Jumpstart Automotive Group

“Ed Piotrowski is writing this post using the onboard computer of (the) 2010 Ford Transit Connect in Knoxville, TN.”

- via twitter

Anyone who doubts the paradigm shift that social media has caused in our daily lives, our activities — even how we communicate with each other — need only read the above Tweet.

Ed Piotrowski, one of Consumer Guide Auto’s (a part of the HowStuffWorks family) Senior Editors, sent this message from the 2010 Ford Connect’s onboard computer directly to our CG AutoTwitter page. Ed’s tweet subsequently made it to CG Auto’s new Facebook fan page, a first for Consumer Guide — and certainly a first for Ed!

What’s so compelling about these 140-word tweets, these photo posts, these “reports from the road?” For one, we’re hearing the CG Auto team in a whole new voice — in fact, it may be one of the first times you’re hearing from them at all. While the CG Auto team has been dutifully road testing cars for years and posting some of the most thorough reviews on new and used cars, I’ve never heard from Tom, Jennifer, Ed and the gang quite like this.

What a refreshingly unexpected turn it was to have Tom Appel, CG Auto’s Associate Publisher, give us the insider scoop that the Volkswagen CC’s window is, in fact, a bit too small for a great big car-hop tray of drive-in food. Tom found out that tidbit running road tests somewhere near Plymouth, WI. And remember Ed Piotrowski’s dashboard update from the 2010 Ford Transit Connect? He got almost 23 mpg on the Nashville leg of his trip, not bad for hilly, 70-mph driving with the air conditioning on. Now he’s over at the Indy track looking for spots to photograph this new vehicle.

Tell me everything you are feeling about this vehicle after looking at this picture.

Is it different from what Ed just twittered about?

Isn’t this what we really yearn for as consumers? Having someone tell us it’s OK to burn the tires a little bit, that it’s acceptable to complain that the iPod kit is crummy, or to declare that the chemically-captivating new car smell might be the only good thing about a car?

The power of Tom and Ed’s voices to travel so quickly, and the fact that their opinions and insights can spread well beyond their original audience, is part of a Silicon Valley secret that’s just starting to make its way into the layman’s lexicon. Known as the “viral expansion loop”, AllFacebook.com recently picked up on this phenomenon, quoting Marc Andreessen from a Fast Company magazine article:

The secret is what’s called a “viral expansion loop,” a concept little known outside of Silicon Valley (go ahead, Google it — you won’t find much). It’s a type of engineering alchemy that, done right, almost guarantees a self-replicating, borglike growth: One user becomes two, then four, eight, to a million and beyond.

While still early, CG Auto is finding this viral loop already starting to take place. From our meager launch beginnings on Facebook, the CG Auto fan page is already seeing a regular doubling of fans week-over-week. It works something like this:

Facebook fan pages are starting to teem with thousands (sometimes millions) of fans. Somewhere, Vin Diesel is bragging about his 4.8 million Facebook fans. Even the person behind “Flipping the Pillow Over to Get the Cold Side” can brag about their 2.5 million fans (for some reason or another). The fan base starts to form, comments are added to posts, fans like what they see, and friends of those friends begin to gain exposure to this content and want to join in. The organic “viral expansion loop” has begun. Like a saucy piece of gossip shared in the school cafeteria, the loop spreads faster than you can write, “What’s on your mind?” in your Facebook status update box. The nod from a friend that this is a cool and credible page quickly gains status among other users, and the loop keeps spreading.

But, as I discovered recently, this viral loop phenomenon works in incredibly unexpected ways. It’s 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, Father’s Day, and I received a cell phone call from my friend Marc. Marc didn’t call with an emergency, or even to wish me a happy Father’s Day. He’s in the market for a hybrid car and wanted to read the CG Prius vs. Insight article I had posted on my wall a few weeks ago. It seems my connection in the CG Auto viral expansion loop has made me something of an authority on the topic of cars in the eyes of my friends. Despite being flattered by this newfound respect, maybe Marc and I need to have a talk. Is that all I am to him now?

The online conversation about cars takes many shapes and forms in the CG Auto/HowStuffWorks.com family. Our HowStuffWorks.com AutoStuff Channel and our Podcasts, including “High Speed Stuff” and its related blog all strive to answer the head-scratching questions every one of us has about cars.

And these smaller conversations are making a big impact with consumers. Tom Appel recently shouted from Twitter, “I’d change religions to drive the new Roush Mustang.” Amen, Tom. If you help me and my friends better understand how cars really work, I might just change religions, too.