The shift

About 5 years ago, it was all about YouTube 'hits' and unique page views for your website. These stats drove the digital marketing strategies adopted by both mainstream and start up companies. But the speed of which content has shifted around the internet is phenomenal. Google remains the powerhouse of search, but Facebook is now the powerhouse of content and therefore the powerhouse of power, generally.

As the Test Pilot who flew the jetpack in this video, I was secretly hoping that our web page would crash from all of the views of the video and views of our written content. But it didn't. And we "only" got 1 million views on YouTube (feel free to watch it a few more times!). Several years ago, a previous version of this video using a hovercraft had several million hits on YouTube. As someone who opted out of Facebook back in 2009, I was unaware of how things have shifted with both video content and written content. I discovered that our video went mini-viral on Facebook and has more than 7 times as many 'hits' than on YouTube. Further, the written content on Facebook around our video was not generated from our website, but was self-generated through people's comments and opinions. The generated content became its own source of truth.

This process is also representative of the way people get news these days- and according to this Mashable article, a lot of it comes 'unchecked' from social media. So really, it seems that the key to a successful launch into a volume-based market is to get it on to social media, and hope that through a well managed social media campaign, you might slightly influence the crowd. It seemingly doesn't matter whether a designer believes whether a product is good for the market, or even whether the product is actually good at its intended purpose, the crowd now has the power to make this judgement very quickly (potentially without ever seeing or using the product). Apple are re-learning this lesson with their ear pods and now maybe moving away from traditional USB ports. Facebook and other social media channels are filled with commentary and videos against these moves by Apple, most of them who haven't even seen or used the products.

This is how social media has shifted in recent years- it now listens to you with a degree of intelligence, you have little influence over it, and the crowd now has real power to influence both the digital and real worlds. Smart companies will use these facts to speed the development of their products that are suited to mass markets, and to shelve those less appealing (but potentially useful) products that may not receive widespread approval immediately.

But relying on social media as a source of truth or direction may not be a good thing. We might be missing out on some of those gems that take time to get traction with the mass market- the things that aren't immediately hyped on social media. Like Bluetooth. Or geothermal energy. Or even my trusty Thermomix.

Thankfully, this conundrum doesn't apply to jetpacks. Market traction will be determined by the pace of the regulators and our certification program, and less so the crowd's influence. Or maybe social media could also have an effect here too?