by Josh Bernoff

Some of you like to read. Some don't. So we arranged to bring Groundswell out as an audiobook.

You can download it to your computer or iPod from Audible.com or iTunes. Now you can master social applications in the gym, or while commuting.

The audiobook includes nearly everything that's in the text, except for some of the figures and the notes. It's about 8 hours long. If you're looking for the CD version, that will be out this fall.

Some people who know me have said they could hear my voice as they read the text of the book. You don't need to wonder any more -- that really is my voice on this audiobook. I spent 15 hours in a recording studio on this. It is an interesting experience to record what you have written -- it was like reliving the experiences of the people we interviewed. The trick is to be interesting without being too dramatic. You'll have to let me know if I succeeded.

Here are are a few samples.

From the introduction (5 minutes, with both Charlene and me, introduces the book).

From Chapter 1 (16 minutes, introduces the idea and then gets you all charged up).

From Chapter 12 (4 minutes, Stormhoek Winery living in the Groundswell, some of my best writing).

If you want to embed these on your site go here.

by Josh Bernoff

In today's post we're showing off our international data capabilities with some data about participation in creating and consuming content in different geographies. This is the first table in Chapter 2 of Groundswell.

I find it amazing what a high degree of variability there is in this data. Note that this reflects percentage of online consumers only. These surveys were done between March and September of 2007.

The blog readership and commenting numbers in Japan and South Korea area astounding. I believe this is where North America is going. I'm at a loss to explain the relatively low level of participation in Germany  and the UK -- any ideas on why this is happening? In the UK, I don't know of any cultural reason why online participants should be reticent to read blogs -- I expect this to reach par with the US (or it may already have done so).

It's an interesting pattern that approximately half of those who read blogs comment on them, with somewhat fewer writing. I'd love to know why readership of blogs is higher in Japan, but writing blogs is more common in South Korea.

The US is the clear leader in both creation and viewing of user-generated video, which is at least partly due to the fact that YouTube is mostly in English. (I refuse to believe we have more idiots making idiotic video in the U.S. -- we don't have a way to survey that!) Given the very high bandwidth available in Japan and Korea I would have expected higher participation there -- is this cultural, or is it because there is more production quality video (on-line television) in these geographies?

Podcasts still haven't caught on the US after years of availability. And they're non-existent in Korea. I am skeptical that these numbers will increase significantly in the U.S. or that other parts of the world will surpass the U.S. number.

One note: we use different survey methodologies around the world (for example, what you see here came from mail surveys in Europe and online surveys in the U.S.) Also, the surveys were not taken in the same month. So direct comparisons are subject to significant variation that's not explained by geography.

If you found this data interesting, you can learn more. We have social technographic profiles from around the world available free. And clients can get access to all of our survey data.

by Josh Bernoff

Even thought it's actually been available for a weeks, today is the "official" publication date for Groundswell. That means it's in stores all over the US and on iTunes and Audible as an audiobook.

We created this book to help people take advantage of the social computing trend. But is it actually useful? Only you can answer that question -- and we'd like to hear your answers.

We love bloggers reviewing the book, but you may not have a blog, or have time to write a few paragraphs. So why not make it easy. Twitter your review.

Start your review with "@Groundswell" and keep it to 140 characters. Why? Because it enforces some discipline on your thinking. And because it makes it easier for the rest of us to read all the reviews.

If you're not on Twitter, you can certainly write a 140 character review in the comments below.

Or you can leave it on our wall at Facebook.

Want to see what others are tweeting, use this Summize link or this Tweetscan.

(If you haven't read the book, what are you waiting for? Buy it here or here.)

Around May 15 we'll highlight the most interesting ones in a post on this blog, and we'll be retweeting them from @Groundswell on Twitter.

Looking forward to hearing your ideas!

by Josh Bernoff

As we distributed copies of Groundswell at Forrester's Marketing Forum in Los Angeles this week, several people asked an interesting question: how did you get started with the book?

