Video: Why Social Media scares the Analyst Industry (3 min with Carter Lusher)

Categories: Analyst, Social Media, VideoPosted on January 20th, 2008

In the above video, I met up with Carter at the famous Buck’s at Woodside, a famous restaurant where VCs from nearby Sand Hill road meetup with prospective investors, and entrepreneurs from the tech community. Many a deals have been brokered here.

When I first heard of Carter Lusher, it was when I ran into his fiery blog post when he was the head of analyst relations at HP (read all the comments too). That’s a pretty heavy duty job, as this means that he’s responsible for ‘infuencing the influencers’ and a tech company this is especially important.

Although he’s moved on to start his own gig at SageCircle, he continues to focus in on social media + analyst industry, and how it’s disruption will cause some analyst firms to be less relevant, and those that participate to be more relevant.

I’ve not heard of any analysts that directly get paid to blog, we do it because it’s fun, or we know the benefits, if I stopped blogging, I would still get my paycheck, although it’s very clear that my influence would be less. (Besides what else would I do for two hours before the rest of the world wakes up?).

In one of his most recent and relevant posts, Carter has some excellent advice (read my comments) why analysts reject briefing requests from startups.

Share This Post:

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 8:18 am and is filed under Analyst, Social Media, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Oh yeah, I’d also like to add some additional thoughts on the impacts that social media is having to the this (and every) industry.

What are the different angles of impact of social media to the analyst industry?

-Although most are not, Analyst Relations professionals could use social media to influence the market, bypassing the influencers.
-Analyst Relations professionals could use social media to listen into the interest areas of analysts that blog
-Analyst Relations professionals could use social media to network, and build relationships even stronger.
-Analysts can use social media to increase their influence. Not only are they influencing clients and media, they can directly have a voice –much like media.
-Analysts can listen in to the marketplace and learn about what’s hot
-Analysis can use these tools to collaborate with others, making research more efficient and accurate.
-Analysts can use these tools to build better relationships with media, analyst relations pros, and clients
-The most challenging one do digest? Analysts will give away some of their knowledge using these tools, which is somewhat contrary to what most understand as becoming a client to glean the analyst insight. An analyst who does this increases their influence, business opportunities, and learns a heck of a lot more, than not being in the conversation.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on January 20th, 2008 at 8:23 am

[...] Comments Video: Why Social Me… on Why startups have their briefi…Video: Why Social Me… on Why social media scares the an…Jeremiah Owyang on Why startups have their briefi…Barbara [...]

Posted by Jeremiah Owyang interviews SageCircle’s Carter Lusher « SageCircle Blog on January 20th, 2008 at 10:22 am

Well done. Good insight from a well-respected voice in that world. The one thing that struck me the most was that he indicated the analysts were scared because they weren’t using social media. That applies to so many different fields that touch what we’re doing. Because I work at an advertising agency, I can offer that perspective. Creatives, account managers and the like don’t know what to think about social media because they aren’t using it. How are we then (the industry as a whole … I’m working on my agency) going to make smart decisions for our clients when the thinkers in the building don’t know much about the mechanisms we’re using? I’m sure the same perplexity faces the analysts out there as well.

Thanks for the perspective!

Posted by Jason Falls on January 20th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

[...] Video: Why Social Media scares the Analyst Industry (3 min with Carter Lusher) Carter explains how analysts probably don’t like social media. Must be a terrible mindset to be stuck in. (tags: videos via:twitter analysts carterlusher socialmedia web2.0) [...]

Posted by People Over Process » links for 2008-01-21 on January 21st, 2008 at 12:18 am

Jeremiah, your comment is a good round up of how AR and analysts could be using social media.

Posted by Carter Lusher on January 21st, 2008 at 1:30 pm

I agree with Carter that social media is a potentially disruptive force for the traditional analyst model. Another potentially disruptive force is the fact that computing models themselves are changing. Cloud computing is could be another disruptive trend that rocks the analyst world.
Where I disagree is the fundamental assumption that social media will somehow replace personal relationships and face to face contact. I think social media can enhance outreach, but personal relationships and human interaction still matter. The rhetoric reminds me of the .com days when pundits were predicting the demise of brick and mortar retail. The sock puppet was a fun diversion, but PetsMart is still around.

Posted by Kent Cook on January 22nd, 2008 at 8:04 am

Jeremiah, I think you’re dancing on Occam’s razor when you say,

“I’ve not heard of any analysts that directly get paid to blog…”

Blogging is a publishing platform. Hopefully, analysts get paid to analyze and advise — and do not get paid just to publish for the sake of publishing!

Are you envisioning “whiteblogs” replacing “whitepapers”?

Seriously. Many new and smaller analyst firms are delivering their websites, newsletters and webinars/telebriefings as blogs, wikis, podcasts, online videos, RSS feeds, networked resources, and blog-integrated CMS systems.

If you are interested, I’ll give you a list of firms who have standardized on the new communications tools as their publishing platforms — if you consider companies in this situation as analysts who directly get paid to blog?