My living Grandmother won’t read this post, unless my mom prints it out for her and hands it to her in person –actually a common practice in my family.

A few weeks ago, I had a phone conversation with Grandma, we talked of politics, and how many companies would not hire Asians when she was my age, and of course, my favorite topic, the internet.

She still lives in a print world, but is very aware of the online world, and ask me to tour her through the internet when I see her. According to social technographics, she’s an ‘inactive’ when it comes to social media, and that’s ok with me.

She loves to see me in print, and stumbles across my name in her newspaper reading? I rarely touch news ‘paper’, as online is far faster, and much more interactive; “you can’t doubleclick paper” I tell her.

Perhaps one of the things that she has over me is wisdom and experience, one observation she’s had over the years is that she’s noticed that “newspapers are getting thinner”.

Despite the generational differences that we have, we’re still the same, we seek information, news, and opinions about the greater world.

Today is a special day, one that I’ll always remember, like every Oct 31st, today is her birthday, Happy Birthday Grandma, I’ll call you in a bit.

15 comments

I was pleased to see Frank Eliason (he just launched his blog) from Comcast cares join us at Forrester ’s Consumer Forum this week. In fact, I talked to many of the world’s largest brands about social media marketing during my 1 on 1 sessions with clients (almost 14 of them), it was really the common theme throughout many discussions.

If you don’t know the story of Comcast Cares, well they’ve a pretty disliked reputation for service and support (see sleeping technician), but are trying to turn a new leaf by responding and supporting customers using Comcast Cares on twitter. I had to use this a few months ago, as my bandwidth was extremely slow at home, and they responded within a few minutes.

Frank has become somewhat of a a celebrity, they are frequently mentioned in presentations (mine included) and while many companies are now supporting customers on Twitter, the reason why they get so much attention is because, just like Microsoft and Dell did, the tarnished brands get extra community kudos when they stick out and try to connect with customers.

I polled my twitter followers (twitter is my social computer) to pose some questions for Frank, and I found these ones to be interesting, tune in to find out his responses.

seacatz: @jowyang what’s the most surprising customer experience or story he’s encountered so far?

davefleet: @jowyang does he have the power within Comcast to actually get issues addressed? Is there substance to the engagement or just words?

williamu: @jowyang Ask him how SM doesn’t short circuit p2p/community groups that are Comcast focused. Is it competition or collaboration?

Tabz: @jowyang Whose idea was @comcastcares to begin with - was there resistance from the Powers that be? How did he overcome it?

Despite this outreach on twitter and other websites, what’s going to matter if Comcast actually makes changes to improve their products and service –not just be responsive to problems as they occur. I’ll be watching.

Action Items for your Brand:

Monitor your brand (or your clients) on Twitter using search tools

Secure your company names

Develop a roles, policy, procedure to respond

Before you respond, be prepared to make actionable changes, not just providing lip service

17 comments

I’m pleased to let you know that this year’s Groundswell awards were presented yesterday by Josh Bernoff at our conference in Dallas. I was one of the final judges, although Josh and Zach Hofer-Shall were instrumental in sorting through over 150 submissions. Congrats to:

Winners by the POST Methdology 5 objectives:

– Listening: Mattel’s “The Playground” Community by Communispace

– Talking: Young & Free Alberta by Common Wealth Credit Union

– Energizing: Hershey’s Bliss House Party by House Party

– Supporting: Nerd Network by National Instruments

– Embracing: MyStarbucksIdea.com by Starbucks

Other key categories include:

– Managing: Borderless Workplace by Accenture

– Social Impact: Artshare, Click Exposition, and Posse by Brooklyn Museum

Some of the winners told me although there are other industry awards, this one was really the important one they wanted to achieve as far as measuring deployment. Thank you all for submitting, and keep on doing the good work to connect with customers, employees and people.

Heh, this is funny, I met Tim from Currency Marketing who did the Young & Free Alberta campaign yesterday, I should have known he was this creative. Watch his video, funny guy.

DONT TELL ANYBODY!

5 comments

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column.

Web Strategy Summary
This week, LinkedIn makes some considerable moves forward, first raising $22million that will let them stand the downturn and prepare for acquisitions, they also launched an application platform with 10 partners. Expect to see more media focus on business social networking as some scramble to network to keep, find, and improve their jobs.

---

Platform: LinkedIn launches Application environment
Perhaps one of the most anticipated announcements is LinkedIn’s ability to have third party developers launch applications that can interact with their over 29million user base. This has some interesting impacts on the corporate intranet, collaboartion and beyond.

Positioning: Where does Plaxo fit in?
CIO magazine offers a perspective and asks about how does Plaxo fit in within the business related online social networking space. Does it compete with LinkedIn or really become a contact and content aggregator?

Culture: Students sabotage competitors for college applications
Interesting story how students will show pictures of those competing to get into colleges in order to win the spot for the right college. Right out of an 80s movie but now with updated technology.

Funding: Linkedin Raises 22 million
Able to obtain a very large round even after the economic warnings was a smart move for LinkedIn, they were able to clinch this money bag that will help this already profitable social network stand for the long haul, and be ready to make some key acquisitions in a downturned market.

LinkedIn: Is LinkedIn poised to take Facebook?
The Standard has an article suggesting that the less buzzed up social network LinkedIn may be poised to take Facebook, do see my quotes, as well as Jyarmis.

Behavior: Why friending may lose it’s luster
Wired article shows why losing touch with some may be a good idea.

