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According to Universal McCann, we have gone from the Pre-Media Age to the Mass Media Age, and we are now in the Social Media Age. That is just one of the conclusions on the effects of social media in this extensive research report titled, “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers?”

As the illustration above shows (click to enlarge), consumers control the agenda in the Social Media Age. Technology has empowered ubiquitous communication, and marketers had best take note what a profound shift this will have on how they build brands. According to the study, the amount of content published online each year has gone from one exabyte in 1999 to 8760 exabytes annually in 2008. Much of this growth of content can be directly attributed to the chatter of social networking.

People have developed a “trust landscape” based on the opinions of friends, acquaintances, strangers and others that fall into the category of “super influencers.” All of these people can be accessed through social networks and they can profoundly affect purchase behavior. This trust landscape still includes advertising, PR, mainstream media and a host of other communication channels, but the consumer now has a much more extensive viewpoint from which to draw conclusions before making a purchase, and the social network effect is powerful.

This report confirms once more that marketing and technology are inexorably linked, and companies that want to grow are going to have to embrace the opportunities and challenges inherent in this new Age of Social Media.