by Josh Bernoff

Today we introduce a new feature – once a week, on Mondays, we’ll share a data chart from Groundswell or from our research, and talk about its significance for social strategists..

Our interactive social profile tool is great if you want to profile your customers by country, age, and gender. But since we’ve collected our data globally using the same social technology questions, we can profile nearly any group of consumers, anywhere. (Here's a quick explanation of our social profile system and the groups that make it up.)

For our first data chart, we’ll examine the Social Technographics Profile of small business owners. (This is from the case study for Constant Contact, from Groundswell Chapter 7.

If you’re marketing to small business owners, what does this profile tell you?

The first thing to look at is the proportion of Spectators (people who consume some form of social content) and Inactives (those who do no social activities at all). With 53%, Spectators, and only 38% Inactives, small business owners are significantly more likely to participate in social applications than the average American consumer. This tells us it's worth putting social in your marketing budget for them.

Second, notice that Creators and Critics are well represented among this group. The Creators among them are blogging and uploading content like video – it would pay to keep an eye on them, using monitoring services like Motivequest. The high number of Critics tells you that business owners are relatively open to responding to blogs and participating in communities. In our book, we describe how Constant Contact’s Maureen Royal took advantage of this in creating the company’s ConnectUp! community.

While there are only 17% Collectors in this group, that’s still way above average. This indicates that if you’re marketing to this group, you could potentially get some of them to join and vote in an idea community, like the one Starbucks just set up.(Voting sites are one of the indicators for Collectors). Of course, that depends on if they’re interested enough in your products, and you should remain aware the fact that you’ll get a skewed subset of your customer base.

This analysis is typical of the first step in our POST method (P for people). Once you know your customers’ profile, you can follow up with objectives, strategy, and technology.

Look for more data in this space every week. We’re looking forward to your reaction.

by Josh Bernoff

Join me for a talk about Groundswell and how to build and run a successful community, sponsored by Lithium. Sign up here. The Webinar is at 1:00 eastern, 10:00 pacific.

Many companies use Lithium communities for Supporting their customers, one of the five key objectives we cite for groundswell strategy.

Lithium is featured in our book including the incredible story of the support forum that saved Christmas when an earthquake in Asia cut many of the support phone lines for router-maker Linksys. We also quote Lithium CEO Lyle Fong on how recognition systems are crucial in making communities successful.

Should be an interesting online event.

by Charlene Li

I'm often asked if Twitter is important or not, and while I'm not a major booster, I fall on the side that it's an idea and technology to watch closely. A conversation with a colleague yesterday sparked me to write this post, which has been rattling around in my brain for a while. It shows how Twitter connects people in new ways previously not possible. 

Twitter is somewhat of a new thing for me -- I'm what is described  as a "binge twitter-er", in that I go for long periods when I don't tweet anything. I'm getting a little better, using Twitter to ask questions or to share a post or link. But I do think it's particularly interesting in that it's a unique communication tool, and I thought I'd illustrate it with this example.

I'm in the midst of a launching the Groundswell book and realized that given all of the upcoming travel, that I would really benefit from a Clear pass, which allows me to skip to the front of the security lanes. I'm lucky in that the airport closest to me, SFO, has a Clear Lanes at pretty much every security area, so I can fly through. I have to say, I am absolutely loving it.

During the sign-up process (which I did back in January), I noticed an area where I can enter a discount code. A little bit of searching turned up that I could get a referral code from someone who already had a Clear pass, and we would both get a free month of service.

But how to find someone? I figured there had to be someone I knew amongst my frequent flyer friends and colleagues who had a pass....but I didn't have the time to send out an email, nor did I want to spam everyone. That's when I decided to Twitter the following:

charleneli   Signing up for flyclear.com. Does anyone have a referral code I can use? I think you'll get 1 month free. FCFS. 04:53 PM January 16, 2008

My friend, Christopher Carfi, saw my tweet and replied with the following:

 ccarfi   @charleneli: i think @anildash uses flyclear. 04:56 PM January 16, 2008 

So still in Twitter, I sent a direct message to Anil Dash at Six Apart asking him about it. Here's his response:

anildash i *love* Clear. My referrer code is *********, and i blogged about it here: http://tinyurl.com/2fhf9r 05:12 PM January 16, 2008 

(Note: Clear members aren't allowed to broadcast/publish their discount numbers, so I removed it from Anil's reply)

Now this is important to note. The time between when I put out my first tweet and Anil's response was 19 minutes. That's pretty fast, especially considering that I most of that delay was me getting around to sending Anil the direct message in the first place.

Imagine what it would have taken for me to track down, email/spam my contacts to hunt down that code. So the benefit to me was a month of Clear's $100 service, or $8.33.

I'd love to hear how Twitter has helped you get something done -- beyond sharing links, ideas, or communicating with people in your network.

And if you're thinking about getting a Clear pass, let me (or Anil) know and we can "make" another $8.33 together!

by Charlene Li

In my work, I often find that companies eager to create a social strategy often struggle with how to get started. One of the key recommendations we have in the book is to find the spark, champion, and evangelist within the company -- the person who is most passionate about forming a relationship with your audience, be it customers or employees.

