An Update on my Research Agenda

I’ve been receiving questions about the much anticipated Community Platform Wave report, and wanted to provide an update. I’ve completed a majority of the report and it’s currently with the editing team getting the t’s crossed and i’s dotted. We’re expecting an early January publication date, and I’ve been making an effort to be upfront and transparent with updates. Also, there’s a teleconference that many of you may have signed up for in this Dec, however we’ll be pushing it back in order to coincide with the publication date. Update: The report will publish in early Jan and the teleconference is now on Feb 3rd.

If you’re a client of Forrester, you can schedule an inquiry call with me to discuss your plans for selecting a community platform vendor –or view this vendor product catalog (free for anyone) which has over 50 of them listed out. I’ve already helped a few clients with vendor selection based upon the data found in the report, research really is a powerful process.

I’ve received a few questions about the smart folks at Gartners take on this space, and they’ve recently published a magic quadrant on social software (Read a copy on Jive’s site), but it looks like they may be including more internal tools, and are including a plethora of vendors.

I can’t comment on their research (as I wasn’t involved) but the focus on the Community Platform wave is for interactive marketers at enterprise size companies, also I’ll only be including 9 vendors and they are all community platforms (not collaboration, not wiki players, not insight vendors). This means external deployments (communities for customers), and not internal, it looks like we’re approaching it at two different angles.

Also, I’m working on a report to understand how baby boomers (like my mom and dad) use social technologies, so expect to see that publish in the near future. While youth certainly adopt social tools, boomers are also reading and participating.

10 Replies to “An Update on my Research Agenda”

  1. Feeling snarky before I’ve had coffee. I can’t comment on Gartner’s research, but I can comment on the worst chart I have seen in months. Can we get them a designer or maybe a pass to a Tufte course for Christmas?

    It’s a jumbled mess which basically says that in Garnter’s opinion, *nobody* has a complete vision with the ability to execute that vision. That’s a lot of empty graph space for a very small insight.

    Looking forward to what you find, Jeremiah.

  2. Scott

    The Forrester Wave report is intended to segment the market in order to see the stratification of the market. We ‘zoom’ in to see who the leaders and followers are.

    Expect my report to follow that same method that other Forrester Wave reports also do.

  3. As a card-carrying boomer, I’d be happy to share my experiences and opinions about social technologies. As a Lithium employee, I have plenty of both.

  4. Jeremiah:

    Thank you for the update! As far as I can see, you are the first to take a “deep dive” look at what is happening with community platforms/white labels, and I expect there will be lots to discuss once you have released your findings.

    Best,
    Connie

  5. looking forward to the results; any hints or guesses at the nine finalists so we might follow along?

  6. Feeling snarky before I've had coffee. I can't comment on Gartner's research, but I can comment on the worst chart I have seen in months. Can we get them a designer or maybe a pass to a Tufte course for Christmas?

    It's a jumbled mess which basically says that in Garnter's opinion, *nobody* has a complete vision with the ability to execute that vision. That's a lot of empty graph space for a very small insight.

    Looking forward to what you find, Jeremiah.

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