Video: Fascinating video about spread of information
Watch this video and pay attention to the segments showing the rapid growth of social networks here in the world, notably how Facebook reached 50 million in two years –much faster than any other medium we’ve ever seen. (update: content no longer available, I dunno why, will try to find another link)

Analysis: Facebook platform showing sluggishness
This analysis by All Facebook shows how growth has been slowing to the platform activity due to recent design changes.

Doh! Worker calls in sick, but tells truth on Facebook
Genius calls in sick but outs himself on his Facebook status. Reminds me of this case of the Facebook faerie, what’s up with kids these days?

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

5 comments

Although I don’t have any kids of my own yet, but I’m sure my kids won’t know what a firewall is when they reach the workplace.

Why? firewalls, the enterprise security that maintains security between employees and the public on your intranet are going to be irrelevant –and LinkedIn and other SaaS products are making this happen –one URL at a time. I’ve expanded upon this a bit more in a recent discussion with the WSJ indicating the opportunity for LinkedIn and others.

I’ve been in close contact with LinkedIn over the past year, and recently had lunch with their CEO to discuss their strategy, so I’ve been fully briefed on this platform announcement. Given the downturn in economy, this is a great market for LinkedIn to grow with users, and to offer services and features that reduce developer cost within the enterprise.

A bit of history, LinkedIn, which is reported to have 29million users, was one of the OpenSocial partners that agreed to join the coalition and put their name by it in fall 2007, finally, a year later they’ve finally launched an application platform with 10 application partners. You’ve heard of MySpace, Bebo, and many others being OpenSocial compliant, and you should be aware of Facebook’s F8 platform that kicked this off in mid year 2007.

These 10 application (sometimes called widgets) are now accessible by LinkedIn users and have collaborative and social features that allow you and your LinkedIn friends to share presentations, favorite books, event calendars, documents and other work related themes (no super poke here). You can collaborate with your colleagues at a company and even beyond with your business contacts, imagine that, getting work done with people that aren’t even your colleagues.

I used to be the enterprise intranet manager at HDS before I started the social media program, and I know that from experience, most intranets are a horrible cobbled together experience, most lacking true social features. We continue to see more SaaS products being offered like SocialText, Zoho, ConnectBeam, and of course SalesForce to allow employees to work and share together, without even having to rely on IT developers to build a new products.

LinkedIn isn’t done with it’s growth, to truly be a major competitor in the intranet market, they need to make their system extensible with other platform players, allow more business applications to be shared on their platform (they hand select developers) and consider some acquisitions in the community platform space or collaboration space. Since they snagged funding before the investment money dried up, they recently have generated $22 million in funding (beyond their existing raised capital, which will enable them to : 1) stand the test of time, 2) get ready to go shopping.

Expect LinkedIn to:

Offer more collaboration between colleagues and connections to happen outside of the firewall where IT doesn’t have control

Provide resources for some IT departments to lean on SaaS environments to further their mission

Launch more business applications request to be developers on LinkedIn’s business platform

Export the top business applications will be then be ported to community platform players

Raised significant capital, thrive in an downturned economy, and get ready to go shopping

19 comments

Every wanted to know who was behind those 140 characters? Now you can. this 2 minute video you can hear 50 people shout out their twitter handles at last night’s Dallas tweetup.

What’s a Tweetup? A group of social media enthusiasts who want to connect and networks. Despite all the tools that are available to us to communicate digitally, there’s nothing like meeting in real life.

I help the worlds largest brands develop community strategies, yet, sometimes it’s the simply things that really tell more of a story then anything else, BBQ, Shiner Boch, and a $200 camera. That’s what community is really about: people.

Speaking of people, I’d like to thank Paula Thorton (follow her on twitter) for organizing this dinner, and Forrester’s Alexis Karlin (follow her), as well as the sponsors Eric T. Peterson, Web Analytics Demystified, DFW UPA and Forrester Research.

Perhaps we should rename the social media industry to really be the people industry –it’s not about technology.

8 comments

I’m in Dallas Texas right now, perhaps the most opposite place thank Toyko where I’ve been the last week, and have been avidly sharing my observations via Twitter, the following are some of these observations, as well as a bit more context beyond 140 characters. These observations are more of a personal and cultural note, rather than my field report that focuses on the business aspect of social media in Japan.

Internet Adoption high in Japan: I met the top executive of a marketing company in Japan and he told me that 2/3 of Japan’s 120 million residents are on the web.

Yet most Japanese corporations do not invest heavily in web: This executive also told me that only half of Japan’s 4000 companies spend more than $100k on the internet at all.

Credit crunch discussed: This is a global issue, I heard it in a few meetings with clients, it’s cascaded beyond US.

Facebook’s Japanese Translation Poor: I asked my Japanese clients what they thought of Facebook’s translation, they looked away, grimaced, and gave very clear body reactions that it needs improvement. I promised to pass the word on, as I speak to Facebook on a frequent basis.

Tokyo’s adoption of Twitter highest in globe: Given the heavy mobile adoption, I’m not surprised by these stats.

New Social Media Technology: Learned about “Nico Nico Douga” from Jonathan Browne, he says its a video sharing site where the users can ‘write’ on top of others’ vids

Developer and Enterpreneurs not fully gelled: There’s a gap (cultural and language) between business entrepreneurs in web scene and the web engineers and developers, mentioned one web entrepreneur now based in Tokyo. In silicon valley, it feels like one family.

