I stumbled across this report “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers?” (it’s a large download) by Universal McCann and thought it was a real gem in terms of giving you some good insights into the way that social media, distance virtual (digital) friendships and online influence are working together. The report offers some really nice insights of which I give you a sampling here, but I recommend you grab it and give it a read or watch the slide share presentation.

• “The result is an influence economy that is forcing everyon in the public realm icluding the owners of products and brands to become more transparent, open, conversational and honest. They have to rethink the way that influence is distributed and the role of marketing communications.”
• Between September 2006 and March 2008
  • Blog use is up from 28% of those surveyed to 44%
  • Social network usage has grown from 27.3% to 57.5% – you have to figure that number is higher now
  • Uploading a video is up from 10% to 42%
• People on average
  • Keep 35 friendships face to face
  • Keep 32 relationships via email
  • Keep 30 friendships via social networks – I might replace that with Twitter now and the number would be much higher
  • Have 29 instant messenger contacts they communicate with
• 42% of users had shared an opinion about a product or service via email in the last month