You probably already know who this person is within your organization. It may be the technie who brags that she's been blogging since 1999, or the corporate communications person who loves to talk with customers on external bulletin boards. This person is probably also a bit a thorn in the side of management, constantly agitating for under-represented customers who are suffering some sort of injustice at the hands of management that just "doesn't get it".

As Shel Israel and Robert Scoble put it so nicely in "Naked Conversations", these radicals constantly push against the corporate membrane, stretching it close to the breaking point.

Well, it's time to get these radicals turned into revolutionaries. Let me explain by telling the tale of two Thomas' -- Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense in 1776, which advocated for American independence from Great Britain and stimulated colonial fervor toward independence. He was the spark that lit the American revolution. But Paine never really settled down and after the American Revolution was over, he headed off to France and its revolution, got thrown in jail and almost executed. Prominent Americans interceded and he was released to return to the US. Back home, he cast about for a role, but the revolution was over. He was a man without a cause, and when he died only six people attended his funeral. One obituary read, "He lived long, did some good, and much harm." Paine was a radical, agitating for freedom and challenging authority.

Thomas Jefferson, in contrast, was a revolutionary. A writer and scholar like Paine, Jefferson was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence. But it wasn't just his writing skills, but also his ability to forge compromise and consensus that won him the job. Through the hot summer of 1776, Jefferson worked with the Second Continental Congress to draft the Declaration. It took time and effort to put together the framework and the process to bring about the revolution. He forged relationships with the other members of Congress, and brought them to the table to sign the document. There was fear about the consequences, but the Founding Fathers leaned on each other for support. Jefferson went on to become the Governor of Virginia and third President of the US.

I tell these stories because companies are in the midst of a social revolution -- specifically, one being led by their customers and employees. The question becomes how do companies deal with it, but more importantly, how do they tap into the energy of potentially disruptive radicals and channel them into being revolutionaries who can lead positive, lasting change?

This was the gist of the speech I made at SXSW last week (slides are available). I believe that:

Making revolution stick will require frameworks and process

The POST method provides much of that framework and process. It's a blueprint, and starting point for the revolutionaries in your organization. They need to know that executives are bought into the process, and they need to know what the goal is. After that, I suggest that you let them do their thing -- stand back and watch them revolutionize and transform your organization.

by Charlene Li

Today I tried out Starbucks' new customer feedback and idea generation site at mystarbucksidea.com, which is powered by Salesforce Idea (it's the same product that's behind Salesforce's own Idea Exchange and Dell's Ideastorm).  Josh and I feature these two sites in our Groundswell book, as an example of how a company can execute an "embracing" objective.

On these sites, people like you and me can "share" an idea. Then other people can "vote" for them, and the ideas with the most votes float to the top.  People can "discuss" an idea by adding comments, and  finally, to close the loop, Starbucks will provide feedback and status reports on the most promising ideas.

The results: Starbucks "launched" the site on March 19th. The top idea as of today is for Starbucks to offer a "punch card" to provide a frequency discount or free drinks. It has 29,410 points, which means that 2,914 people have voted for it (each vote counts as 10 points). The site's "Ideas In Action" section has a post (sorry, no permalink!) has an entry on March 24th saying that this particular idea is being reviewed and will be incorporated into the Starbucks Card Reward program.

The reason why I was so intrigued with the Starbucks site is that I'm a loyal user of Starbucks, so I have plenty of ideas on how they can improve their service. Just how much do I use Starbucks? It's my default place to work on weekends (the empty office is too depressing and having spouse/kids at home is a recipe for non-work) and my remote office when I'm traveling. As a result, I know where the electrical outlets are at all of my local Starbucks and bring along an extension cord. I also have a list of Starbucks stores bookmarked on my phone browser.

What's impressive is that I'm feeling more connected with other Starbucks fans, especially those craving healthier breakfasts, automatic ordering with my Starbucks card (mine is a simple Grande decaf), and my pet peeve, more power outlets.

But Starbucks, please don't let this engagement end! I want to subscribe to your Ideas in Action "blog" via RSS so that I can find out more about what's new -- and to see if my favorite ideas are being implemented. I want to comment on your blog too, to let me know that I'm happy/not happy about your future decisions. Close the loop, and you've not only got me hooked, but I'll walk the extra block in NYC or drive the extra mile to go to you rather than another coffee house.

Update: It hit me that I'd like to know your experience with Starbucks Ideas. What do you like/don't like about it, and more importantly, what brands/companies would you like to see adopt something similar? I'm curious to see if you would participate and contribute more to personal, consumer brands like Starbucks, or if there's also an affinity to business-oriented companies like Salesforce.

by Josh Bernoff

In 2007, an amazing groundswell of support did what many thought was impossible -- persuaded CBS to retract its cancellation of the show Jericho and promise to air it again in 2008.