This made me think back to when we did get started, in December of 2006. And I think we did this a little differently from how most books get written.

We didn't start with an outline, or even an idea. We started with a need.

Charlene and I sat in a conference room together with a PC connected to a projector and, together, composed what we thought of as the back-of-the-book copy. You know, what you expect to pick up and read to tell you what the book is good for. That copy described, in fairly vivid terms, what the Groundswell trend was, and how the book would help you to deal with it.

In fact, it was in writing that copy that the word "Groundswell" arose. It was in the middle of a sentence, but Charlene and I both started looking at it and said, "Hmm, that's a powerful word. We could make that the title." So we did.

That marketing copy appeared again in the proposal we showed to publishers including the one we picked, Harvard Business press. They liked it. And it drove the whole project.

I'm reminded of the scene in Woody Allen's "Sleeper" in which he purports to be preparing to clone a person from his nose. He puts the nose on a person-shaped table in the nose position and says something like "we're going to clone him right up under the nose here." We, essentially, built the book up right under the marketing copy.

Engineers will recognize this process as being like creating a functional spec before writing software or building hardware.

In the end, we feel the book did meet the promises we made 17 months ago. And the marketing copy on the book flap is almost identical to what we wrote back then.

On a project of this intensity it sure helped to know where we were going. Clarity of purpose not only inspires you, it inspires your coworkers and and partners. Try it yourself. Next time you are developing a new product, write the marketing copy first, not the product description. It will keep you honest.

P.S. Here is the marketing copy in its final form:

A groundswell is rising. Are you ready?

Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and recutting your commercials on YouTube. They're defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomon -- the groundswell -- that has created a permanent shift in the way the world works. Most companies see it as a threat.

You can see it as an opportunity.

In Groundswell two top analysts from Forrester Research show you how to turn the force of customers connecting to your own advantage. With twenty-five vivid cases from around the world -- from health care to retail to consumer goods to business services -- Li and Bernoff show how leading companies are gaining insights, generating revenue, saving money, and energizing their own customers. Whether you're in marketing, research, support, sales, development, or even running the whole enterprise, there's targeted advice here for you, backed up with real-world ROI to prove it works.

Groundswell is based on hard consumer data and experience with dozens of companies. You'll see how the marketers of Procter & Gamble proved that subtle marketing within a community was four times as effective as television, how Best Buy taps into the intelligence of over a thousands of its own employees with its own social network, how Dell has transformed itself by embracing customer insights in nearly every department, and how a South African winery boosted its sales tenfold by tapping into the power of bloggers, YouTube, Facebook, and every other tool of the social technology arsenal.

You can't ignore this trend. Read Groundswell and learn how to ride the wave. There's no going back.

by Josh Bernoff

Groundswell is now in stock and shipping from Amazon.com and BN.com.

We'd be quite pleased if you buy a copy.

Please let us know what you think. Contribute a review to Amazon or BN's sites -- reviews make a big difference to buyers (as we discuss in Chapter 7).

See you in the groundswell.

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

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 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

I admit it. I am an unabashed fan of Seth Godin. So I was delighted to get a chance to sit in on his Webcast preview of his speech at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago.

Here is what you get with Seth: a mashup of massive quantities of common sense with a nice view of the future. There is so little common sense in visionaries, and so little vision in sensible people, that this is unique. Even moreso, it allows him to come up with a nearly endless series of "oh yeah" kind of insights on his blog.

Now the fun part about this is you have to renew it every year or two, so he can come out with a new book every year or two. This time it's Meatball Sundae.

Seth ran down (no kidding) 14 trends that people need to know about now. They include things like direct communication between producers and consumers, amplification of individuals' voices, short attention spans, the long tail, and the shift from How Many to Who as the important question for marketers.

Listed out like that, these seem like platitudes. But what's available from Seth is all this stuff in a nice package that makes so much sense even a CEO can embrace it.

