Forrester's Owyang points to friendship market

Posted by: Stephen Baker on April 30, 2009

Just got the new Forrester report from Jeremiah Owyang, The Future of the Social Web.

I haven’t read it yet (and am heading into a meeting), but wanted to get the link up. I was struck by this sentence in the intro:

“Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate.”

I’m hearing more and more about this as I report. Steve Rubel, linking to Owyang’s study, predicts these relationships will very soon transcend the domains of Facebook and Twitter. We’ll just travel with our networks of friends through the Web.

When I was at Microsoft Research, danah boyd (yes, it’s lower case), a leading expert on the sociology of social nets, told me that as middle-aged people rush into Facebook, the younger people she’s talking to are pulling back. “the older cohort is obsessed with Facebook,” she told me. “The younger cohort is fading. They’re not getting off the site,” but instead visiting it as an obligation: “Oh, I have to check Facebook…”

When I asked boyd what she was interested in studying now, she said that Facebook and Twitter were losing their interest for her, and that she was waiting for the “next thing.” Could it be Owyang’s open web?

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