Five years old and more relevant than ever
When Malcolm Gladwell's Blink released in January 2005, 'The Facebook' had launched just nine months earlier and Twitter was still a year out. Yet when I recently read the book, I was struck by the relevance of the concepts to the current media environment. This is the first of a few posts reflecting on Blink in the social media age.
Blink is about thin slicing
Thin slicing, or our ability to gauge what's important and make accurate decisions based on a very narrow experience, is the central concept of Blink. The idea is that our immediate, intuitive reactions, which occur subconsciously and in the blink of an eye, are often highly accurate.
Social media is a world of thin slices
Gladwell cites thin slicing examples from sports, music, warfare, mind reading and several others. But at that time, the social web - which today must be one of the richest examples of thin slicing - had not yet come to fruition. If you think about, it thin slicing is a constant occurrence in social media and the web at large.
Think of what you do when someone follows you on Twitter. If you're like me, you take 2-3 seconds to scan their bio and recent tweets (and maybe even click on their URL) to determine if you want to follow back. Or consider your Facebook news feed. You probably have friends or acquaintances with whom you've fallen out of touch, but as long as you read their occasional one-sentence updates, you still feel connected and have some sense of their lives.
Then there are information sources like Twitter searches and Amazon ratings. Social media make it easier than ever to size up people, places and things based on a limited data set.
Tweets could reveal more than you think
According to Blink, those instant assessments based on narrow windows of experience may actually have a high degree of accuracy. Gladwell writes about a study in which complete strangers were asked to enter a college dorm room and then answer questions about the student's personality. The strangers were nearly as accurate as friends in their evaluations.
Now imagine the same experiment based solely on a person's Twitter or Facebook page. Your assessment could be scarily accurate, rivaling those of that person's close friends. If you are a heavy social media user, you've probably been honing your ability to thin slice in this way without thinking twice about it.
Business applications - What do your thin slices look like?
I recently visited the website of a real estate firm in preparation for a meeting. Although the site appeared clean, well-designed and professional, my first reaction was that something was wrong. The site had a closed-off, impersonal vibe.
Then I realized what it was: the site had no points of access or interaction besides an email form on the contact page. Later I was surprised to learn that the company actually was active in their niche social networks.
Did the website give me an inaccurate reading of the company? Or was my thin slice true because it showed that openness and interaction are not integrated into the company at a high level? I believe it's the latter.
Consider some of the ways that people can instantly thin slice your brand online:
+ Your search engine results page
+ Your website
+ Your blog or lack thereof
+ Your relevancy and alacrity in social media
+ The social sentiment around your brand
+ Your product/service ratings and recommendations
+ Your news/blog coverage or lack thereof
Summary
A brand's web presence is now dispersed over a multitude of online platforms. Each one is a potential thin slice and a point of entry to the brand. Brands need to provide an integrated experience across all those touch points to serve up a favorable thin slice no matter where they're found online.
