Try, No Buy

Social media is effective, but maybe not in the way we might assume, says a new study from MIT researchers. The new research shows that social cues influence people to try products but not necessarily to buy them. Researchers gave some 14,000 people 48 songs each. They could sample the music, and, if they liked it, could choose to download the tracks. Social interactions affected how popular songs became but did not affect the rate of downloading. Still, scientists recognize that the research is not definitive. “For most real-life scenarios, social influence does play a big role, because we want to do what our friends do, and we trust their opinions,” Lada Adamic, an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, tells Technology Review. “We want to fit in and be up-to- date.”

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