His main point, which is that grafting these new ideas onto an old-world thinking company doesn't work, is important. A meatball sundae is "the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas." And having tried to evangelize these ideas within corporations, I have seen this over and over.

I think I know the cure. First they should probably get his book. (Ours won't be out until May).

And the second is to pick a small social project -- a blog, a presence on Facebook, a community -- and make it work. Successful projects spawn more, which creates change. And that is how to avoid ending up with a meatball sundae.

Tags: ses07, Seth Godin, Meatball Sundae, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff

We are now within spitting distance of handing in the manuscript of Groundswell to our editors at HBS Press. (Which means about 6 months until you can hold it in your hand.)

With Charlene's encouragement, it is now heavily footnoted (or perhaps more accurately, endnoted). This means when you see anything of interest in the text, we'll let you know how to connect with it online. Stats, articles, blog posts, discussion forums, the whole works. It is after all a book about people on the Internet, why not fill it with links?

The problem with this of course, is that URLs are long and ugly. So in a fit of inspiration, we've replaced nearly all the URLs in the endnotes with tinyurl addresses that will be easy for readers to type in on their on. Neatly solves the digital -> analog -> digital problem that books have.

From poking around a bit I see that tinyurl is blocked in some contexts because sometimes spammers use it to hide their real addresses. We of course, will only send you to interesting sites, some of which are filled with nasty language (it is, after all, real people talking) but none of which are bad for your computer.

So here's my question. Can anybody see a problem with using tinyurl addresses in our book, and if so, what is it? 'Cause if you out there can't find anything wrong with it, it sure looks like a good idea to me. What are the risks?

(Here's a nice David Pogue post on the topic with some interesting comments, and if you click and it doesn't work, tell me, because it's a tinyurl of course.)

Tags: tinyurl, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff

Based on the schedules that the publishing industry lives on, we need to complete a draft of Groundswell very soon. Even so, I believe we are delivering material with a high degree of quality. I thought I'd take a moment to talk about how writing a book is different now -- better, faster, more global, more collaborative -- and the technologies I use that make this all possible. This is a highly personal description from a guy who started using computers 25 years ago -- and a measure of how an old guy uses and doesn't use some of the better new technologies.

1. Collaboration with a wiki. Charlene and I have put as much as we can into a SocialText wiki. It's contains research interviews, title ideas, the latest table of contents, the elements of the proposal that got us here, everything. I just added a page which tracks all the chapters as they move through various writing, editing, and review stages. We don't generally use the Wiki to write the chapters -- the drafts still move back and forth by email, partly since SocialText can't quite handle all the formatting flexibility that MS Word can -- but copies of the chapters do live there. A bicoastal collaboration needs a wiki. We also share it with other interested parties including my boss, Charlene's boss, and our editor at HBS Press.

2. This blog for testing ideas. I can't count the ways that a blog helps. When we think we have a good idea, it goes up here. For example, the five goals of a company for social computing, which became the core of the book. We put our outline up here for your review. That post became extremely useful, because I reference it in every email I send to people I'm trying to influence or interview. People doing interesting things contact us because of the blog. And I'm not even getting to the uses of the blog for promotion, which will start after the book is written, but well before it's published.

3. Del.icio.us for gathering research documents. Every story, vendor, YouTube video, and anything else on the Web gets tossed into the del.icio.us bucket. I rarely used to bookmark things -- now I bookmark everything. These sites are even classified with our own proprietary set of tags that indicate what chapter they relate to. (We'll share this when the book is closer to done -- right now it's proprietary.) I don't believe we could have written this book without del.icio.us.

