“You gotta listen to this!” So Nathan, one of my co-workers, shares his iPod and, yeah, he’s right. Cool song!
“But, hey, Nathan, check this out.” (More iPod sharing.) So, OK, he wasn’t as wild about the band I thought he might like. But he understood why I thought he’d like them. No problem.

But, really, can you imagine this:

“Good morning, Anne. I’d like to recommend a musical selection I think you’d care for.” Same iPod sharing…
“Why thank you Nathan. Perhaps you’d like this recommendation.”

And then there was the time my sister called to tell me, “You’ve gotta see the Thriller wedding video on YouTube!” The conversation did not go like this, “I’d like to recommend an online video that you might find entertaining.”

Nit picky. Maybe. But does anyone say “recommendation” (or any of its derivatives) in real life? Other than “Would you recommend so-and-so for the position of head honcho?”

No.

Why? Because recommendations have become impersonal, generated, manufactured. At least that’s what the word implies now. Recommendations come from web sites that don’t know anything about us other than what we’ve recently bought or listened to or watched.
And “recommendation” doesn’t capture the all out enthusiasm that usually starts with “You gotta…”

So what is it we do? And we all do it. Share? Swap? Endorse? Gush?

And what we do is viral. Otherwise, how do you explain over 6 million viewings of the Thriller wedding video (unless that’s all my sister has been doing in the past few months.) We may use all manner of electronic means –email, IM, social networking, to pass the word. But that need to connect, to share stuff that we think is great, isn’t new. We just have much more immediate and far reaching ways to communicate.

So how do we wrap the enthusiasm and immediacy into one great word?
Even as a writer, I’m stymied. But I’m definitely open to suggestion.