Anonymous trolls hurt in real life: It was mentioned in conversations a few times that comments –esp anon ones –can really damage someone’s reputation, honor. This south Korean actress was pushed over the edge and committed suicide.

Police light handed with foreigners: A UK tourist decided to swim in the moat of Tokyo’s Imperial Palace –naked. This is considered taboo, insulting, and just humiliating. Apparently, if a native did this, they would be severely punished.

Hotel Life: My room is equipped with a plasma screen, cordless iron, toilet with a bidet, and a futon like firm mattress.

Pride in workmanship: Everyone takes pride in their work and the customers they serve. Many taxi drivers have white glove service, and I noticed idling taxi drivers polishing their vehicle while waiting for next fare. A far cry from NY cabbies. Also, they will open and close the door for you using a remote lever –so dont open or close taxi doors, it’s frowned upon.

Tipping not required yet service high: Tipping isn’t part of Asian culture, in fact, it could be seen as insulting. Despite this, service was extremely high from taxis fast food, to hotel staff. If the weather was bad, expect apologies from Japanese, a most polite and considerate culture. I question why I feel forced to tip at American restaurants for mediocre or even sub-standard service.

Pandora: It works in Japan, I’m pleasantly surprised as I thought it was North American only.

Corporate Responsibility motto a current trend: Like “Green computing” in US, many Japanese corporations are on the sustainable and giving back to the community bandwagon, in fact, this makes a ripe opportunity for social media efforts to help tell this story.

Salary Men: Are Japan’s corporate worker, in the area I stayed, there were many dressed in black or gray suits, often with a skinny tie. Work life takes priority over anything else, and long days can extend to 12 hours, then not including after work eating, drinking, and festivities. Apparently, it’s not unheard of many salarymen to stay the night in small hotels, or even utilize showers at work… I thought I worked a lot.

Fresh Sushi: I had ‘real’ sushi near the fish market. It was more like FRUIT, than fish. Firm, burst in your mouth and sweet, I don’t think it was frozen.

Vending Machines: Dispense not only drinks and smokes, but also you can pay for food before you enter noodle houses, this increase effeciency, and reduced need to fumble with money and change. Salary Men hung out near vending machines where beer was dispensed in late evening –I wanted to join them.

Crime rate low: I noticed cops have batons, but not guns. Crime rate here is significantly lower than US. Upon closer look some had smaller guns, 22s? Much different than larger guns US cops carry.

Tokyo Travels: Went to Roppongi which has many ex-pats, as well as a somewhat nefarious hidden underground.

Mobile Medium: No SMS, yet all phones are 3G, most phones have built in digital TV tuners, so you can watch TV in crystal clear quality.

Developer Community still growing, yet not unified: Developers complexities with developing software, as they are a hardware based culture. Shibuya is the technology center –esp high tech and startups in Tokyo. Kris Tate, CTO of zooomr.com a photo sharing site notices an increase from 7-715, then later from 8pm-1am. Both are before and after work, often accessing from home computers before hitting the subways. There’s isn’t a large blogging community in Japan to help be the ‘instant niche media’ that you’d find in the US.

I can’t wait to go back…

Been to Japan? What have you observed?

9 comments

Families are our first community, and it’s no surprise that I first starting experimenting with connecting my large family online as my first project. Today, I’m an analyst focused on communities for the largest brands in the world –and to think I start with a group of Owyang’s.

What happens offline happens online, in fact our blood lines are now being found in Yahoo groups, geni.com (online family tree, where I have 291 blood relatives), wikipedia, and personal created communities.

My family was able to connect online, and it eventually resulted in a large family reunion –which we then led a group of us back to our humble village in Zhongshan China two years ago. We had a second reunion yesterday in Oakland, we continue to share online as we did in person.

I’m not the only one, Stephanie Agresta was able to connect with her family members because of one of my blog posts, take a moment to watch this video –it’s heart warming.

I posed a question to my twitter network to find out if their family has connected online BECAUSE of the internet, (hear some of their stories), I’d love to hear your story.

7 comments

Intel is known for trying out a variety of social media efforts, for better or for worse. They experiment, and continue to learn and iterate, I give them continual credit and reference them in presentations. One particular activity of note is what I learned from David Veneski, he tackled the join vs build question and made the call to join.

Earlier this year, I visited Intel up in Seattle (correction: Portland) and spoke to David Veneski, a marketing manager, and spoke to his group about social computing strategies. He had deployed some successful marketing efforts, and reached communities where they existed, he had efforts to reach early tech adopters in Digg, as well as Slashdot. Both of these communities are rabid passionate tech communities that are self-thriving and require little attention from outside sources to be successful.

[Savvy brands join communities where the exist, rather than solely trying to coax customers to the corporate website through disruptive tactics]

In the case of Digg, Intel funded development of new features, and became a sponsor of the creation of “Digg Arc” a visualization feature. This associative play tied the Intel name with early tech adopters, as well as got dugg. Next they brought forth some of Intel’s top engineers to have a conversation with the Slashdot community, and apparently it was so successful that the amount of questions became unwieldy to respond to.

The moment of brilliance was when David said that one of the requirements of his marketing efforts was to not link to Intel.com. Rather than try to join a community then pull them away, the marketing efforts joined the community and stayed there –likely where the trust is highest (see data).

As a result, David fished where the fish were, and avoided trying to suck the members off the community they were part of. Marketers are often measured on the amount of traffic they generate to their corporate website, but in this case, Intel will have to measure using different attributes such as interaction, viral spread, and maybe even a survey.