4. Email for everything -- but highly personalized. Every single contact in this book -- and there will be hundreds and hundreds -- will have been made by email. I'm sure you're not surprised that I email Charlene 10 times a day and do a few IM conversations, but I'm talking about making introductions by email. If I need to introduce myself to somebody, I send a personalized email describing the book in one sentence, linking to the blog post about the book, and telling them what I want and making it clear I have researched them and know what they are about -- and I frequently get a response the same day. This email might take 15 minutes to write, but it's worth it -- it's the opposite of mass emailings, highly personal and personalized.  (I recently invited a CEO to speak at our Forum in October and got an affirmative response within two hours -- astounding our events team.) Where do I get the email addresses? Forrester has a database that may or may not help. Easier is finding the PR email address on a company's site. Often somebody I know, knows it. Sometimes I use Zoominfo's PowerSearch. And sometimes, if I know the email address of somebody else at the company, I guess based on that format. That actually works -- recently got the CEO of an Italian company to get back to me that way.

At first I had big spreadsheets full of contacts I was pursuing on Google docs but I've found a better way. I just flag all incoming and outcoming mail that relates to contacts. The yellow flag means I've pinged somebody and need them to get back to me. Then I just check all those flags when I'm in followup mode. It's not ACT, but it works for me!

5. A big monitor in a quiet office. When I am ensconced in my home office with my high-speed Internet, VOIP phone line, home network, and big flat monitor, I am highly productive. The big monitor has made a big difference -- I no longer feel cramped and squeezed by my laptop screen, and I frequently have one thing up on the laptop (like a Web site, or edits I need to address, or an interview) while I write on the big monitor. When I'm not at home, my productivity goes down. My home office, while it's in the basement, also has a window out onto my lawn, a fireplace, a hardwood floor, big whiteboards filled with the stuff I'm working on and my kids' artwork, and quick access to the kitchen and my family when I need to decompress. Makes all the hours possible.

6. A phone line that follows me anywhere. Forrester has an Avaya phone system with a cool little feature -- an Internet app I can run on my laptop that turns any phone into my office phone. At my home office, I can call Japan using Forrester's phone system, conference people together, transfer them to other Forrester extensions -- everything I can do at my desk. And if I go anywhere else, I can do this with any phone line -- my mobile, Forrester's Foster City office, or my parents' house. People see my caller ID as if I were calling from Forrester, and my voicemail is one click away. I find this far better than giving everyone my mobile phone number.

7. Firefox and Netvibes. I use Firefox for everything possible, because the tabbed browsing and the bookmarklets make it very efficient for me. I cannot survive without tabbed browsing since I am typically browsing 4 or 8 things at once to build a chapter. (I know IE has tabbed browsing now but it's too late, I'm happy with Firefox.) I use Netvibes to track a surprisingly small number of blogs including Micropersuasion, The Church Of The Customer, The Long Tail, Blog Maverick, and Seth Godin. I also have up TechCrunch, GigaOm, TechMeme, and TechDirt, but they post so frequently that I don't read them unless something catches my eye.

There are lots of other tools from Technorati to Google Search but we all use them so why even bother talking about them?

Interestingly, I do not read email on a mobile phone -- I have a positively anachronistic Moto Razr -- I don't twitter, and I don't IM except with other Forrester analysts. And I don't check email every 10 minutes. These activities are interruptions for the most part and interfere with writing and interviews I need to do. If I had to rank what I use most -- and what has changed the way I work most since I became a writer -- it would be personalized email, del.icio.us, tabbed browsing, and that big monitor.

What are your favorite productivity tools, and what tools waste the most of your time?

Tags: del.icio.us, SocialText, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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By Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

Well, it’s not out yet. But we’re excited – we have a publisher! Harvard Business School Press will be publishing Groundswell in Spring of 2008.

We couldn’t be more pleased. First, the HBS Press imprint stands for a high degree of quality around the world. And second, we’re very excited to be working with the quality editorial team they’ve assembled for us.

Third, HBS Press shares our enthusiasm for tapping the groundswell itself to help research and promote the book, from collecting and vetting ideas on this blog to connecting with all of you to help with promotion as we publish.

For more on the book, click here.

