Recommendation has always played a significant role in purchasing decisions. This is why customer service is so important; because you knew if someone had an exceptionally good/bad experience that they would be in the pub that evening telling all their friends. So along comes the internet and suddenly that highly vocal individual can be shouting your praises/damnation to a much wider audience and much quicker. Even if the individual involved doesn’t contribute to a blog, the internet and technology means we are much more connected through means such as text message, instant messenger, Twitter, Facebook etc; meaning we have a much wider circle of influence.

It is much easier to maintain relationships with people over greater distances in time and space than ever before, as we aggregate our relationships and syndicate our own personal status. So now we can share with a much wider circle our opinions, as they relate to a product or service, or politics. Facebook is particularly interesting in this context because it is viral by design, pushing out your actions across your network and vice versa.

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