Do you remember George Orwell's novel “1984” and itsprediction of the all-powerful, all-knowing Big Brother who kneweverything you did and thought? Well, 1984 came and went and, forthe most part, we all laughed it off as silly paranoia.

Today, the secret is out. You don't need the power of theFederal Bureau of Investigation to gather information—all you needis an Internet connection. The advent of social media and its appshas not only made information gathering easier, but the amount ofinformation to gather exponentially greater.

Gathering and analyzing information is both a blessing and acurse. It is a blessing because of the richness of knowledge anddata such a network represents; a curse, because in the wronghands, such knowledge could lead to unjust decisions.

Crowd sourcing

An example of the value of this resource comes from theinteractive opportunities this network represents. On my website,rggcommunications.com, I wrote a blog post on crowd sourcing(rggcommunications .com/crowd-sourcing-at-its-most-basic), a newtake on an old idea. Crowd sourcing looks at the power andinfluence of a group dynamic as it pertains to brainstorming or anycreative activity, from product development to service improvementsto writing a book. 

Frito-Lay leveraged crowd sourcing to create a new potato chipflavor. Using its new “Do Us a Flavor” Facebook app, Lays askedpeople to suggest new flavors and click an “I'd Eat That” button toregister their preferences. The results showed regional preferencesand gave Frito-Lay product ideas and marketing and distributioninput.

Related: Read Rick Gilman's previous column “NewROI.”

Other companies like Wal-Mart, Estee Lauder and Samuel Adamslook to the social network as an extended marketing department andbuilding new products, placing products in certain markets andconsidering partnerships all based on the datacollected. 

As a 28-year PR professional, my idea of receiving input from acommunity traditionally came in the form of focus groups, surveysor studies. But it's only in our technology-centric world that thebroad, interactive dynamism of crowd sourcing could take place. Iguess you could say this is still just conducting a focusgroup—only it's bigger and most people don't even know they'reparticipating.

Also, only in today's environment is somethinglike Wikipedia possible. My son has a Wikipedia page and a FacebookFan page. Given the notoriety he's achieved from his movie(“Moonrise Kingdom”), it's not really a surprise. People completelyunknown to us created both, which was surprising, flattering andinvasive.

Keep in mind that what's on Wikipedia may not be fact; whichrepresents the downside of content development.

Hunter-gatherer

When the Internet began, it focused on growth: adding morecomputers and servers, more users, exponential development ofwebsites and tools to add more information. While that processcontinues, information aggregators, data miners and knowledgecurators popped up to make it easier for people and businesses touse.

We are now in the “hunter/gatherer” phase of the Internet.Different services make links between sources, painting pictures ofpeople and businesses by weaving information from different places,and allowing us to gather and process information much faster thanpreviously thought possible.

Related: Read another column by Rick Gilman “HaveTech, Will Travel.”

MyLife (MyLife.com) aggregates all of your activities from yoursocial media and email accounts. You can view them in achronological stream or select any one or more activity to analyze.It seems like a neat idea, but in reality, it's a bit cumbersome.For those already linked sites (Twitter and Facebook), I see postsrepeated. 

I only connected with the three main social accounts but thereare many more, including Gmail, Yahoo mail and AOL, which havepartnered with other social sites for finding friends, buildingbirthday calendars and tracking down classmates. I generally findthat aspect of social sites too cumbersome and also note that toomuch in the way of permissions is asked.

Another aggregator, Klout (Klout.com), determines your socialinfluence by analyzing your presence and activity on sites fromFacebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, among others. I think many peoplemay look at it as a measurement of their success, especially iftheir focus is Internet marketing. Klout is measured on a scalefrom 0 to 100; the higher the number, the greater klout you have.Mine is currently 41, which is not great, but nothorrible. 

On the corporate front

From a similar concept but a different perspective, Reachable(Reachable.com) aggregates all of the social media contacts of abusiness' employees to leverage the exponentially larger list of“warm” prospects for marketing, recruiting and sales. As itstagline reads, “Use Reachable to Leverage All the Relationships inYour Company.”

It consolidates the contacts from varioussources, grouping them together to discover the best path betweenthe right people from your company to theirs, “leveraging therelationships of trusted colleagues.” Reachable then folds in acustomer relationship management system to rank the relationshipsto identify the best connection path to the “people you need toknow.”

Reachable is integrated with popular CRM systems like Salesforceand Oracle CRM On Demand, and guarantees the safety of yourinformation. I can't determine how it gathers employee Facebook,LinkedIn and Twitter contacts without requiring permission intotheir accounts. 

Similar to MyLife, Reachable taps various email providers likeOutlook, Gmail, Yahoo mail and more. It claims to incorporatecontacts from schools, clubs, associations and other people youknow. I haven't been able to discern how and it truly concernsme.

Passwords… please?

Over the past few months I've come across stories that talkabout a growing trend of asking employees for their social mediaaccount passwords. 

It doesn't feel right. When you fold in the steps somecorporations take to use the social web to evaluate prospectivecandidates or current employees, it  gives a personpause. 

Related: Read the article “Agents: Do You ReallyNeed a Website?” by Rick Gilman.

This last activity has legal implications, as you might imagine.Companies must not use any criteria, regardless of where they findit, that might be based upon an individual's race, religion, sexualorientation or other protected group. Just because someonefrequents a website or belongs to a gay or lesbian group onFacebook doesn't mean they can be turned down for a position orfired from one.

So what does this mean for insurance agents? The major takeawayis to listen to your clients and market. We've talked about how theconsumer drives the relationship more now than before. Use yoursocial media presence to listen more than talk.

Sometimes that means doing some active listening, being morethan a fly on the wall. Test the waters with some new servicingideas. If you're thinking about incorporating live chat on yourwebsite, ask if that's something your customers appreciate. Ifyou're looking for a community-based cause to support, what'simportant to your customers? Better yet, listen to their chatterand learn what they are posting about. 

Subscribe to your community's online news site; it can be thebest way to stay on top of what's important to your market. Readthe articles and comments, use what you find for some of your ownagency posts and show up at some of the announcedevents. 

It's the best way to reap the fruit of what you hunt andgather.