We wrote about this in our Sloan Management Review article, describing how CBS Entertainment head Nina Tassler, faced with 20 tons of nuts as physical evidence of the show's following, agreed to put the Jericho back on. [Note, the article wont' be free for much longer.Article no longer free, but an excerpt is available at the link above.]

Well, now the show has been canceled again. The audience was simply not large enough to keep airing it on CBS.

You might think this proves that bringing Jericho back was a mistake. Or even that the groundswell isn't as powerful as we've been saying. But I beg to differ.

First of all, all network shows are a crapshoot. Evidence of signs of life in the audience means it may be worth the risk. When CBS brought back Cagney & Lacey in the 80s, it had four more years of life. Based on the following it developed later, NBC made a mistake canceling the original Star Trek. Was it worth the risk to bring back Jericho? Yes. It was worth a shot.

Beyond that, networks nearly always own a stake in the shows they air. By bringing back Jericho, CBS has confirmed it has a passionate audience, but one that is not large enough to be profitable on CBS. But that audience likely is large enough to be successful on a cable network like NBC Universal's Sci-Fi. If Jericho continues on Sci-Fi or elsewhere, CBS will make some money on that. Probably more because the audience has proven itself to be loyal.

What's the lesson here for social strategists? It's not that the groundswell can be ignored. It's still a powerful force. Just don't assume a small, passionate group is representative.

When Dell created a Linux PC based on votes from its IdeaStorm idea community, did that mean that Dell thinks everyone wants a Linux PC? Of course not. But Dell was convinced that the audience for Linux was large enough to warrant a product, one which apparently is doing quite well.

Given the non-representative nature of social application participants, in particular content Creators (not only are they obviously younger on average, they also underrepresent the mass of passive lumpish consumers) it's dangerous to follow them. But it's also dangerous to ignore them -- they're your loudest and most engaged customers.

Once you've got this well understood, you can blend their ideas with your own judgment to make decisions. CBS' decision to cancel Jericho was undoubtedly the right one -- the audience was just not going to be there. But based on the show's enthusiasts, the show will succeed somewhere.

How are you treating your most enthusiastic customers? Are you out of touch with their needs? Are you being persuaded by them to do something the rest of your customers won't want? Or have you blended their judgment with your own? That's a skill worth developing.

by Josh Bernoff

As you can see, we've made a few changes here at the Groundswell blog. As the availability of our book inches ever closer (about two weeks away now) we've put the blog in the context of a broader site with a whole bunch of goodies for you.

Feel free to browse around, but I'd like to draw your attention to one key feature: a free data tool about consumers around the world and their behavior around social technologies.

You may recall that we group people in the social world into six overlapping groups: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives. We show these groups as steps on a ladder based on their increasing levels of participation in social technologies. (We've conducted more surveys and refined our definitions since our original post on this topic almost a year ago.) Basically, you're in a group if you participate in one of the behaviors shown in this graphic on that rung, at least once a month.

Now comes the fun part. Forrester painstakingly collects data from countries on four continents: North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. And we can calculate the Social Technographics Profile -- basically, the level of social participation -- for any group of people we can identify in any of those countries.

Chapter 3 in the book is filled with these profiles and we show throughout how they drive strategy, but we wanted to give you a chance to see what we've seen -- just how diverse the world is and how profiles vary based on the country, age, and gender of the participants.

If you play around with this tool, you'll soon see that, as you would expect, there's an inverse relationship between age and level of participation. But would you have guessed that 33% of people in the US age 55 or older are connecting with social applications in some way? Because they are.

Why are the differences between men and women's participation so much greater among people aged 25-34 than among those that are younger? Will those gender differences go away as the Millenials get older?

You might notice that 41% of Koreans are Joiners -- members of social networks -- more than anywhere else in the world.

Or that in Metro China (we survey a subset of people in Chinese cities) 36% of people are Creators, creating blogs, maintaining content, or uploading video or music. That's an amazing level of participation.

It's very expensive to collect this data. Why are we giving it away for free? Because we wanted to give you a taste of how real data can open up insights into people's behavior, and to think about it in some of the ways we think about it.

And if you're looking for a group not shown here -- like Toyota owners in the US, or people with Fujitsu PCs in Japan, we've probably got that, too. Go ahead. Ask us.

I'm looking forward to your reactions.

P.S. If you hit a "No Data Available" message, that just means you've asked for a slice of our data so thin we can't show a valid answer. Just set the Age dropdown back to "Not Specified" and you'll see data for the country you've asked about.

by Josh Bernoff

Does your company reject change?

Of course not. You love change, don’t you. Change is good. That’s how companies grow. The bigger the company, the more a little change will do it some good.

Baloney. You all know the truth. Companies are like organisms with immune systems. If you’re a change agent, you’re the antigen. Your company wants to reject you, and it’s got lots of systems to block that -- accounting systems, legal systems, management hierarchies, policies and procedures.

Social applications and their champions run afoul of this all the time. Why? Because the people in your social applications – your customers and prospects – are out of control. Who knows what they might say or do? And you want to make that a part of how your company runs? That’s what stimulates the allergic reaction.