To join our mailing list for information on the book, send an email to groundswell @ forrester.com.

Gotta go . . . back to writing!

Tags: Forrester Research, Groundswell

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By Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

There really is a book project behind this blog. We’ve been researching case studies and concepts like Social Technographics and now we're ready to solicit publishers.

What will set this book apart is 1) Lots of great consumer data, 2) global case studies with real people, 3) our access as Forrester analysts -- and our ability to promote a book like this, and 4) a focus on numbers, specifically, return on investment.

Now you, dear blog reader, get a preview. If you like it and think you’d like to get a copy, email us at groundswell@forrester.com and we’ll put you on our list. (Sorry we can't give 'em away for free -- but we're creating a list of those who are interested so we can let you when the book is available and where we'll be speaking about it.) And if you think something’s missing or you have any comments at all, just add your comments on this post or email us.

We've got an agent and a list of publishers waiting to see this, but hey, we're open. If you're a publisher of business books, contact us at jbernoff@forrester.com or cli@forrester.com. Or if you think you know the right publisher, tell him or her to have a look and send us an email.

Here's the outline.

Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies

Introduction

Part 1. Understanding the Groundswell

Chapter 1. Why the Groundswell -- and why now?

• Social forces and technology
• Power comes from people connecting
• Why companies have so much trouble with the groundswell

Chapter 2. Groundswell technologies and the future

• The technologies of the groundswell
• Blogs and monitoring, social networks, user-generated media, wikis, ratings/reviews, virtual worlds, widgets

Chapter 3. The Social Technographics Profile

• The participation ladder: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, and Spectators
• How we use the Social Technographics Profile
• How social technographics varies by age, by nation, by brand

Part 2. Tapping the Groundswell

Chapter 4. Strategies for tapping the Groundswell

• The threat and the promise
• Jujutsu -- turning social phenomena to your advantage
• Different urgencies for different companies -- the social technographics test
• What’s your objective: Listening, Speaking, Energizing, Supporting, or Embracing?

Chapter 5. Listening to the Groundswell

• The Groundswell is talking, are you listening?
• Ways to listen: Monitoring, private communities, ratings and reviews
• Case studies: private community, brand monitoring
• ROI of listening
• What you should do

Chapter 6. Speaking to the Groundswell

• Ready to speak? Are you ready to listen, too?
• Ways to speak: Blogs, Social Networks, and Communities
• Case studies: blogs, participation in social networks, community
• ROI of speaking
• What you should do

Chapter 7. Energizing the Groundswell

• Energizing the base
• Techniques for energizing enthusiasts
• Case studies: ratings and reviews, communities
• ROI of energizing
• What you should do

Chapter 8. Supporting the Groundswell

• Users supporting users -- and money saved
• Case study: blogs, Wikis
  
• ROI of supporting
• What you should do

Chapter 9. Embracing the Groundswell

• Making your community collaborators into your product
• Case study: embracing with communities
• ROI of embracing
• What you should do

Part 3. How The Groundswell Transforms

Chapter 10. Media Transformation

• Roll your own media: Wikis, Digg, YouTube and del.icio.us
• Media case studies
• The future of media

Chapter 11. The Politics Of Participation

• Case study: government and presidential campaigns
• The future of politics

Chapter 12. The Groundswell within your company

• Why social computing is relevant to companies
• Employees as a social force
• Command and control vs. the Groundswell
• What it means for corporations: IT and HR
• What it means for the CEO

Part 4. The Future of the Groundswell

Chapter 13. The Groundswell around the world

• Case study: Brazil
• Case study: Korea
• Case study: France

Chapter 14. The next generation of the Groundswell

• What happens when Generation Y gets older?
• Social forces vs. institutional forces
• The social world of 2018: disaggregated, collaborative, and fluid

Tags: Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff

Seth Godin says you should buy and read business books. Shockingly enough, I agree.

Yes, they are indeed the cheapest training you can get.

