Memory of a Goldfish
Oct 12th, 2010 by tiffrennick
I just read an article in ‘The Globe and Mail’ about the possible ramifications of social media on our views on life. The article is called The danger lurking in the social-media shallows. This article caught my attention because of the metaphor the author, Ivor Tossell, used to describe the trend of social media. Basically he says in this article that social media causes us to perpetually be living in the world of the ‘now’, and forgetting what we did even a day ago. Social media websites like Twitter and Facebook reinforce this through having very difficult to access ‘history’ parts of their website (it is basically really hard to find on Facebook or Twitter what you posted a couple of months ago). All of this coincides with this trend that the author calls having a memory of a goldfish.
I think this trend is really important for a number of reasons. For example, as a marketer, you would want to know that consumers don’t even remember what they may have posted a month ago, which could basically mean for your product numerous opportunities to get on someone’s “good side”. There is the down-side as well, which is that consumers may easily forget about you, especially if you are new to the market. Another marketing advantage to this trend is that consumers may not remember how they got to know your brand (so if they got to know it through bad reviews for example), and therefore may be more inclined to trying it out.
Goldfish typically wouldn’t even remember if you tapped the glass of their tank and hurt them, and with social media laid out as it is, consumers may become more and more like this in regards to products. It is definitely something to watch out for!
Here is the link to the article:
“Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events” – Albert Einstein