Word-of-mouth has always been an incredibly successful advertising mechanism.Since the days of carnival barkers shilling their wares, advertisers and promoters have always encouraged consumers to tell their friends about new products. Often the only way to find out about new products and services was to call a friend.But the Internet has changed the game a little bit — why ask someone about a product when you can just Google it yourself?  While it may seem like word-of-mouth is diminishing,  the Internet actually presents it with a great opportunity to grow.The Internet communication medium known as Twitter represents a new dawn for word of mouth advertising.To be fair, word-of-mouth advertising has never really gone away — people are never going to stop telling their friends about cool things they saw or bought.  Even infomercials, whose entire premise is to inform consumers about products, will still occasionally end with the classic “if you promise to tell two friends about product X, we’ll give you X as a bonus.”That’s not just a cheeky reference to old Faberge shampoo commercials — it’s an honest appeal to the power of word-of-mouth.Despite the continued existence of word-of-mouth in some form, I think it’s fair to say modern technology has drastically changed the processes we use to inform our purchasing decisions.Take someone shopping for a new camera for instance. A few years ago, someone looking to buy a new camera would be either call up their most knowledgeable friend, wait until the camera issue of Consumer Reports came out or be held at the mercy of the salesman at their local Wal-mart or Ritz Camera outlet.These days, I’m more likely to check out a Web site that aggregates professional reviews and consumer opinions before I head into an electronics store or call a friend who knows about cameras.While I do consider myself pretty tech savvy, I don’t think I’m alone in that situation. Thousands of people go through the same ritual every day.Quite frankly it’s often less of a hassle to do my own research than it would be to take the time to call a friend and get their full range of thoughts on the state of modern camera technology.In that way, the Internet can limit the effectiveness of word-of-mouth advertising.  But that’s not where the relationship between the Internet and word-of-mouth advertising ends.Enter Twitter.To those who only watch The Today Show and other network news shows, Twitter magically appeared on the horizon six months ago and changed the shape of Internet communication.Popular media starlets such as Stephen Colbert to Kathy Lee Gifford have dedicated segments on their shows talking about what Twitter is and how it works.
Since they’ve all gone through so much trouble, I’ll keep my explanation short — Twitter is a Web site that lets people send short messages via the Internet.  Other people subscribe to and receive the messages.These short messages have the potential to be the next big thing for word-of-mouth advertising because they allow the passive transmission of information through trusted social networks.In other words, Twitter lets people give and receive information without actively requesting it from an individual.The individuals who read the messages are not random strangers staring at a banner on the side of a bus, they are people who have signed up to follow your messages — they’re listening to you because they want to and vice versa.The passive communication within the context of social networks is a perfect medium for word of mouth advertising.Using the camera example from earlier, if I wanted to find out about a certain type of camera I’d just have to send a “tweet” out to my group of subscribers, and those with the desire and knowledge would most likely respond.Furthermore, if a friend just bought a new camera, they could send a message extolling the virtues of that new device.That’s what the great cyber-forefathers intended — people using the Internet to pass along information that makes their lives better .But it actually means more than that, because communications technologies like Twitter often do more than what they were intended to do.A new form of word-of-mouth advertising is really just one side effect of this new technology.  The things we’ve seen are just the start. It’s the thing we never think about, that will be most significant.Skylar Gremillion is a 26-year-old sociology graduate student from Plaucheville.
 
—–Contact Skylar Gremillion at [email protected]