The thing I find interesting is the high degree of variability. There are three axes on which you can evaluate a business book:

1. Ideas. Does it have good ideas? A book without ideas is a catalog. May be good stuff in there, but it's hard to remember.

2. Real-world examples. Godin calls some of these books "overwritten brochures." Yup. It takes real research, which is work, to get examples to back up your ideas. One of my younger colleagues asked me today if the book was already written. If it was just words, sure, we could be done by now. It's the research that takes the time, but makes the book relevant.

3. Readability. Is it enjoyable to read? If not, I can see why people have trouble getting through it -- you should eat your vegetables, but not everybody wants to.

Many books do one or two of these well. Very few do all three. To change the world you need all three -- and changing the world, or at least how people think, is what makes a book catch fire.

The Tipping Point, The Long Tail, The Ultimate Question, and just about anything by Seth Godin are good on all three and they sell like mad. In fact, even if your examples are weak, if your storytelling is strong (and you're good at promoting) you'll do well.

All Charlene and I want is to be this good. A modest ambition.

by Josh Bernoff

We thought it was time to give you an update on Groundswell and how you can be a part of it.

As you'll recall, Groundswell is not just this blog, but a book we are working on. Groundswell is about winning strategies in a world transformed by social technologies.

How do we find these winning strategies? Despite what you may have heard or imagined, we don't just make them up. We research them. This research is based in part on the extensive, global consumer surveys Forrester does, a program we call Technographics. But there's a more important, essential ingredient.

You.

The book will be crammed full of case studies from organizations that succeeded through embracing consumer technologies. While we bump into quite a few of these in our interactions with clients and our research, with this post I'd like to reach out and ask you tell us about what you're doing.

We're especially interested in projects that have:

• A good story about how you got started and kept going.
• Real business results you can speak about. (Successes are great, but we'd also like to hear about projects that flopped or haven't succeeded yet, too.)
• Real people involved in the project that we can speak with.

And in case you are worried about the public nature of sharing with us, we can keep these examples confidential until the book is published some time next year.

So send us an email. Click here for Josh, here for Charlene. And be a part of the Groundswell.

The world is changing. And we’re not going to sit by and watch. We’re not just going to document what we see. We’re seeking to understand what’s happening, really understand it. And to help you to deal with it.

The change goes by a lot of different names. Forrester Research has called it social computing. Others call it the Social Web, or social networking. In the Valley people talk about Web 2.0, meaning both the technologies emerging on the net and how people use them.

In this blog, and the book that will spring from it, we call it the Groundswell – a spontaneous movement of people connecting, using online tools, taking charge of their own experience, and getting what they need – information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power – from each other. This groundswell crosses industries – in retail, it looks like eBay; in media, it’s Digg, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Agoravox; in finance, it’s loans from Prosper. Within corporations, employees are redesigning how they work together – management can only hang on for dear life. This groundswell is coming to your industry, your company, your government, your church – at a rapidly increasing pace.

For institutions that have become accustomed to wielding power, the Groundswell is terrifying. Brands spend tens of millions of dollars to define themselves, only to have bloggers and YouTubers eat away at that foundation. Media companies see reporting and creative edifices built over decades supplanted by ill-mannered bloggers, peer-to-peer file sharing, and remixes that treat copyrights like waste paper. Corporations find their employees collaborating in news ways, creatively out of the control of management. Is there a way forward through this chaos?

We believe there is, and we'll prove it. We promise to identify the economics of the Groundswell, defining how it affects businesses and developing metrics you can use. We will look everywhere to identify the strategies that work in the groundswell - collecting them, examining them, classifying them, and making them available to you to use with your companies and your customers. One key role of this blog is to become a meeting place for people developing those strategies, so we can take advantage of our own collective wisdom.

We will help you master the jujitsu of turning the Groundswell to your advantage – giving up power, but in the process gaining customers, loyalty, relevance, and the knowledge to succeed in this new world. Whether you're a marketer or a manager, a media company or an educator, we'll refine for you the strategies that can turn the groundswell to your advantage.

