Recommendations 2.0: Everyone's a Critic

Are our friends the media critics of the future?

Going to a friend for advice in fashion, cooking, film, travel, or music is by no means a new phenomenon. Many of us have “experts” within our social circles that we turn to when we’re sick of pretentious New York Times reviewers, wealthy magazine editors, or hipster music critics. In fact, a recommendation from a friend is often much more targeted to our taste profiles than those from “professional” media experts, since each of us has a different friend we go to for advice based on our individual palate. Now, since the dawn of the digital era and the soc-ification of all-things-Internet, the expertise and interests of our friends, peers, colleagues and acquaintances is more accessible than ever. It is often but a keypad-click away.

The digital realm and the technology driving it have opened up a new world of possibilities when it comes to accessing media reviews and recommendations. Once but lonely media-consumers, individuals equipped with nothing more than an opinion and a Blogspot account have become media experts and mini-celebrities in their own right. These individuals have the power to dictate tastes and drive transactions. But perhaps more importantly, they are present on platforms that make them and their leads readily available to the average web surfer.

Many online services are taking advantage of these new social possibilities by adding user reviews and social elements as additional features to improve customer satisfaction or drive sales. Spotify lets users upload Facebook friends and their public playlists, making an evening of new great music accessible to all those with musically informed friends (and a European IP address). IMDB and Amazon give users the chance to review and recommend, creating a community of film-experts for the former and informed shoppers for the latter. Some actors have even made the socialness of content-recommending a stand-alone digital business. Goodreads, jinni, and StumbleUpon are all blending the insights of personal data mining and friend recommendations to better serve their customers the targeted content they crave.

Unlike aggregated user reviews or professional media critics, our friends and loved ones have unique insights about our tastes and consumption patterns that technology is finally allowing us to capitalize upon. So are magazines and newspapers as reviewers of media content a thing of the past? Are our friends the Roger Eberts and Anna Wintours of the future? One thing is for sure – they are certainly a lot more likely to reply to a message on Facebook.