This isn't social technology, but indulge me. I used to be a TV analyst. And this is big news for marketers.

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday decided to let stand a ruling that Cablevision can go forward with its virtual DVR product.

Let me explain what this is, and what it means for marketers.

Cablevision's service works just like a DVR, but uses storage on the company's VOD servers instead of a hard-drive in your home. So when you ask to record "Hung" on HBO, the company makes a recording on its servers (and needs only one recording to serve all the people with the same request). Works just like a DVR otherwise.

When Cablevision told me about this product in 2006 (in advance of the general announcement) I told them "you will get sued." They knew that, of course. And it has taken 3 years to get the legal issue resolved, which is fast as these things go.

Here's why this product is more than just a DVR with no disk.

1. They don't have to put limits on disk space. Since everyone is sharing the same recordings, there's no reason to limit you to 100 or 1,000 hours of recorded content, in high definition. No limits.

2. Retroactive recording. No more "damn, I wish I'd thought of recording that." They could, in theory, allow you to ask to record something that's already passed. Or when you find out about a program on episode 4, why not ask to see the previous 3 episodes.

3. Un-delete. Assume deleted programs hang around for 12 months. When you ask to delete something, they just take it off your recorded programs list. If you want it back later, just ask to see it again.

None of these features have been announced, and some might be subject to further suits. But it's possible that, within two years, all of these features will be available to all digital customers, not just on Cablevision, but on Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, and the TV services of AT&T, and Verizon. Why? Because they can do this, and DirecTV and Dish Networks can't. And differentiation from satellite is a big problem for cable operators.

If you're an advertiser, this means a whole lot more customers are about to get DVR service. Not one at a time when they upgrade. En masse, system by system. If cable is smart, they will give everybody a free level of this service, as a taste, and then encourage them to upgrade (the "Freemium" model).

Commercials will become optional for many more people, and on nearly every program.

If you advertise on TV, this could be a problem.

It's all part of the transition to video available on any device, any time. Omnivideo, you might say.

I'd also say it's time to figure out how to make your commercials more engaging and interactive, on those same digital television systems. Can you Canoe? Better learn how soon.

(Also published on Adage.com).

As I ponder what's so hard about social technologies for marketers, I'm reminded of the old joke about what the Grateful Dead concert fans said when the drugs wore off ("Holy cow! It's country music!"). Because I've been having my own drugs-wore-off moment about social technology lately and it goes like this:

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook -- yup, it's just another communications channel. So what is it about this channel that gets everybody's knickers in a twist?

We know about channels where you talk. We know about advertising, we know about PR, we know about direct mail and email and promotions.

We also know about channels where you listen. We call this research (surveys, focus groups) and customer service.

The problem is simple. Marketers don't understand channels where you have to talk and listen at the same time. Like one of those maddening not-full-duplex speakerphones where you can't interrupt somebody, this is what drives customers nuts. Think about it. None of those talking channels allows a response. None of those listening channels encourages actual feedback from the company.

The marketing industry's idea of a two-way communication is to put an 800 number or a web address in an ad and take orders.

This couldn't be more obvious than with email. Your company has a chance to turn its email list into a two-way communication. Except that most mass emails from companies are "do not reply". "We want to talk to you," they say. "But we don't want to hear back from you. Unless you want to place an order, and if so click here."

It's all in the name of efficiency. The people in charge of talking are in the marketing department. The people in charge of listening are in the research or service or sales department. They hardly ever talk to each other, let alone have full-duplex conversations with customers.

This won't fly in social technology because the minute you talk, people expect you to listen. And if you start to listen, you'll be tempted to talk. It's a full-duplex channel that befuddles one-way-marketers.

I won't ask you to reorganize your company to fix this, since I know that's impossible for most of you. All I'm going to ask is this. If you want to start any social technology activity, make sure you've got people in place to listen to the responses, and that you can respond to what they say. If you're blogging, you (or some of your minions) need to monitor the comments and respond. If you're Twittering, same thing. If you're present in a social network, or start a community, or ask for ideas from people, you'd better have a staff in place to respond.

This is so darn simple, but it will cause profound changes over time. Your company will seem more human. You'll learn a few things about how you're perceived, and maybe come up with a few new product ideas. And maybe you'll learn to get along with those folks in the call center. Get started. It's a good thing to learn, being conversational.

