Listening to Online WOM: A Primer

Listening to Online WOM: A Primer:
"By Matt Galloway In The Beginning There Was WOM... Since the dawn of time when the first Cro-Magnon grunted "Starbucks" to his cavemates, people have talked about brands, products and services. As we started walking upright, we came to call this chatter "word-of-mouth," or more recently by it acronym WOM. One of the common reactions I get from folks when I start talking about WOM and it's commercially applied derivative Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is "Don't these marketing guys know that Word-of-Mouth has been around forever?" Yes, I assure you that they do. But like our Cro-Magnon friend, WOM has evolved, and that's why among marketing types, there's a lot of WOM about WOMM. "