But you can succeed. Here are our best tips, taken right from the pages of Groundswell, which could have been called, “How to be a social provocateur and still succeed within a company.”

• Start small. Don’t try to change your whole company overnight. Pick a single project, a single brand, a single group of customers, and work on that (or them). You’ll seem smaller and less threatening to the status quo. And you’ll get the chance to foul up and learn in a sheltered environment.
• Get an executive sponsor. When the you-know-what hits the fan, you’ll need somebody in a high place to cover your back. At Dell, it’s Michael Dell who gives people cover. At Unilever, it was two top executives: Babs Rangaiah and Rob Master. Who’s your sponsor? You’ll need her. Take her to lunch now and make sure you can count on her.
• Line up the stakeholders ahead of time. Will legal be blocking you? Then get a person from legal on your committee. Or a regulatory affairs guy. Or somebody from accounting, or brand management, or whomever might be threatened by what you’re doing. You want them on your side. And you want to hear their objections early, not when you’re about to launch and they can shut you down for some policy violation you didn’t even know about. In the months it takes to spec and build your application, you can win them over, or learn from them and change what you’re building as necessary.
• Set deadlines and move fast. This is how you get the objectors’ objections out of the way now. If your launch is six months off, they won’t pay attention until month five. If it’s one month off, you’ll get to their objections now. Speed also helps – you’ll be up and running before they can figure out some new reason to object. Lionel Menchaca and his team got the Direct2Dell blog up in three weeks. (This was a week later than Michael Dell wanted.)
• Seek precedents. What’s your competitor doing? Is your community, your wiki, your blog like one in another industry? Show them to your management and anyone else you need to convince. (Groundswell has 65  examples including 25 full case studies, indexed by industry, by strategy, and by geography – you might find what you’re looking for by starting with page 265.)
• Make friends. Join communities like the Social Media Club, or Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell's Society for Word of Mouth. Find people who are doing what you’re doing. Lean on them. Learn from them.
• Measure your success. The surest way to fail is to be unable to prove you accomplished anything. Decide what you’ll measure up front – buzz, conversion rates, sales, community memberships. Prove it accomplishes your objectives. And then prove your application is delivering results. (If it isn’t . . . fix it!)
• Don’t stop at one application – build! So six months have gone by. Your first application is successful. Go ahead revel in it – for ten minutes. Then build on it. You have momentum – you’ve bested all the obstacles and proved you can deliver results. The second app will be far, far easier. Doing one proves you’re a prodigy. Doing two or more will get you promoted.

What’s your best tip? Add it in the comments.

by Josh Bernoff

Thanks for all your responses on the scale I posted. Recall that 10 is an extreme purist (power to the people!) and 0 is an extreme corporatist (power to the corporation!). I saw people coming in all over the scale.

Here's what I learned:

1. Nobody likes to be pigeonholed. I loved this from frymaster.

When I'm drinking [which is most of the time], I'm a 10. When I'm at the client I'm a 5. Unless I had a little nip, and then I'm a 7.

 

I also enjoyed Mark's attempt to add a dimension. People just can't get comfortable living on a line segment.

2. A lot of people seemed comfortable in the 5 to 7 range (or couldn't tell my definitions of 5 and 7 apart). Here are the definitions again.

7 The groundswell is powerful, but companies have a role in it. Groups of people inside of enterprises can get together and make themselves heard. Even so, the groundswell will always prevail over their interests.

5 Companies belong in the groundswell. They have interests just as the people do. They will set up corporate efforts -- presences in places like Facebook or their own corporate blogs -- and connect with their customers. They can't shut down or co-opt people in the groundswell, but they can form meaningful relationships with them. And they can accomplish goals like marketing or collaborative innovation, if they respect that they're not in charge.

Given the fact that our active readers are probably the biggest believes in the power of social, this shows an amazing tolerance for corporations. Maybe because to make a living doing this stuff, you have to give the corporation a role. I'm quite happy myself at 5 and expect to sell a lot of books to others who are comfortable there.

3. I was intrigued by the perception that people were moving. I especially liked this comment:

The last number [average of businesspeople you meet] is the one I see movement in every day...one at a time I'm seeing people who used to be 2 or 3 become a 4 or 5.

So here's the interesting question. Is the business world slowly creeping towards the middle, or headed towards the purist end? Are we going to end up with a balance between enlightened corporations and powerful people, or are the people just going to overrun the corporations and take over? I think how you answer this says a lot about everything you do while working in the groundswell.

by Josh Bernoff

What is blogging? People will tell you "it's different based on who you are and what you want to accomplish." But I realized this weekend that it can be different for different audiences, even if you are the same person. A lot of people I know have more than one blog. I realized I now have five. Examining what they are and how I use them makes an interesting little case study.

To begin with, know that I define myself as a writer, a communicator, and an analyst -- not a blogger. Calling someone a blogger in a few years will be like calling them an emailer now -- it will be just another form of communication. So even with these five blogs, it's not because I'm some sort of tech-addicted whiz-kid -- far from it. It's because writing is what I do, and I use them to accomplish different goals.