Rather than coax users to your irrelevant corporate website, savvy brands will fish where the fish are.

34 comments

Wave report to segment market leaders in a crowded industry
I’m over the hump of this laborious research project to determine which of the 90 community platform vendors are enterprise worthy for Fortune 5000 interactive marketers.

Enterprise brands seek ‘Community Solution Partner’
I firmly believe that technology is a commodity, that’s why there are 90 vendors in this crowded space. Brands have indicated that success is only 20% technology, and the majority is 80% is a combination of internal changes, services, and support.

One thing I heavily stressed in my research, isn’t a focus so much on the technology, but instead how the vendors could truly be ‘community solution partners’ to their clients. A true solution partner understands the business needs of their client, offers strategy, best practices, can assist with implementation, offers ongoing technical –but more importantly, community management, guidance, and recommendations.

The research methodology includes:
I’ve had to make sense of thousands of cells in multiple excel sheets, ensure each line is accurate and will enable our clients to make important decisions.

6-hour in person lab days with each of the 9 vendors
During the last few weeks, I spent 5-6 hours with each of the nine vendors, often in a windowless room where powerpoint, screenshots, and live testing of their software took place. Using Forrester’s 5 objectives of listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing, I’ve found some key patterns to the strengths of vendors.

Up to 27 customer interviews
Surprisingly, vendors don’t know their own customers that well, in more than one occasion, customers poorly rated the vendors that suggested they participate as this ideal customer reference. I also cross references with vendors to see how well they could anticipate what their customers said about them –in some cases, vendors were completely unaware of the challenges that clients were having –a very bad sign.

Reviewed data submitted by vendors
Earlier, we issued a survey to vendors in this space, over 50 of them responded, and submitted around 50 or so fields of data. I factored in a great deal of this to perform market sizing and to complete comparative analysis.

Frequent discussion with clients
Perhaps the most important piece of data input is the constant discussion with my clients on inquiry calls. I hear from them what they want (demand side) as well as their experience with vendors (feedback). It’s interesting to find out that many brands are not happy with their platform vendors, and the vendors often don’t even know it!

Next Steps: Final Analysis, Preparing for Publication
Expect to see the published report in the coming weeks. Right now, the spreadsheets are being reviewed by vendors in the fact checking process, and I’ve already started to see some patterns in the data that will help to determine positioning. Thanks for your patience, between client duties and travel, getting all the pieces together for success requires some patience to ensure it will be done correctly.

If you’re a client and need advice now, you can schedule an inquiry call with me and I’ll be happy to discuss with you my current findings. I’ve already made some recommendations to clients based upon their specific needs and objectives.

I hope you find this transparency in the research methodology helpful in understanding our goals to make sure our clients make the right decisions to be successful.

Read more about this Wave Research project:

Part 1: Starting the Wave
Part 2: Data Collection Process
Part 3: The Analysis Process
Part 4: Announcing the Wave, the final report (coming soon)

10 comments

Above Image: Social Technographics of Japan’s Online Consumers, this data (and more) is accessible from the Groundswell Profile tool.

First of all, this isn’t formal research, it’s just a one week observation from an outsider who spoke to a variety of companies and experts at a blogger dinner. For ongoing commentary and dedicated research from a true expert, meet colleague Jonathan Browne who’s a Forrester analyst focused on Customer Experience and based in Tokyo –he has far more knowledge, experience, and research on Japan than I likely ever will.

I’m here for one week speaking to some of Japan’s top companies about my research on communities and social technologies, as well as keynoting Japan’s ZDnet conference on social technologies and speaking to press and media. I soaked in as much Japanese culture as I could, and make a lot of observations and comparisons on twitter.

[Japan is global technology leader, yet when it comes to social computing, culture is the strongest influence –not technology]

Japan’s high tech industry fuels innovation –and impacts culture
Everywhere I look I see process and technology efficiencies that improve Japan’s environment. Every minute detail has been thought out, in order to ensure the country works well together and is efficient in day to day operations. Riding a 100+ MPH bullet train to Osaka confirms that only a few countries can develop and put into action a transportation system so effective.

Yet despite the high adoption and leadership of technology (esp mobile) in Japan, some locals expressed to me that technology optimism within Japan is actually very low. Some expressed to me that individuals are less social in real life as they tend to communicate via mobile devices.

Japanese Social Technographics (see above graphic)
Yet despite the advances in technology from any country, it’s important to note the impact of culture on social media. In fact, social media marketing is more like psychology or sociology than it is about marketing –in fact, technology is just a trigger point –and not much more.

I’m told that Japan’s group think culture can cause pressure that gives individuals a desire for self-expression. These tools can enable just that, and I’ve learned that many Japanese have multiple profiles to allow them to traverse in public, with friends, or speak their mind anonymously.

Looking at the graph at the top of this post, this confirms my observations. It’s interesting to note that ‘creators’ in United States are 21% compared to 35% in Japan, also, both countries have about equal number of ‘spectators’ both more than 2/3rds. In a culture where mobile usage is extremely high, accessing the web at any time is a fingers’ reach, this may explain why the ‘spectator’ behavior is so high.

Most corporations hesitant to adopt social
I expect social media adoption to continue to increase among citizens, consumers, and the public, yet we’re still a few years off from seeing a mass movement of corporations adopt these tools, unless there are some ‘punkings’ that spur corporations out of hesitation and start to react then be proactive.