By Josh Bernoff, from my Marketing News column.

Social technologies take a while to build, but last a long time. Think about the effort it takes to get people reading your blog, following your Twitter feed, viewing your YouTube videos, joining your community, or friending your Facebook page. They all start with zero viewers, but the more they grow, the more powerful they become.

Ad campaigns move at a faster pace. More importantly, they have a beginning and an end. You rent a chance to get some attention for a few months, then you see whether you moved the needle.

Since advertising people often get responsibility for social elements of marketing, this creates a fundamental disconnect. Marketers who tap into these two forms of communication can get whipsawed – the social builds too slowly, and the campaign ends too quickly, to make it easy to synchronize them. Even when they do succeed, there’s huge waste. If you’ve assembled 100,000 customers into a community behind your brand, what happens when you’re done with them? Send them a thank you email and say good bye? That’s a tragic waste.

The answer, as my colleague, Sean Corcoran, discovered in the research behind his report “Using Social Applications In Ad Campaigns,” means thinking of social fans as an asset that you can build with a campaign and then tap over and over again. To do this, you must also make sure you connect with and feed them between campaigns, to keep them interested.

For example, Starbucks has 1.2 million fans on Facebook. So when it launched its first instant coffee, VIA Ready brew, those brand loyalists got to tag whether they liked it, and to share it with their friends. And H&R Block took its 2008 tax-time promotions on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter and turned them into 1,700 Facebook fans and 2,300 Twitter followers that they regularly check in with as tax season approaches.

Marty Collins, a social marketer at Microsoft, has figured this out. She supported Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign late last year with short-term social tools, so people could contribute their own content to the campaign. But now, Marty spends 75% of her time with continuous online discussions to make sure the company has an engaged audience to tap into for the future.

Here’s how to master the rhythm. First of all, you need a launch plan. Sometimes, this means identifying key fans and tapping into them early, so they can help you build a community, spread buzz, or make the contributions that will attract more people to your offering. It may also mean starting the online portions of your campaign early, so it has time to grow. If you must start your online social campaign concurrent with your other ads, be aware that most of the impact will come weeks or months into the campaign, when the momentum and word-of-mouth has time to build.

Second, during the campaign, pay close attention to customer participation. Social applications need fuel. You may need to plan events over a period of weeks or months to keep people coming back. And don’t be afraid to make mid-course corrections in your social campaign, based on what’s working and what’s not. Most importantly, your company has to participate. Since you’re tapping into brand fans, the feedback from you is the fuel that will keep things going. You can’t spin up an online community and expect it to continue on its own.

Finally, you’ll need an exit strategy. What will you do when the campaign winds down? If you’ve named your Twitter account after your ad campaign, you could have a problem – maybe it’s better to name it after something more permanent, like your brand. And do you have the budget to keep the community going in a maintenance mode? You’d better budget for that, because this community could well generate the ideas for your next campaign.

In the end, companies that have built up fan bases this way will have an advantage. For one thing, as this trend picks up, the socially active consumers will be getting serenaded by every brand in America. In this environment, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Scion are all direct competitors – better to sign them up to your dance card before another brand comes along to romance them.

Of course the real challenge here is for agencies, who tend to get paid on their short-term efforts. Partly because of this short term focus, clients are reaching out to digital agencies like imc² and PR firms like Edelman and Fleishman Hillard to build social applications, often keeping them out of the hands of traditional ad firms. Agencies who wish to play here will have to adapt to these long-term platforms, which means a new set of skills.

They’ll also have to find ways to get paid for efforts that pay off in the long-term. To that end, marketers ought to consider paying by the number and enthusiasm of fans recruited, rather than by the impression. That’s the only way the agency, the campaign, and the social media will ever end up in sync.

by Josh Bernoff

As a young man I was a science fiction fan. Not just a reader, a fan who went to conventions (“cons”), gathered in weekly or monthly meetings and argued arcana, sought autographs and bought fan art.

Among fans there was a ubiquitous argument. Many believed fervently that Fandom Is A Way Of Life (FIAWOL). Their lives revolved around their fan activities. Others responded that Fandom Is Just A God Damn Hobby (FIJAGDH). They loved to be fans, but their lives had other things going on, too.