The five blogs:

1. Groundswell -- the blog you're reading, that I share with Charlene Li. The main purpose of this one is to communicate with the audience interested in Charlene's ideas, my ideas, and increasingly, Groundswell, the book. If you like this blog, you like me and my ideas, which means you should hire me, buy the book, or somehow stay connected with me.

2. The Groundswell Effect -- this blog has much the same content as Groundswell, but it's over at harvardbusiness.org, the Web site of our publisher Harvard Business Press. It's been interesting to work with that site. It gets a very different audience from our regular blog, because people who are looking there are interested in management and leadership along the lines of what appears in the Harvard Business Review and books Harvard Business Press puts out. It's a rarefied atmosphere with the likes of HBS professor John Quelch and management consultant Gary Hamel. Our editor there has changed a few of our post's titles, in a subtle attempt to show us to win over this audience. I'm grateful to be reaching a different audience thanks to them. And it doesn't require any additional effort.

3. Groundswell Makes Money -- This is my internal blog for Forrester Research. Forrester has been extremely helpful in making it possible to write Groundswell, and as we get ready to roll out the book, I am trying to tap into all the resources the company has. The reason for the nakedly commercial title of the blog is simple -- I am helping salespeople, other researchers, and management at Forrester to understand how the book's success can translate into helping with our image and eventually research and consulting revenues for Forrester, how I am repaying their work with me. Having blogged so much leading up to this, it became a no-brainer to start the internal blog, which has become both a reference and communications tool. Anyone who works inside a company and needs to gather resources should consider the value of a blog like this.

4. Groundswell: Notes from the Road -- I created this just to keep a few close friends up to date on what's happening as we go on tour to promote the book. I put stuff in there I would never put here, and it has readers like my dad, my wife, and my daughter. You'd find the things in there boring, but they care.

5. A personal blog I have created for myself. In earlier days you might have called this a private diary. Having created the first four, as I undertake a personal improvement project, this is a way I can keep track of my progress. I think of the audience as my future self -- I will look back on what I wrote and track my own progress. I doubt anyone else will ever read it.

(These blogs are on, respectively, TypePad, Movable Type, Wordpress, and Blogger, and Blogger again. Doesn't make much difference.)

It's interested to me that the meaning of blogging has expanded for me over the last 4 years to the point where I think of it to communicate to any audience. And of course this isn't the end: I twitter (although not nearly as much as people like my colleague Jeremiah) and a some of my work these days is poured into a wiki we're using to collaborate with all the marketing people at Forrester and at Harvard Business press to roll out the book.

Someday I'd like to write all these blogs in one tool and just pick a different audience to send each to, the way we do with email now. (Firewalls and privacy and economics make this impossible for me right now, since companies like Forrester and Harvard Business School Publishing have made choices for me.)

 

To sum this all up, I like to think about my idol as a writer, Isaac Asimov. Asimov was interested in everything, and wrote books about it all, from science fiction to essay collections to a Treasury of Humor and a Guide to the Bible. He wrote for all different audiences, to him it was all just writing. I wonder, if he were still around today, would he blog? How many blogs would he have? Or when your name gets big enough, do you need only one?

by Charlene Li

Josh is making his way to the West coast so we're going to have an informal, no-host blogger dinner on Tuesday, March 25th in San Francisco. Also joining us will be Jeremiah Owyang (bio, blog). The goal: to have a stimulating discussion around any topic that intrigues us -- in other words, all things social. No pitching allowed!

It’s pretty normal at blogger dinners that everyone pay their own way, and in the spirit of community blogger dinners, we’d ask that you chip in $30 for dinner and we’ll all buy each other drinks. Please RSVP and pay in advance, as there's space for 50 people. Hurry - I have to turn in a headcount by Sunday.

And see below for a list of attendees -- I'll be updating as frequently as I can.

SF Blogger Dinner on Tuesday, March 25th

Dinner
Cocktail style, with a buffet of appetizers (pizzas, crispy calamari, spring rolls, chicken and beef satays, endive spears).

Location:
21st Amendment, 563 Second Street, San Francisco, phone: 415-369-0900

Date:
Tuesday, March 25th

Time:
6-8pm

Cost:
$30 for dinner. Please RSVP/pay in advance and by Sunday, March 23rd at 6pm.

Parking:
There's metered parking on Second Street. Closest lot is on Townsend, just west of Second Street (at least, according to Google Maps)

Update: I've been asked by several non-blogging PR people and vendors if they can come to the dinner. Well, frankly, anyone can sign up and I'm not going to be policing attendees. But realize that you may incur the wrath of dinner participants who are there to develop closer bonds with other bloggers. Not exactly the way to improve blogger relations if that is your goal!