I heard case studies of companies like Nissan and Sanyo using social technologies to reach customers, but although I can’t confirm it, some blogging initiatives don’t enable comments. Even with that said, experience shows that successful social media efforts require corporations to truly be transparent resulting in the rich history of Japanese corporate culture to change.

[While consumer adoption of the social and mobile web is high, corporations will be slow to adopt until they experience brand damage and true loss of control]

Corporate and social pressures increase perceived risk of social adoption
I spoke with bloggers, corporations and colleagues and confirmed that Japan’s top down management approach make it difficult for a Groundswell to be accepted within corporations. Furthermore, senior leadership may be removed from being adopters of these new technology –furthering the understanding gap. Although all brands are fearful of failure and risk, within Japanese corporations this resonates even louder. The ‘fail quickly and iterate’ mentality of silicon valley isn’t a virtue shared within Japan’s long time pillars of business.

At my keynote at Tokyo’s Zdnet event, I presented my findings from my recent research report on the “Best and Worst of Social Network Marketing” I could visible see the attendees get uncomfortable as I outlined the many companies who had ‘failed’ my test. Despite the unpleasant feeling, it was important that the attendees see who did it wrong –then right, so their chances of success increase.

Expect to see corporate internal adoption before external
Perhaps the first place to look for corporate adoption isn’t within the marketing and PR departments, but within the internal enterprise. I met with a few companies who expressed that internal usage of communities and social networks are already underway. Given the strength of the Japanese culture that can act collectively (although may be more top down than bottom up) the opportunity for group think collaboration may be high.

[Across the globe, power shifts to the participants of the social web. To reduce risk and become more connected with customers, Japanese corporations should prepare to engage with social technologies. Given this untapped approach, savvy brands who yield the traditional command and control approach can seize an opportunity before their competitors]

To be successful with social marketing corporations should:,
I’m echoing what Johnathan Browne has posted, read his full post to get more context.

Let go of the “command and control” Public Relations mentality

Focus on PEOPLE not on technology

Empower young Japanese employees as innovators

---

Related Reading

Q&A: What is the Japanese equivalent of [Western web service]?. Find out which websites are popular in US and they’re counterparts in Japan.

Japanese more likely to search for term “wiki” but does it reflect adoption?

Cathy shares her observations of some of Japan’s web services: What can you add to this?

Terry White attended one of my presentations, and comments on how a focus on people –not technology will prevail.

4 comments

Despite’s Wired’s opinion piece that blogging is waning (they cite no data), perhaps some of the most important data for this year is this recently released Social Technographic Data from colleague Josh Bernoff showing an increase in adoption in United States of Social Technographics from 2007-2008.

He points out that inactives (people that cannot be reached through social technologies) has reduced from 44% to 25%. This means that three fourths of the US online users is touched by social technologies. Also note that more people who consume this content has increased from 48% to 69%.

Do note that to be accurate in your marketing, like you have specific personas for your marketing efforts, you’ll need the same technographic profiles for those personas. Age, culture, professional, and other factors all play into each technographic ladder.

There’s so much more to explore here, from specific cultures, regions, age groups, but looking at this bigger picture of a one year trend tells a bigger story –adoption so far, has increased. I also recommend you read Sifry’s state of the global blogosphere as well as access more social technographic data (now including Canada) at the profile tool, at no charge.

Discussion points

Does your marketing efforts match the changes in online consumer behavior?

Should we expect this to plateau? if so when?

At what point will we see a decrease, if at all?

Are you prepared to answer these four questions of social media in an economic downturn?

Are you and your company ready to address these social media challenges?

18 comments

I started out my social media career as a community manager, and can see why several community managers have expressed some concerns about our over connected world. It seems that some of them are cursed with the very technology that gets them paid.

You see, some community managers have a hard time separating their personal and their professional lives. In some cases, I’ve heard that the members of the communities they serve become so comfortable with them as a social contact that they send them friend requests in Facebook, (where some community managers may have personal and family info) follow their tweets, and connect with them in many ways.

As a result, the work of the community manager is never done, they’re now completely connected to the community they serve. While sure, an effective for way to build trust and really know your community at work, this leaves very little personal space. In some cases, I’m sure that community managers will get requests in Facebook to solve issues, or take feedback, as well as exposing their personal life to their customers.

Perhaps one of the most scary cases are those of troublemaker community members that become so livid when they are reprimanded or removed from a community that they seek personal revenge against the community manager, and are able to find out way more information than any phone support person would have supplied.

As a result, expect community managers to create more than one personal identity, withhold personal information, and potentially suffer from burnout or frustration at work and at home. These are the challenges of being connected to the community you serve –even during off hours.

Love to hear from the community managers out there, what are the other hazards of the job?

32 comments

It’s actually THURSDAY here in Tokyo, but I’m publishing on Wed pacific time to keep on schedule. It’s been more difficult paying attention to what’s happening on the web during global travel, so please leave a comment if I’ve missed anything.

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column.

Web Strategy Summary
There wasn’t any earth-shattering news in the social networking space, although several deals and partnerships such as watercooler and hulu make for an interesting marriage of social rating and online video. As social networks continue to get popular, the threats from malicious code continues –this time with a strike to Facebook.

---

Partnership: Watercoolor and Hulu
Watercooler which enables sports and TV fans to engage with their favorite teams and shows within social networks, teams with online video service Hulu to use its new player for full-screen shows from Fox and NBC. Expect more social features to be embedded within real time video media –watching TV will never be lonely again.

