Facebook | Mass Interpersonal Persuasion, or just a waste of time?

Fast Company is running an interview with Stanford Prof BJ Fogg, author of a new book about the social networking service. There are some interesting ideas, and also some rather outlandish ones. Of the more explorable is this tidbit:

“A lot of our exposure to services and products is now going to be socially mediated. It’s going to be very hard to create a centralized broadcasting message about a brand or product… That’s where mass interpersonal persuasion comes in. Through the newsfeed and my social network, interesting stuff now comes to me; I don’t have to go searching for it.”

Fast Company then (rightly) asks if this will flow into the Long Tail philosophies that are popular right now. Fogg’s response is fundamentally correct, although perhaps not how he means it:

“As a brand, you can worry about all these micro niches and micro markets and the long tail, but I think at the end of the day you’re not going to have enough resources to do that. You have to focus on creating a spectacular product or service, and your market will find you.”

Whoa, wait a second… did I just read that in the future (according to Fogg), marketers are going to be out of a job? That if you build it (really, really well) they will come? Fortunately, not exactly:

“You don’t have to pre-define your market right out of the gate. As long as you watch what’s going on, you can adjust and go with what’s working.”

Phew. For a minute there, I saw long lines of well-manicured homeless folks trying to explain why the street is now REALLY where it’s at.

The really interesting piece to Fogg’s argument is that Facebook, or rather social networking in a broader sense, is going to democratize marketing. Thing is, I know a lot of young people for whom Facebook is yesterday’s news, and they are looking for a place that they can call their own (the early appeal of Facebook). Facebook has responded with “lists,” or the ability to create mini virtual Facebooks so you can keep your friends separate from uh, your parents. It’s too soon to tell if this is going to play out, but I suspect it won’t.

Here’s the thing. People (the necessary component to the social networking eco-sphere), don’t change that fast. Fogg is describing a wholesale shift from push to pull marketing. Anybody else remember Pointcast? How about lesser-known Backweb & Marimba (check out this 1999 Forbes article for some good irony).

At the end of the day, Google ads get closer to what Fogg is describing… While I agree that SaaS (Software as a Service) and grid computing are changing the landscape, and that products are, by their nature becoming iterative (think iPod, salesforce.com, and the still-in-beta GMail), I think that’s a far cry from the marketing paradigm shifting so dramatically. Besides, the concept of engagement is just catching on…

Why Facebook Is Even Bigger than You Think | Fast Company