Attendees:

Charlene Li
Josh Bernoff
Jeremiah Owyang
Adam Metz
Jacob Morgan
Sarah Park
Ted Shelton
Carter Lusher
Deborah Schultz
Eric Rosser Eldon
Beth Blecherman
Chris Heuer
Jennifer Jones
Shel Holtz
Justin Thorp
Kevin K. Leong
Esther Lim
Christopher Lynn
Janet Tyler
Samantha Weeks
Wayne Hengesbach

by Josh Bernoff

My post on Purists and Corporatists kicked up some dust. WOMMA put it on their list of stuff to read. And Shel Israel explained that he's not a purist, he works with companies. But I still think there's some difference between his position and mine. While Shel agrees with me that there are two camps, he appears to see them as the authentic types and those who are going to force marketing messages down our throats.

But this is my platform, and while I want to be part of the dialogue, I'll define my terms my way. Right now I want to see where my readers come down.

In the continuum below, the groundswell I refer to consists of ALL social applications -- not just blogs, but wikis, user-generated video and audio, social networks, ratings and reviews, twitter -- any application that allows people to connect and draw strength from each other.

EXTREME PURIST

10 = The groundswell is such a powerful force, the people in it will always prevail. All companies can do is watch and listen. Their employees can participate, but only as independent people. Corporate efforts are doomed to fail.

9 =

8 =

7 = The groundswell is powerful, but companies have a role in it. Groups of people inside of enterprises can get together and make themselves heard. Even so, the groundswell will always prevail over their interests.

6 =

5 = Companies belong in the groundswell. They have interests just as the people do. They will set up corporate efforts -- presences in places like Facebook or their own corporate blogs -- and connect with their customers. They can't shut down or co-opt people in the groundswell, but they can form meaningful relationships with them. And they can accomplish goals like marketing or collaborative innovation, if they respect that they're not in charge.

4 =

3 =

2 = Corporations and other major institutions are powerful and will always be powerful. This so-called "groundswell" is similar to any other medium -- people are there consuming it, and corporations can reach them within that medium. Flare-ups of negative publicity can be contained or at least "handled" so they cause minimal damage.

1 =

0 = Corporations have power because they have money. This groundswell thing is a flash in the pan and it doesn't matter. If it gets too far out of hand we'll buy it and make sure we control it.

EXTREME CORPORATIST

Sure, I've set up an arbitrary continuum, but it reflects the range of opinions I'm seeing out there. Now it's your turn. Please comment. In your comment, please tell me:

What number on the continuum best describes your attitude?
What number best describes your boss' attitude?
What do you estimate is the average attitude among businesspeople you know?

by Josh Bernoff

Jennifer Jones of Marketing Voices inteviewed me for Podtech.net about social applications in a recession.  They featured this on their home page for a while.

I've embedded the Podcast here for your convenience.

AOL announced that it would buy social networking site Bebo for $850 million. I have several points of view on what it means, and I've summarized some of the key ones below.

• Future direction of social networks. In many ways, I think this deal represents how social networks will develop in the future. That's because as a stand-alone social network, Bebo had no chance of competing against big boys like MySpace and Facebook. But as an integrated part of the larger AOL content and ad network, it has amazing potential to play a role in how social networks develop. With the $850 million acquisition of social networking site Bebo, AOL is finally showing its hand -- a plan and way to integrate the disparate assets and acquisitions its been quietly building over the past year.

The foundation of my premise is that social networks will be like air, integrated into everything that we do. Let's start with AIM and ICQ, in the case especially for AIM, leading instant messaging platforms. Most social networking sites already have IM-like capabilities built into them, but the reverse isn't true. And yet, the buddy list of services like AIM reflect very well a key part of my social graph -- the people with whom I communicate with in a very intimate, frequent manner.

AIM introduced AIM Pages a few years ago, which was a lightweight approach to having a profile attached to an AIM screenname. It didn't go over well and I agree with Saul Hansell/NYTimes that this could be an opportunity to bring social networking into AIM and AOL in general.

The potential is that Bebo members' social graphs and activities are expressed and connected to instant messaging, and that IM use is reflected in the nature and tenor of the relationships within Bebo, e.g. if I frequently IM someone, then that relationship is very strong and should be reflected in my Bebo experience if that friend is also there. 

• Valuation of social networks. As Stacey Higgenbotham/GigaOM  points out, the $850 million price comes out to about $21.25 for each of Bebo's 40 million members. That's a bargain compared to the $27.62 per user price News Corp paid for MySpace back in July 2005. Excepting Facebook's $15 billion inferred pricing thanks to Microsoft's strategic investment (which puts it at roughly $300/user!), we're starting to see a rough valuation for today's social networks.

Will this start a frenzy of acquisitions in the space? I believe so, but not necessarily at this valuation. That's because there's tremendous downward pressure on valuation because of the unproven business model, namely advertising. We're in the trough right now, because while there's tremendous consumer uptake of social networking sites, marketers still haven't figured out how to tap into all of that energy and enthusiasm.

That's why it took so long for Bebo to find a buyer, and also likely why other sites like LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster haven't gone yet. My prediction -- we'll see smaller, niche social networks focused on a specific group like Black Planet (by BET), or interest area like Flixster (by NetFlix) or iLike (by iTunes/Apple) get snatched up by companies interested in those areas. They have a clear, focused way to engage a specific social group or go deep into an area of passion -- both great ways to get the attention of marketers.