Security: Facebook exposes users to malicious code
Network world has a report about the potential dangers of hackers within social networks, and it’s impact to users. I know of one friend who has opened an email from Facebook forcing her computer to be damaged. If it looks fishy, it very well could be.

Privacy: Could social network sites be snooped on?
UK article suggests that some social network sites could be monitored in order to prevent deviant and destructive behavior. For public websites, that don’t require a login, I’m sure that’s already happening.

Executives: Zuckerblog reaches out
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s young founder and CEO is now communicating more frequently to developers, users, and press and media says Cnet.

Partnership: User Plane and JS-Kit
Userplane and JS-Kit Partner to Offer Complementary Social Networking Widgets to 900,000 Communities, I have a briefing with JS-Kit soon, will learn more about them and what makes them unique.

Data: Social Network Growth Slowing in the U.K
To be clear this data shows growth rates –so the social networks are still growing yet the adoption rates have slightly dipped. To determine the changes, we’d first need to look at overall technographics data to determine what’s the total saturation number would be –then see how close total population was to achieving that ‘joining’ behavior.

USA Today: Social Networks Boost Productivity
This light article showcases Gina, Ning’s spokesperson as the posterchild for social networks and discusses how some companies are finding productivity gains. I promise you, mileage will vary.

Launch: Plum launches, plugin social networking features
Expect to see more of these companies appear, commodity technology allows any website to be social. Recently Liveworld launched Livebar, which is somewhat similar, expect to see many other existing community platforms to offer these features.

Profiles: Why some social networks appeal to people
This light reference guide tells about what some social networks mean to those who use them –think of this as a humorous exercise in profiling.

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

7 comments

I have so much to share about my trip to Japan and meeting with dozens of people from Japan’s top companies, and over 20 bloggers and social media experts at last night’s blogger dinner.

Perhaps the best way to share is to keep it short, here are my most recent tweets:

One AM Tokyo
City Never Dark, Soft Glow
Sleepless City We Are

We Often Forget
Social Web About Culture,
Not Technology

Most Brands Do Not Join
Yet Japan Use Social Web
Fish Where The Fish Are

Jet lagged Jeremiah, 1:48 AM, Tokyo

4 comments

Above photo: I had a great time discussing the impact of social media on culture and business in Japan with Tokyo’s top bloggers. Image taken by Andrew Shuttleworth –used with permission

The following portion is updated the day after the blogger dinner.

Read Michael Whang’s blog report of “Tokyo 2.0″
Jonathen Browne posts his thoughts on the movers and shakers of Toyko

Last night’s blogger dinner with Tokyo’s finest was interesting, aside from meeting the movers and shakers in this space, discussed the social web and it’s impact on culture, we had a fun time enjoying food and drinks.

I encouraged the attendees not to socialize but to also think about how social technologies impact culture, business, and Japan, we had some very interesting discussions, and the viewpoints from many of the ex-pats were often similar to the Japanese. I met some of the social media evangelists at large Japanese companies, as well as entrepreneurs, professional bloggers, and local VCs.

As I tried to circulate to many of the different tables, I started to hear patterns in the discussions. I asked folks to think about the adoption of these tools (this graph aboves shows a high degree of consumption by ’spectators’) yet I quickly learned that many corporations are not participating with these tools, there’s just a handful of companies using these tools in public (Nissan, Sanyo, and several are conducting buzz marketing efforts). I’m still formulating my thoughts on why this is the case and what can be done –but I want to loop back with Jonathan Browne, Forrester’s expert on Japanese Customer Experience to bounce of him as a sounding board –more to come on this topic soon.

---

Original post below.
I’m excited to meet Tokyo’s top bloggers at a community blogger dinner, I’m cruising through many of the attendees blogs before the event, sadly, about half of them I’m unable to read –gotta learn Japanese. Here’s the lineup for tonight, quite a few ex-pats.

Akihitok’s polar bear blog
Andrew Shuttleworth
Tokyo Reporter
Clast English blog about consumer and media insights in Japan
Dominic Carter : Tokyo resident and food lover, in English
What’s happening in Japan right now: English blog
Gen Kenai: I’ve met Gen before, and pretty much everyone knows him in Japan to Silicon Valley
Smart Security Blog
Jonathan Browne is Forrester’s analyst in Japan, English and Japanese
Kaorine’s blog:
Kristopher Tate: Founder of Zooomr and personal friend of mine
Primetime
Matt Romaine
Michael Whang is from Toronto, blogs about technology
Mikihiro Yasuda
Nob Seki
Robert Sanzalone
Shin Fukushige: a returnee venture capitalist living and working in Tokyo
ICHINOHE Blog
Honjo Biz
Dseneste
The Western World
J-Magic
Taromatsumura
Social Media Marketing: This one, I really wish I could read.
IT Blog Jiji
Blog Myrss
If I missed anyone, leave a comment, I’ll add you in.

I’ll add my notes and pictures to this post later.

See you tonight!

While we’re all connected by bits and bytes, there’s nothing like meeting people in real life, I’ve met bloggers all over the world, you can see the archives, I’ll be adding to this over the years, it’s a great journey.