FIAWOL types had jobs, but often had trouble getting ahead since their attention was elsewhere. Unless, of course, your job was in publishing or bookselling, but those jobs paid poorly. FIJAGDH believers were more likely to get ahead. They were also more likely to drift out of the fannish orbit. As I did.

As I see people immersing themselves in social technology I am reminded of this argument. Are you twittering all the time? Blogging every thought? Keeping up with every discussion about your topic? If this is your full-time job, you're like the fans who landed the jobs in publishing -- good for you. If not, your boss, your coworkers, and maybe your customers are wondering why you're not fully there, even when you're with them. If you're working at Facebook maybe social is a way of life (SIAWOL?). Not sure if that applies if you're at Best Buy or Accenture.

I'm not arguing you should give up social media. Staying connected is terrific. I'm blogging, twittering, facebooking and emailing (yes, that too) frequently. But it's not a way of life, it's a useful communications tool. (Would you ever say "email is a way of life?") I love to connect in these social worlds. I also like to take a moment to step back and think once in a while, instead of being caught up in the whirlpool at every moment. And whether it's a client engagement, a briefing, an event, or just a discussion in the hallway, I try to be fully present. People seem to appreciate it, and I learn things from those other interactions, just as I learn them within the groundswell.

Do you have trouble with this balance? How do you sort it out? I'm avidly interested in your answers.

Photo by Time Portal via Flickr

by Josh Bernoff

Many have said that Groundswell is a bible for companies using social technology. (Yes, I know there is a book that came out after ours called The Social Media Bible but indulge me for a moment here.) With apologies to my more religious readers (it's a metaphor, people), here are some qualities of the bible that I hope Groundswell shares.

• It helps a lot of people, so it sells a lot. (We're about 6 billion copies behind the other bible.)
• It’s full of useful advice (e.g. “Thou shalt not kill.” "Listen first before engaging the groundswell.")
• People get inspired by it and tell others to read it.
• It attempts to be the definitive authority on the topic.
• It uses stories to communicate messages.
• While it's useful by itself, it also creates an opportunity for people (priests, analysts) to spread and interpret the word further.

If you ever wanted to know what I'm doing next, here it is: I'd like to write another bible. We're looking at possible topics right now inside Forrester. They will be important, groundbreaking ideas for business; they won't necessarily be about social technology (since that bible's already written).

Assume any bible I write has the qualities I describe here. Keeping in mind that any future bible won't be out until spring 2010, what sort of bible would you like to read? Think big.

Photo from Robotlab, 2007, www.robotlab.de/bios/bible.htm , via Gastev

by Josh Bernoff

I've just come back from 11 days in Madrid, Rome, and Milan, where I met an incredible variety of people at client meetings, tweetups, press briefings, and every other imaginable way. Since you couldn’t be by my side, I thought I’d share what I did and what I learned.

I knew from out data that social technology is spreading rapidly through Europe, but I was surprised to learn that American social networks were catching fire – the Spaniards told me they’re all in Linked In, while in Italy the populace is rapidly embracing Facebook. And corporate interest in social technologies is similar to the US, although fewer companies have gotten to that point.

Before the trip. Forrester sales and consulting set me up in each city. But I had to initiate the blogger events myself. Learned: You can count on the kindness of strangers (friends, followers), just check them out online first.

Visit to Telefónica. Telefónica is one of the largest communications companies in the world; their headquarters is like a city, including an underground mall. I talked to them about use of social technologies for collaboration in the largest conference room I’ve ever seen. Learned: When you have 250,000 employees spread over many countries, social applications for employees are a huge deal.

Groundswell speech at the Center for Innovation of BBVA, a large Spanish bank. Talked to Web 2.0 experts, bloggers, and reporters in two sessions. They didn’t ask many questions, but wrote quite a bit. Learned: Don’t mistake silence for lack of understanding, especially when working with people for whom English is not their first language.

Workshop with staff at BBVA and my colleague Rebecca Jennings. I continue to be impressed with the breadth and depth of BBVA's social technology offerings; this is the most advanced bank in the world when it comes to social technologies. For example, they have built Tú Cuentas a tool customers can use to benchmark their spending against their peers, and Actibva, a financial community. Learned: Once a company gets started with applications, the pace of social applications accelerates. Have seen it here and at Dell, Intuit, Best Buy, and other places.