• Multiple open platform support. I've always been impressed that Bebo has been able to sit in the middle between the two giants, MySpace and Facebook. It has the entertainment, self-expression aspects of MySpace but also the communication and application features of Facebook. And although Bebo was one of the core members of OpenSocial when it was announced, when it launched its own open applications platform in Dec 2007, it made sure that Facebook applications would also work on it.

This willingness to craft a middle road between these two behemoths had been a necessity as  Bebo is a far smaller player in the space. But going forward, I believe it will be a strategic advantage for AOL. That's because it will make AOL much more willing to open up its own site, services, and platform to anyone who wants to tap into it -- and more importantly, to go out into any social networks that would have it.

AOL has already organized its advertising assets, led by Platform A, into a formidable ad network that can serve any site, not just AOL's network of content sites. Look for AOL to be a part of this "opening up" of social networks, by sheer force of it having millions of users.

What do you think? Does AOL with Bebo have a chance at shaping the integration of social networks into more traditional Web sites and services? Or was this simply an opportunistic acquisition that AOL is not in a position to truly leverage? I'd love to know your thoughts, either in comments or via email at cli at forrester dot com.

by Josh Bernoff

(Cross-posted from our blog at harvardbusiness.org.)

People are not insects. So why is it so popular, in analyzing the surge of social activity online, to compare them to bees?

Here you see the covers of two recent books about social technologies, Barry Libert and Jon Spector's We Are Smarter Than Me and Larry Weber's Marketing to the Social Web. Both appear to be more hive than Web.

It doesn't stop there. Online contributions are typically referred to, in the aggregate, as buzz. There are dozens of companies in the buzz-monitoring business. Two of the prominent ones are Nielsen BuzzMetrics and BuzzLogic, which has got bees all over its site. Or, if you'd prefer to hire people to buzz about your product, you can always go to BzzAgents, which has got an angry (determined?) looking bee as its logo.

Language matters (see my rant against "users" which stirred up a hornet's nest . . . oops!). These books are pretty good and pretty interesting, and these companies are all successful at what they do. But from their covers and Web sites, you would think that all those contributors to the groundswell are diligent, interchangeable workers. This is the wrong image, folks. The groundswell is as heterogeneous as humanity itself. You're part of it. Are you an interchangeable part?

The fact is, the groundswell is made of people. Some of them are strident and vocal, some are quiet. Some like to gather in social networks, others in online forums. Their contributions are thoughtful, insipid, polemical, balanced, respectful, blasphemous, adoring, hateful, and any other adjective you can muster. You can use companies like BuzzMetrics to get a general idea of what's happening, or you can use companies like BuzzLogic and Visible Technologies to identify the influencers in your market, which could be far more important.

I think these bee images recur because they're easier to understand. Yeah, it's a lot of people out there contributing and interacting (We Are Smarter explicitly harks back to The Wisdom of Crowds in its marketing) but by thinking of them as bees in a hive, we become comfortable with their activity. Like all those busy little workers building Wikipedia. Ok, says the corporate strategist, I get that.

In fact, online activity is messy. It's characterized by flareups often driven by a single person with a creative idea, which never happens in beehives (lots of great instances are in Groundswell and in Citizen Marketers, for example). You can join it, influence it, deal with it, become a part of it. But no matter how much smoke you pump into it, it won't calm down as a beehive does. And that's because it's made of unique individuals, not worker bees.

by Josh Bernoff

I am so jealous of Seth Godin I can't see straight.

By the way, the Blendtec story leads off Chapter 6 of Groundswell.

by Josh Bernoff

It's time for me to weigh in on the question: can companies be part of the social world?

This is in part a reaction to Shel Israel's comments of a few months back and my colleague Jeremiah's Owyang's responses. But it's an ongoing issue that comes up often in the blogosphere in my conversations with corporate clients.

On the one side are the folks who say, "The social world is an emergent phenomenon generated by people connecting." The original Cluetrain Manifesto rails against many aspects of the corporate world and basically posits that the right way for companies to get involved is for people inside those companies to connect to their customers. Based on my recent participation at a Cluetrain event, Cluetrain author Doc Searls still harbors a lot of skepticism toward corporations pursuing goals in the social world. For shorthand, let's call these folks the Purists.

On the other side are companies who are looking at the social Internet and saying "how can we exploit this to do what we already do -- PR and advertising, for example?" PR and advertising are mostly one-way, broadcast type communications, and these folks continue to try to adapt those one-way modes of thinking in the two-way, read-write world of social computing. I'll caricature these folks as the Corporatists.

I'm here to stand up and proudly say, Purists and Corporatists, you're both wrong.

Here's how I suggest people in companies think about social computing.

If you're in a company, your company can participate. In fact, you must participate. Your customers and prospects are connecting and talking about your products and your company right now -- this is what we call the groundswell. You need to be a part of the conversation. You might start a blog, you might start a Facebook group, you might start a community, or begin twittering, but until you start connecting as a corporate employee, you won't understand what's going on out there. And it can and will bite you.