The following pics were taken by Midori Allen of Forrester and used with permission

7 comments

Despite there being many layoffs in the startup space. I’ve started this post series (see archives) to recognize and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

Aaron Strout leaves Mzinga and joins Powered to be head of marketing of this social commerce platform. Looking at their website, it sounds like I’ll be in constant contact with him as they have prominantly featured Jupiter and Forrester reports on their homepage.

Todd Vanhoosear has moved from the PR world to take a job as senior analyst and director of client services at SocialSphere Networks.

Dave Knox has officially started a new role at P&G as the Digital Brand Strategist is what I use externally, this is a pretty big move as I’m hearing that P&G is starting to do more and more with social media. Also, Dave has the coveted first place slot in our fantasy football league –but I’m just a few yards behind him.

Congrats to Samantha Skey who has joined passenger as senior vice president of business development and general manager of Passenger’s eastern region.

I C.K. Sample III is now the Social Media Evangelist for Crowd Fusion.

Lauren Fisch took the Community Manager position at Slide and is focused on growing SuperPoke!

Although there have been some additional submissions, I’m seeking people that indicate in their blog posts they are working in the social media space –you need to clearly articulate that in comments or emails.

---

How to connect with others (or get a job):
Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how:

Submit an announcement
If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, leave a comment below, or if you’re feeling shy (it’s cool to self-nominate) send me an email. Please include a link to your announcement, and ensure you’re really living and breathing in the social media world –this is not a small aspect of your role.

Seeking Social Media Professionals?
If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

List of Enterprise Social Media Professionals
This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

This week, I’ve run across a few jobs that would be related to this audience such as a technical community manager, or even a VP of client services for a social media company.

See Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, fees pay for my hosting)

Read Write Web also has job announcements in Jobwire, although at a broader scope than my announcements

Connect with others in the community manager group in Facebook

Check out Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs

See Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs

SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed

ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community

Teresa has a few jobs, some around community

New Media hire has an extensive job database

Social Media Headhunter

Social media jobs

Jobs in social media

Hiring? Leave a comment
If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, or I’ll delete it)

I’m seeking folks that are related to full time hands on social media strategy and community managers, to be on this list, so let me know if you see these folks, and please submit them –try to include links to announcements on blogs or on the wire. Also, I probably will not include executive management changes on this list at social media companies, as the list would go on and on, but you can feel free to express yourself in the comments!

10 comments

While there are SO many social media books appearing, there are three books on social media that are must read for anyone approaching this as a career or program for their job. What’s interesting is to see the evolution of though as they slowly become part of corporate culture.

The first one was the Cluetrain Manifesto, which was written quite a few years ago. This book is about radicals changing the world, and it uses language that really is something you would expect to see on bumper stickers in Berkeley. It’s a ‘grab you by the collars and wake you up’ type of book that suggests major changes are coming to the world, yet arguably, these changes are happening slowly. It’s available online for free, and if you only have time to read one major section, read the 95 Theses. Secret: I actually printed those 95 theses and dropped them on the desk of marketing managers at Hitachi who were resistant to change –it may have worked.

The next book is Naked Conversations, which focuses on how one specific technology is the change for the culture of corporate communications to change. The timing of this book is what is key, as it moved slightly from the radicalness of cluetrain and gave early examples of how some individuals at corporations were adopting these tools. This book marked the milestone of early efforts of corporations, small companies and individuals and really proved that “hey this is happening”. As you know, I’m close friends with both of these authors, Shel was a mentor, and I ended up working with Robert. At Hitachi, my director gave me budget to buy over 60 copies which were distributed around marketing –and I purchased many more.

Although I’m biased, Groundswell marks the start of a new wave, as corporations now have a process, methodology, and framework to approach social computing. It leads with data, forces companies to have an objective. This book represents a practical response and answers to many corporations that are hesitant “here’s how we do this based off understanding data –and tying to business objectives” I was one of early copy readers and was credited for providing a small amount of input in the book, I know both authors very well, and live, and preach the methdology to clients. This book, and what it stands for, was part of the reason I decided to join Forrester.

Bundle these books up, buy all three, and send as Christmas presents to executives and decision makers in your company.

What’s next? The book that’s missing from this series is one that can show a transformational change among the entire enterprise (beyond marketing) among dozens/hundreds of companies and show how communities change business forever. I’d expect it to have clear ROI and measurement, as well as show budgets, processes, roles, and program management.

I know there are many other great books on this topic, but these reflect my personal preference as a “corporate +social media” focus, feel free to leave comments of other books you reccomend, and why.

28 comments

Future of the Social Web Roundtable
Last Tuesday, for the first time, I hosted a no-cost private roundtable of the leaders from brands and vendors in the social space to discuss the future of the social web for my upcoming research on the topic. This wasn’t a conference, everyone worked and everyone shared, as a result, everyone got something out of it. The following is just the high level event premise and findings.

Attendees
I invited many brands which included companies that have been implementing social media have teams, and budgets in the area that included SAP, EMC, Cisco, Webex, Intel, Wells Fargo, O’Reilly, Nokia, Juniper Networks, Cadence, Oracle

I also invited vendors that have products and services for the market, and they include, Biz 360, Web Trends, IBM, SAP (CRM), Oracle (CRM), SocialText, Gigya, Widgetbox, Newsgator, Google, Six Apart, OpenID, LinkedIn, Documentum EMC, Pluck, Acquia, Jive, Awareness, Lithium, Kickapps, Leverage Software, Telligent, Mzinga, LiveWorld. Many of these vendors sent product managers and a few of the smaller vednors sent their CEOs and founders. A few flew in from NYC

There were a few companies that I invited that did not show or were too busy to attend, if you weren’t invited, I may do this event next year, perhaps with different companies.