This project is a collaboration between two people, supported by Forrester Research. Charlene Li has, for the last seven years, been Forrester’s analyst dedicated to technologies like blogs, podcasts, wikis, and the whole trend we call social computing. Josh Bernoff is a Forrester analyst who spent the last eleven years analyzing trends like file sharing and digital video recorders that are transforming media. Together we are discovering the entrepreneurs, the technologies, and the ordinary people who make up the groundswell. In this blog, we invite you to join us in this exploration, bring us your insights and your criticism, to make the book we’re building great.

Tags: social computing, bernoff, Charlene Li, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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Happy New Year! Although just barely two weeks into it, it already feels....well, not quite old but more like "broken in".

Before you read too much further, don't think that "new adventures" means that I'm leaving either Forrester or this blog. I'm thoroughly enjoying both but I'm going to be up to something new this year as well.

I'm going to write a book.

There. I'm now committed! And it's a huge commitment, so some people think I'm absolutely crazy to be doing this while holding down a full time job and raising a family. But I have a secret weapon in my arsenal -- a co-author.

Josh Bernoff has been my colleague at Forrester for almost eight years and we've collaborated on countless research projects together. He's smart, a gifted writer, blogger, and most importantly for me, VERY organized. Special thanks go to Chris Anderson for inspiration -- I had lunch with him last summer right before "The Long Tail" was published and he shared that a writing assistant was very helpful in writing his book. That got me to thinking that I could actually pull this off.

Then I realized that Josh wanted to devote his full time to writing and I thought I had hit pay dirt -- here was an opportunity to have not just a writing assistant, but a full collaborator and partner, someone who can push me beyond meaningless platitudes to understand, interpret, and share what all this means. I will continue as an analyst at Forrester, with my ongoing research and writing contributing to the book. Josh will be spending his entire time researching and writing the book.

So why write a book? As a thinker and writer, I've enjoyed two wonderful outlets thus far -- Forrester's syndicated reports and this blog. But neither allow me to explore the full depth and scope of the social computing phenomenon. I feel in my gut that this is something much bigger than individual technololgies like blogs or widgets -- we're in the midst of a groundswell of change that will impact all aspects of our lives. In my daily work with companies, I often feel I'm explaining an alien world to these executives and managers -- it just operates on a totally different plane. My hope is that the discipline and format of a book will focus and pull together the many different perspectives out there and make sense of this groundswell for our readers

Josh and I are off an running with this project. But we can't do it alone. I invite you to contribute your ideas, your criticisms, and most importantly, your inspiration on our blog, "Groundswell" at blogs.forrester.com/groundswell. I can't tell you how often your comments and emails provide the impetus to dig deeper into subjects and keep me focused on what's important out there.

Update: I was asked what the difference is between a writing assistant, co-author and ghostwriter. A writing assistant is just that -- an assistant who helps with the writing process. This can vary from someone who helps with background research and organization to writing some of the sections. But the ideas, the essence, and soul of the book comes from the author.

Co-authors share together in the writing and thinking process -- "Freakonomics" by Steven B. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is a good example (both the book and the blog are inspirations for us.) is a good example.

And a ghostwriter is someone who writes the book for someone with no acknowledgment -- but usually for a decent sum of money!

(Updated May 1, 2007)

The world is changing. And we’re not going to sit by and watch. We’re not just going to document what we see. We’re seeking to understand what’s happening, really understand it. And to help you to deal with it.

In this blog, and the book that will spring from it, we call it this change the Groundswell – a spontaneous movement of people connecting, using online tools, taking charge of their own experience, and getting what they need – information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power – from each other.

The book is called Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies and it will be published in 2008. The blog is where we are developing the ideas that surround and support the book, with your help.