Dinner with bloggers in Madrid. Learned: When it comes to food, trust the locals.

Meeting with Francisco González, chairman and CEO of BBVA. Learned: It's no coincidence that BBVA is so advanced -- progressive thinking comes from the top. Senior management of an old-world company can be surprisingly insightful when it comes to the future. Keep an eye on this company.

Speech to media company executives for Siemens, in Rome. On the way to the speech, a pigeon bombed my suit, hitting pants, jacket, shirt, and tie. (It had to be aiming for me.) I followed a specialist on body language which made me self-conscious about my hands during the speech, and then my slides malfunctioned. Participants still found it valuable. Learned: When speaking, if you prepare well, trust the material and be confident no matter what. Also: when walking in Rome, wear a broad hat or carry a parasol.

Day of collaboration in Rome with a colleague I’d never met in person before. Learned: If you really want to get to know someone, walk around a strange city together.

Evening with Roman bloggers. One of them turned out to be a freelance writer for the largest Italian business newspaper. Learned: Seek out the influential bloggers wherever you go.

Sightseeing in Rome with Shelly Palmer of Mediabytes. Both of us had been to Rome before, but we found the crypt of the Capuchin monks fascinating. Learned: You can turn anything into a blog post, including dead monk bones.

Evening with Milan bloggers. Milan is a real hotbed of social technology activity; I met fascinating people including the fascinating Funky Professor, who told me about Poken, a social technology pendant for wearing and sharing. I’m eager to learn more.

Visit to the Leonardo da Vinci Museum. I loved this museum, especially some of the displays of technology evolution throughout the ages. And it’s in a beautiful Renaissance building. If you’re in Milan, don’t miss it. Learned: Beautiful useful machines certainly didn’t start with the iPhone. Look at this absolutely gorgeous, ergonomically interesting telegraph machine -- you can bet the operator was in love with it.

Evening event for Italian executives, put on by Google. This event completed the trip and the variety of settings. I’d spoken in a techno-fortress at Telefonica, a remodeled classical building at BBVA, a luxury hotel built over ruins in Rome, and now in Milan I was set up in a totally mod space featuring techno lighting and music. The Milanese executives were too senior to be a twittering crowd, but seemed quite appreciative nonetheless – and my jokes and insights appeared to survive the translation. Now we’ll see if any of them take the plunge. Learned: When speaking to executives in stylish Milan, it pays to get the pigeon poo cleaned off your suit. Also, when on the bill with a piano player, make sure you go first.

We created a new spinoff of Groundswell just for marketers. This new edition includes only chapters 5 (Listening), 6 (Talking), and 7 (Energizing) from the original version. There is also a new introduction that talks about how valuable the groundswell is for marketing in a recession.

Groundswell continues to sell really well, often within Amazon's top 500 books, but we wanted to create this new version for a few reasons.

First, to make it cheaper and easier for marketers to get the book. The book lists for only $18, and is available on Amazon for just $12.24.

Second, this new edition is allowing us to get into new distribution channels like some airport displays, and to reach more people that way.

If you've already bought Groundswell or want the full version, don't bother with this. You already have this content. (Unless you have a fetish for green and yellow books, of course.)

However, if you know a marketer with a short attention span -- or maybe a department of a few hundred of them -- this is the quick way to get them up to speed.

Amber Benson, a strategist at digital marketing agency imc², has also been researching use of social technologies in health care. Since her perspective comes from within the company that developed marketing programs including the groundbreaking alli circles campaign, it's well worth checking out.

You can download the imc² paper "Is Social Media Right For Your Healthcare Brand" from their site. We interviewed Amber and her team for our own pharma research, and her thinking influenced mine, as you'll see from reviewing the paper. We agree that carefully examining the conditions to be treated along dimensions of use and involvement is crucial. For instance, I like their criteria for evaluating the level of investment a community is likely to get from people with a given condition:

Any health care company pursuing a social strategy should give these ideas a thorough review.