---

There were three major objectives:

Generate four predictions, challenges, and solutions.

Develop relationships ecosystem for partners, vendors, and clients.

Continue to fuel Forrester’s leadership as a research firm focused on social computing.

---

Four Predictions, Challenges and Solutions
At a high level the following four predictions were generated from the crowd

Group Prediction 1: Community will participate in all aspects of marketing/strategy, product development, and support.
Challenge: Yet brands will have difficulty managing the culture shift.
Solution: Develop a business program to create incremental benefits.

My Observations: : What’s interesting is that the solution fix here had nothing to do with technology –it was about corporate change processes. The group that presented the solutions (mainly brands) developed a plan that wasn’t unique to social media, but to any change management process within the enterprise. This is clearly about people –not tools.

Group Prediction 2: Brands present and participate where organic communities exist –not just corporate created communities
Challenge: Reorientating the organization to deliver value to the community first.
Solution: Brands require monitoring tools, internal training and processes, in order to deliver value to communities where they exist.

My Observations: : Again, this was less about technology (except for the ability to monitor communities where they exist) but more of a need to understand how to join communities where they are, and how to deliver value without splatting your brand on the community. This is more about marketing strategy, listening to customers, and conversational marketing than technology.

Group Prediction 3: Work style evolves as employees collaborate beyond colleagues to get work done
Challenge: Yet rules within corporate culture prevent adoption
Solution: Develop strategy for internal process change

My Observations: : Much like the other two, managing the potential roadblocks internally were the key here. HR, potentially legal, and IT could be in the way of employees working collectively in the open with others, this really wasn’t a technology issue, in fact, many of the tools needed are available today.

Group Prediction 4: One identity with controllable multiple facets empowers users to control their web experience.
Challenge: Industry does not agree what should be portable, and how it should be, resulting in no trust
Solution: Despite this being a prediction, market demand doesn’t yet exist to spur adoption and innovation

My Observations: While this frequently came up as a prediction and a need, the market clearly wasn’t ready for this. The unconference station was unattended, and when we talked about it at the group think, I asked if any brands were ready to fund this development –in most cases, just getting SSO is still a priority, let alone a common social ID. It’s too early for this technology, and I’m sure, just like how we developed a handful of IM logins and handles they weren’t integrated for nearly a decade.

---

Summary Observations
Vendors were cautious what to say around competitors, in some cases, we had ‘mortal’ enemies in the room, yet they realize in order to be successful, their systems at some point will need to share data, develop standards, or serve the same customer. I often started with the demand side (brands) as they will lead with what’s important to them (aka what they’ll pay for). The social web industry was able to collaborate towards a single goal.

In general, the predictions weren’t anything more than I discuss already on this blog, we were only able to see about 5 years out, certainly not 10, in some ways this was a little disappointing, but the upside is that it’s confirmation from a pan-industry perspective we are all seeing the same direction –that it worth it’s weight in gold.

Outside of the four predictions there was another discussion around industry standard measurement, while it was discussed, I didn’t see a group that was willing to commit to what this was going to look like.

It’s interesting how the common predictions all revolved around process and change management –not so much a technology issue. This means more education, more strategy discussions, more case studies, and more proof of ROI will be needed for the next few years.

Overall, most were glad to have attended, this meeting of the minds was the first time this have ever happened, and I connected everyone via email, and they were able to find each other on Twitter.

While group based research isn’t anything new, applying it as one additional stream of inputs to everything I do has proven helpful and a valuable resource. To be clear, this is just one of the many streams of incoming I receive to watch this industry. It’s likely my final report will think beyond these four predictions.

Thanks to SAP for hosting this event, and Kenny from GPJ and the event team for helping support the event.

Voice from the community
It’s one thing to hear from me, but do listen to what others said

I was really impressed by the leadership that Joshua-Michéle Ross (not Justin) of O’Reilly brought to the event, he writes about Pirates and Poohbahs Unite!

Jeff Nolan was live chatting about the event with others, read the good –and bad– of the event.

Len from EMC attended, and is leading his own events.

Does the Social Web Have a Future? writes Justin Kestelyn from Oracle’s community group.

If you attended and blogged it, leave a comment and I’ll add it to this list.

If you attended, I hope to hear your observations (good and bad) and if you didn’t attend and have questions, leave a comment, I’ll to my best to respond.

Select photos tagged futuresocial08

I’ll be adding additional photos later.

8 comments

Part of being an analyst is talking with clients on inquiry calls, I have several of these a week. Just about every other week, I have a client who calls and tells me their grandiose plans to create a community to reach executives. From the CIO, CTO, COO to CEO, I’ve heard them all. Of course, I tell them that they are not alone and that I just had a similar call just a few days ago.

While reaching the check signer is always ideal, I have to remind these ambitious brands that:

1. Should first know the technographics of executives, do you know if they even participate in social technologies? If age is an indicator of adoption, (see this chart) then it’s less likely older users are going to be ‘joiners’.
2. Executives are busy and don’t have a tremendous amount of time to join communities
3. Decisions are made from the folks below them –they seek the recommendations from the troops, execs may just sign the check –not make specific recommendations.
4. Executive communities already exist –why not join them where they are?
5. Quite a few other brands are trying to accomplish the same task

So before you venture off to create the next executive community be sure you can address these previous five points.

5 comments