How Much Do You Trust These Information Sources?

I recently came across this infogram on the Forrester empowered blog and found it interesting. The graph displays the degree of trust people feel towards different sources of information, from emails from friends to TV communications and direct mail. There’s one really interesting thing about it, look closely and let me know if you see it as well.

Sixty percent of people said they trust customer ratings/reviews more than newspapers, TV ads and radio. Personal contacts are most trusted source of information, as opposed to company blogs, which are the least trusted source.

There’s a clear trend: we trust people ‘like us’ more than any company communication. Erin Nelson from Bazaarvoice mentioned the same thing during the Social Media Benchmark event last week.

Now, for the surprise element… I couldn’t help but notice this infograph is from 2008 (yes, you should’ve noticed it by now), so it really strikes me that the marketing world has only become more aware of these trends that have been present for the last… 4 years?!? More on content sources and content management.

Is this how long it takes for some companies to realise reality or just how long it takes companies to tackle these communication issues?