In this current age of Internet, what I’ve noticed that’s common among all the big sites/trends that have “stuck” is that they’ve all created their own dialect and unique language. “Tag me” became a big hit when Facebook first came out and has become such a common phrase that it would be unusual if you didn’t know that this was a reference to.
In 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year was “unfriend”, paying tribute to the rise of social media and, well, Facebook.
By creating a language around their brands, these social media sites have been able to essentially build a culture around them and thus, give them an unbelievable amount of “sticking” power in today’s generation. These aren’t just fads or trends anymore, they are here to stay and we now grow up and evolve around them. We “like” things for the world to see, we befriend or “unfriend” people, we don’t ‘look things up’ anymore, we simply ‘google it’, we tweet, post, comment, blog, Digg, Stumble upon, and of course, for our everyday life tasks, there is always “an app for that”.
Want your next big idea to be able to stick? Create a language around it.
