Money has a reputation for being useful. Gossip does not. One is associated with investments and growth; the other with whispered conversations and raised eyebrows. Yet the two may have more in common than we would like to admit.
Written by Malak Ouahi, Ottawa, November 2, 2026.
“Money, money, money … must be funny … in a rich man’s world.” If there is one thing Mamma Mia! makes abundantly clear, it is that money has a way of shaping our lives. Yet the movie also offers another familiar scene: friends exchanging gossip and uncovering secrets in their search for Sophie’s father.
In the real world, money has a reputation for being useful. Gossip does not.
One is associated with investments, businesses and growth; the other with whispered conversations, raised eyebrows and the familiar warning: “This is a bad habit.”
Yet the two may have more in common than we would like to admit.
So, when does gossip stop being a mere conversation and start generating economic value?
The Seed: “Don’t tell anyone I told you this.”
A 2019 research article written by Professor Megan Robbins and Alexander Karan and published in Social Psychological and Personality Science claims that people spend an average of approximately 52 minutes a day gossiping. More surprisingly, they explain that three-quarters of the gossip they observed was neutral rather than positive or negative.
Those 52 minutes usually start with the following phrase: “Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but…” Then the information spills. What characterises this information is that it comes from an informal source. And therefore, the message might be inaccurate and completely irrelevant. However, in some cases the information can be useful. And that is how the story begins and the conversation continues.
Germination: “Tell me more.”
The next response is usually: “Tell me more.”
Curiosity pushes us to ask questions, seek context and, sometimes, evaluate whether the information is actually credible. This is where informal information becomes particularly interesting from a business perspective.
Formal information tells us what is already documented, while informal information tells us what people are beginning to notice.
Our curiosity to know more can be profitable to others in some cases. For instance, Miryam, a 67 year old Colombian who operated a successful gossip-selling business. In fact, she claims that selling neighborhood gossip to curious customers was so profitable, it helped her buy two mansions.
Pollination: “Have you heard about this?”
Now the 52 minute conversation has ended, but the story will start to spread. We ask someone else what they think. They tell another person. That person adds their own experience. Eventually, a single piece of information can travel through an entire network.
This is the point at which gossip becomes particularly relevant to business because gossip reveals who has the information. Or in other words, who has the leverage.
In a 2026 preprint examining the economics of gossip, researchers describe gossip as an informal exchange of information through social networks that can influence reputations and economic decisions. Conversations among friends, neighbours and coworkers can create reputational signals that help people reduce uncertainty when deciding whom to trust, cooperate with or buy from.
Ripening: “I can use this information”
Information becomes economically interesting when someone does something with it.
Until this point, gossip is simply information moving from one person to another. But eventually, someone listens and thinks, “I can use this”. The context of which the information has been used creates an information asymmetry. In fact, the information itself may not be valuable until someone knows how to interpret it.
The Fruit: Capital or Misinformation?
Gossip is not a reliable source of information nor is it an asset. Information, however, when useful, creates leverage and therefore could create capital. In some cases, the information extracted from a gossip session could provide a perspective or an undisclosed update, which when used carefully could create economic gain. This is why businesses invest in market research, competitive intelligence, customer analytics and professional networks. They are looking for valuable information in day to day conversation or customers habits.
Today, entire industries are built around collecting, filtering, verifying and distributing information. The commodity is no longer simply information. It is knowing what matters..
Information is only useful when it is sufficiently accurate, relevant and timely. A rumour that turns out to be false can create the opposite of value. It can damage a reputation, distort a decision or send people in an entirely wrong direction.
Financial markets provide the clearest example. Securities regulators distinguish between publicly available information and material non-public information that can raise insider-trading concerns. In other words, possessing valuable information does not automatically give someone the right to profit from it.
The economic value of gossip therefore depends on more than the fact that someone is talking. It depends on what is being said, who is saying it, whether it is credible, when it is received and what happens next.
We have spent so much time asking whether gossip is good or bad that we have overlooked a more interesting question: What does gossip do?
It moves information, builds reputations and connects people.
Gossip reveals what communities are noticing before those observations become formalized into reports, statistics or announcements. That does not make gossip inherently good. Nor does it make every rumour an opportunity waiting to be monetized. It simply means that the boundary between social conversation and economic information is much thinner than we might think.
Capital is traditionally understood as a resource that can be used to generate value. Perhaps information can work the same way. And perhaps the real fruit of gossip is not the conversation itself. It is what someone decides to do after hearing it.
References
AI misinformation may have paradoxical consequences. (2025, December 4). The Economist. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/12/04/ai-misinformation-may-have-paradoxical-consequences
Gulf Today Report. (2026, August 7). Colombian woman sells gossip, earns enough money to buy two houses. Gulf Today. https://www.gulftoday.ae/lifestyle/2026/08/07/colombian-woman-sells-gossip-earns-enough-money-to-buy-two-houses
Mohn, E. (2023). Information asymmetry. EBSCO. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/information-asymmetry
Ontario Securities Commission. (n.d.). Securities regulation 101. https://oscinnovation.ca/education/securities
Robbins, M. L., & Karan, A. (2020). Who gossips and how in everyday life? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(2), 185–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619837000
Toledo, R. R. (n.d.). The economics of gossip: Informal information markets in social networks [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/n7m8r_v1