While traveling in Rome I took some time to visit the crypt of the Capuchin monks at the Church of Santa Maria della Concezione. My companion was the producer of Mediabytes, Shelly Palmer -- neither of us knew were about to have a very unusual experience.

The Capuchin monks conceived the idea of using the bones of their late colleagues and a few other Romans as a medium of expression. The result is a series of rooms in which the walls are decorated with human bones. I found viewing this creation very strange, quite moving, and more than little creepy.

I guess you would have to call the artist a "sculptor," but what sort of mind can conceive building structures, arches, and even lighting fixtures out of leg bones, pelvises and skulls? There are over 4000 skeletons represented here.

Even as you marvel at the clever decorations on the walls and ceiling, including abstract patterns drawn in vertebrae and a grim reaper whose scythe and scales are made of shoulder blades and skull fragments, part of you is realizing that these were people -- that the art you art seeing was once living, speaking, interacting human being. The art has a purpose, and the purpose is clear, with a placard at the end that says:

Emerging from this strange crypt, I realized that the artists who created it were creating media -- art with a message -- and that this media was made of people. And thinking on this, I realized it holds a strange parallel with what we call "social media," which is also media that's made of people.

The monks could craft their media in whatever form they liked, because the people who became that medium could no longer object. If you want to treat people as media and you have a fixed idea of your message, it's easier if the people are dead. The owners of the skeletons presumably agreed to turn their remains over to the unnamed sculptor to do with as he pleased.

In the social world, the people are as far from dead as you can get. They go their own way, they do their own thing. Sure, you can think of them as a form of media, but there is no editor, no artist, no sculptor that determines the form they take. And any attempt to control that expression will fail, since the media itself will rebel and take what shape it pleases.

That's why "social media" doesn't feel like media to me, and why I don't like the term.

Unlike the bones of the Capuchin monks, the people in social media are available to communicate. Talk to them. Listen to them. Immerse yourself in their needs, wants, desires, and connections. This may not be media, but it is social, and it's far more effective.

Photos: postcards from the church, via Johnny Söderberg on Flickr.

For the third year in a row, we will be recognizing the most effective social technology applications at the Forrester Groundswell Awards.

I have to say, these awards are one of my favorite things. First of all, the people submitting entries really care about the work they did and spreading the word about it. Second, the applications we've gotten the last two years were fantastic -- creative, effective, and clever -- and they make it easier for me to tell the story of the power of social applications. And finally, I think it's great that anyone can win -- whether you're Accenture or Starbucks or a tiny credit union in Alberta, Canada.

So, starting now you're free to submit an entry for the Forrester Groundswell Awards. The submission form is here. If you're going to enter, we strongly recommend that you read the Forrester Groundswell Awards Rules before submitting your entry. You can submit each entry only once, and once submitted, you cannot modify it.

We've added a new twist this year, too. We've divided the categories for the prototypical groundswell objectives (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing) into business-to-consumer and business-to-business. And we've added a new business-to-business category, "spreading," to recognize social applications in which you sell ideas or products to employees of a company, then get them to sell others at that company. We've still got the category for pro-social applications ("social impact") and applications within an enterprise ("managing"). That's 13 categories, folks, so while I expect even more entries than the 150 we received last year, there are more ways to win.

A few key facts to remember.

• Be smart. Read the rules first.
• The entry deadline is September 2, 2009. But the earlier you submit, the more time people will have to review and vote on your work. (If three months is not enough time to prepare, you'll have to wait for next year.)
• On your own site or elsewhere on the Web, create a “My Forrester Groundswell awards submission” page or document describing your application. Also include a single screenshot that represents the application.You'll need to put these into the application.
• Only submit your own work. Agencies and vendors can submit work they do for clients, provided they have obtained permission from the client. (This is your responsibility, please don't embarrass yourself in front of the client by posting without getting permission.)
•  Anything in these submissions becomes on the record. Submissions go live immediately and are open for ratings and reviews.

If you are a winner in the business-to-consumer, social impact, or managing categories, we'll present the award to you in a new, expanded awards ceremony at the Forrester Consumer Forum 2009 in Chicago on October 27 and 28. We'll be having a nice party for all the attendees of that event, so they can meet and learn from the winners. We'll be awarding the B2B awards separately.

Go ahead. Impress us. Enter your application. We're looking forward to it.