Brands profit by monetizing user-generated word-of-mouth influence.
Evidence
Despite skepticism, this type of measure of influence is extremely valuable to brands and marketing firms. By 2012 Klout had $40 million in venture capital investment and a score of competitors, including PROSkore, Twitter Grader, and Peer Index. Word-of-mouth marketing is a huge buzzword, with advertisers salivating over the possibility of getting “authentic” person-to-person recommendations cheaply. (Adweek reported that Adidas was amazed when “some random user” made an animated .gif of one of their television ads, which garnered 90,000 reblogs on Tumblr without any money involved.) Klout is the ultimate status affordance, an entire business model based around the quantifiability of importance. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 253
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: the history of ‘authentic’ marketing — how advertisers discovered free user labor via reblogs and gifs, anticipating the creator economy.
- XREF: The Adidas .gif example connects to later influencer/brand-deal dynamics and to free-labor critiques. — connects to: Word-of-mouth storytelling preserves novelty force while mechanical forms exhaust it — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 166; Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43; Platform profit comes from commodifying user data by-products rather than selling ads — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 40 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Lifestyle blogging monetized into commercial blogging through sponsorships
#exemplifies(0.95) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 221 - Viral fame monetized through podcasting, casino appearances, and meme coins
#exemplifies(0.95) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 815 - Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers
#expands(0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43 - The Web enabled individuals to apply corporate branding strategies to themselves
#expands(0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 466 - Platform profit comes from commodifying user data by-products rather than selling ads
#contradicts(0.75) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 40 - Networked audiences force users into unpaid labor to keep their brand image pure
#expands(0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 492 - Brand rent exploits status signaling and positional goods demand
#expands(0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 805