This groundswell crosses industries – in retail, it looks like eBay; in media, it’s Digg, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Agoravox; in finance, it’s loans from Prosper. Within corporations, employees are redesigning how they work together – management can only hang on for dear life. This groundswell is coming to your industry, your company, your government, your church – at a rapidly increasing pace.

For institutions that have become accustomed to wielding power, the Groundswell is terrifying. Brands spend tens of millions of dollars to define themselves, only to have bloggers and YouTubers eat away at that foundation. Media companies see reporting and creative edifices built over decades supplanted by ill-mannered bloggers, peer-to-peer file sharing, and remixes that treat copyrights like waste paper. Corporations find their employees collaborating in news ways, creatively out of the control of management. Is there a way forward through this chaos?

We believe there is, and we'll prove it. We promise to identify the economics of the Groundswell, defining how it affects businesses and developing metrics you can use. We will look everywhere to identify the strategies that work in the groundswell - collecting them, examining them, classifying them, and making them available to you to use with your companies and your customers. One key role of this blog is to become a meeting place for people developing those strategies, so we can take advantage of our own collective wisdom.

We will help you master the jujitsu of turning the Groundswell to your advantage – giving up power, but in the process gaining customers, loyalty, relevance, and the knowledge to succeed in this new world. Whether you're a marketer or a manager, a media company or an educator, we'll refine for you the strategies that can turn the groundswell to your advantage.

This project is a collaboration between two people, supported by Forrester Research. Charlene Li has, for the last seven years, been Forrester’s analyst dedicated to technologies like blogs, podcasts, wikis, and the whole trend we call social computing. Josh Bernoff is a Forrester analyst who spent the last eleven years analyzing trends like file sharing and digital video recorders that are transforming media. Together we are discovering the entrepreneurs, the technologies, and the ordinary people who make up the groundswell. In this blog, we invite you to join us in this exploration, bring us your insights and your criticism, to make the book we’re building great.

History of this blog

This was blog started in September 2004 by Charlene Li (bio) as a way to extend her research at Forrester Research. The goals were to provide more timely, personal insights into the impact of technology on media and marketing and to engage blog readers in a conversation about topics ranging from search and corporate blogging policies to emerging technologies like RSS, podcasting, and widgets.

This year, Charlene decided to embark on a new adventure -- to write a book. She enlisted the help of her colleague, Josh Bernoff (bio), who is also a long-time Forrester analyst. This book is now authored by both Charlene and Josh, with much of the content related to the ongoing research for the book. Charlene will continue to write on topics related to her ongoing research that isn't necessarily related to the book.

Comment policy

We welcome your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, and of course, criticisms. Comments on this blog are posted immediately, but we do read every single one of them and will delete comments that are vulgar, defamatory, clearly spam, or in general, not contributing to the ongoing discussion. We may unfortunately be forced to close individual posts to new comments because of the influx of spam.

At any point, we welcome your comments via email -- feel free to reach out to Charlene or Josh directly.

Subscribing to this blog

You can receive new content via email or through an RSS reader. If you'd like to learn more about RSS, please visit the RSS page on Forrester's Web site.

Code of ethics
As readers of this blog, you can expect that we will:

This is in addition to our adherence to Forrester's Integrity Policy.

Conflicts of interest
Charlene is married to Come Lague, who is a partner in Nueva Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Nueva Ventures has investments that conflict with Charlene's research areas. Specifically, these investments are in the areas of social search, click fraud, and personalized music. When companies with direct investments by Nueva Ventures are discussed on this blog, they will be disclosed.

Both Charlene and Josh provide advice and consulting through Forrester to many of the companies mentioned in this blog. Because of the frequency of these engagements -- and also because of Forrester's non-disclosure agreements with these companies -- we will not disclose these specific engagements.   

Neither Charlene nor Josh have direct personal investments in any companies mentioned on this blog.

Additional information

Charlene Li's bio
Charlene Li's recent research
Josh Bernoff's bio
Josh Bernoff's recent research