earmarked for use online.

Now, no amount of marketing spend can turn dog food into filet mignon. There needs to be something to the platform or any momentum built by the marketing spend falls away quickly thereafter. If there is no ‘there’ there, you will not get people to stick around. But we Marketing/Communications folk do have tremendous power.

What share of Twitter and foursquare’s numbers are based on major brands throwing their own weight behind the platform? Had Ford, Comcast and Dell moved home to Status.net during the summer of the Fail Whale, would Twitter still be in its position of dominance? Would the landscape still remain the same?

Any business person knows that you fish where the fish are. Well if BBDO and WPP have just tossed several million tons of chum into the water to get people onto their client’s Facebook pages, then you can bet there will be good fishing there. “Get us a million fans” becomes an objective and as such shapes how marketing dollars are spent and where people are directed.

Would anyone outside of shipping have the foggiest notion of what a QR code was if every marketing firm weren’t trying to wedge it into their campaign as a bid to show themselves to be tech savvy?

We’re creating a feedback loop where MarCom start down a path for the GMOOT factor, imbuing network externality that gives a platform value, which leads to more GMOOTs. Where choices exist between platforms, it will be MarCom that tip the scales in favour of one or another.

Question whether that’s true? Ask yourself if you’ve recently asked about, or have been asked, how to incorporate Quora into a strategy? Was there any consideration given to other Q&A up-and-comers such as StackExchange, or long-standing players such as LinkedIn Answers or Mahalo? Does a Q&A platform even fit with what you’re doing? Or was it just another GMOOT?

We unwittingly make our own world. When we hear the cry of GMOOT we need to give careful thought and counsel. Before blindly rushing in to plant a flag and cry ‘first’ we need to ensure that the credence and authority we wield through the brands of our clients is wielded responsibly. We need to be sure that the platform we place on the throne is the platform we truly wish were king.