You also need to start with the recognition that you are not now, nor will you ever be, in control of this "channel," "world," "phenomenon," or whatever you want to call it. It goes its own way and it will continually surprise you. This is where the Purists are right and the Corporatists are fooling themselves. But this is not so new. When my colleague Charlene Li was writing about how to deal with Wikipedia, I suggested it's no different in some ways from the New York Times -- you can influence it, but you're not in charge of it. Same with the rest of the social world -- you can participate, but not control. If this scares you, great. If you can't deal with it, somebody else in your company had better head up your social technology efforts.

But the fundamental principle behind about 80% of our book Groundswell is that you can accomplish corporate objectives in the social world. This is what bugs the Purists. As a corporate staffer, you have no business in the groundswell unless you know what you are trying to do there. You could be trying to increase awareness, generate word of mouth, surface leads, save on support costs, on tap into innovation. But regardless, no corporate activity should go forward without a measurable goal, and this is no different.

So, do you participate as an individual or a corporation? Of course, as a corporation. Companies may be made of people, but those people are not free agents. Your boss needs to know what you're doing, and, we argue in the book, your top management should, too, since they're going to inevitably get some surprises from these efforts. You'll need budget (maybe not a lot), and you need cover. Sometimes you need to push the membrane that Rob Scoble and Shel Israel talk about, finding ways to stretch corporate attitudes just enough to succeed. But you'd better be aligned with the corporation's goals, if not necessarily its tactics and every single one of its rules.

There's a lot of talk about authenticity, too. But the tone I hear from some Purists seems to be that if it's corporate, it has to involve lying, or at least deception. Please. Corporations, like people, have interests. They can talk about their products and services honestly. Of course they will be pro-company -- that's authentic, to believe in what you're making. But a pro-company attitude doesn't prevent two-way communication. In fact, in idea-generating applications like salesforce.com's IdeaExchange, or Credit Mutuel's sijetaisbanquier.com, it's that give and take between customers and people inside the company that fuels the innovation.

Teams -- small teams -- get most social projects done. Corporate bloggers may need help with moderation. Specifying, managing, and moderating communities is not a one-person job. These applications work best when they support corporate goals anyway. That's what gets you backers within the company, not just fearful detractors.

So it is no sin to conceive, create, and deploy a corporate social application. If you have a clear objective and can measure it, you are even likely to succeed. Just recognize that you must start from authenticity, it's a dialogue, and that the social world cannot be controlled. The companies I work with are starting to do this. It's not impossible -- in fact, it's the beginning of an incredible transformation. And their participation won't kill the groundswell, it will make it richer.

As you might imagine, we're ramping up our speaking schedule in March and April in support of Groundswell's April release. Here's where you can see us coming up. Please stop by, share stories, interview us -- we want to connect! All times are local -- any of these may require membership in the organizations running them or an admission fee. All times are local.

Sunday, March 09 SXSW Interactive Conference, Austin, 11:30am, central
Charlene will be speaking on "Social Strategies For Revolutionaries", followed up a reading from her upcoming book, "Groundswell".

Wednesday, March 12 Digital Hollywood, New York, 10:45 am, eastern
Josh will be speaking on panel moderated by Ron Grover: Social Media & User Generated Media Economy: The Content, Personalization, Lifestyle and Advertising

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 ETC CxO Roundtable, Burbank, 8:30am, pacific
Charlene is participating in a roundtable on social networking, how consumers are using it, and how it is changing the entertainment experience.

Tuesday, March 18 Public Relations Society of America Teleseminar, 3:00 pm eastern
Josh will be speaking along with technology journalists. Title: Meet the Media: Technology Journalists

Tuesday, April 8 and Wednesday, April 9, Forrester Marketing Forum 2008 Los Angeles
A great marketing event. We'll both be doing a presentation there. More details to follow.

Thursday, April 10, TravelCom, Chicago, 9:00 am central
Charlene will be giving the keynote. "Welcome to 2013: The Changes in Technology and Consumers that will Affect Your Business".

Thursday, April 10, Customer Experience (CX) Innovation Summit, Miami, 9:30am eastern
Josh will be giving the keynote at this Blast Radius event.

Monday, April 14, National Association of Broadcasters, Las Vegas, 3:30pm pacific
Josh will be on a general session keynoted by by John Gage, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office, Sun Microsystems, Inc. It’s an age where everyone can broadcast their thoughts, ideas and digital creations worldwide over a variety of platforms. Is this just a passing fad or the start of a new era in broadcasting? 

Thursday, April 17, Business Without Borders: Leveraging International Networks, Toronto, 1:30pm eastern
Josh will discuss the impact of social technologies on business relationships and how these types of technologies can be leveraged to create business opportunities. The event is hosted by the Canadian Venture Capital Association.

Wednesday, April 23, Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco, 9:40am pacific
We will both be speaking on Creating a Coherent