Above Photo (Click to view notes): The combined Forrester and Jupiter Social Marketing and Social Computing Research teams (missing: Christine Overby, Nate Elliott, Tom Grant, Laura Ramos, Peter Burris, Steven Noble, Rebecca Jennings, Lisa Bradner, and Tom Cummings.)

The last time I participated in an acquisition I was part of the company that was getting bought, it was exciting –yet very scary.

The last two days, I’ve been relatively quiet online (despite my trying to start some rumors on twitter) as Jupiter and Forrester research teams met for the first time at Cambridge HQ. We had folks travel from Amsterdam, Paris, NY, Silicon Valley, as well as teleconferenced in from London and dial in from Silicon Valley.

Although this is just the start of a long road, this is significant in a few ways: 1) This is perhaps one of the largest research teams assembled at an analyst firm that’s primarily focused on the impacts of social computing to marketers. Although there are 16 analyst that we’ve identified as covering some aspect of the social space, not all focus on it full time as I do. 2) This was the first group of many within Forrester to integrate and ‘mashup’. It only seems fitting that a group focuses on ’social’ would be the first to try. 3) The combined brain power yielded some interesting insights to where this market is currently and where it’s headed, while size doesn’t always indicate quality, with this larger team we can dig deeper into very specific areas of social media.

Many of us are going to blog our perspectives (I’ll link to them below) from both Forrester and Jupiter sides, so I’m just going to speak for myself. The key takeaway for is that we’re more alike than apart. While the Jupiter analysts would often approach the problem at a different angle than we were used to thinking about, almost always we would end in ‘head noding’ when it came to insights, findings, and recommendations. It was good to get to know Emily Riley, Michael Greene, David Card, Barry Parr, (Nate Elliott wasn’t able to join us) as well as some fellow Forrester colleagues I don’t get to see that often. I was particularly glad to meet Emily Riley, who’s research on communities, influence, and marketing were both impressive –yet strangely familiar in insights (and confirmation) as our own findings.

Aside from the fact that we got to know each other and were able to share a common bond for analyzing the same area, we were able to focus in on future research topics, take inventory of our areas of coverage, and socialize the POST process, Technographics, and learn about each research culture.

Now back to my story about getting acquired, it was at the tail of the dot bomb in Santa Clara, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, I was a junior web professional, working on the UI for the enterprise intranet at Exodus Communications, the company was falling at a rapid pace after a meteoric climb. We were snatched up by British Cable and Wireless, and spent the next few months integrating and filtering people, tying together systems, and eventually becoming one entity that is now still in existence. I remember so many questions being unanswered, uncertainty and my boss John Perera constantly telling me to ‘embrace change, embrace change’.

Recently, I’ve spoken with a few clients who’d expressed concern about a few of our very smart analysts moving on, and I asked them what could I do to reassure them that we’re still heavily focused on giving them the same insights as before, and we agreed that we should transparently blog about the two new teams coming together, so I’m making it a point to do just that.

To be clear, this is just the start, and we’re all going to ‘embrace change’, as we’ve identified many areas that we’ll have to work on as a team, there is some overlap of coverage, we all have individual approaches to the same problems, and the mixing of any two cultures will take time to settle. The key that we were able to come together, stand on common ground, and agree to move forward to deliver quality research that will help our clients make the right decisions. Personally, I’m reinvigorated and looking forward to what comes next.

Updates:
I’ll be linking to my colleagues perspectives as they appear. It’s refreshing to hear their honest takes on the last two days.

Aug 29: Emily Riley writes she’s Going Corporate, and observes my silicon valley lens.

Aug 29: David Card changes colors by Going Green, Embracing the Groundswell, etc, First Take, he notices the process too. Yup, but like good jazz, structured chord changes allows for amazing improv solos. The first step is to learn those chord progressions.

Aug 29: Blend master Josh Bernoff declares “It blends”

It was good we all met, I just got a project come in the day after the meeting that needs more than my expertise, I sent an email to David with details.

Below are some picture from the last two days which include some rare pictures of the research team at 400 Technology Square.

Many of these pics were taken by Zach Hofer-Shall, who uploaded to our internal wiki, which I then snagged and put on Flickr with attribution.

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One of the ways I tell companies how they can best serve their market is to be transparent on how they build products. By doing so, it helps folks not only understand, but appreciate the level of effort that goes into creating a service or product. While analysts offer guidance and advisory sessions, we’re most known for the reports that we create, in fact, these are key products that help decision makers be successful.

Demand for community platforms, yet too many vendors
I’m asked a few times a week on which community vendor to choose, with a list of 80-120 vendors on my blog and a more refined catalog on the Forrester site, it’s very confusing for brands to determine who’s best. If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know I’ve been watching the community platform (aka white label social network space) with great interest, even before I joined Forrester. A few weeks ago I announced my intention to start a Forrester Wave report, which will segment out nine vendors that will meet the needs of Interactive Marketers at Enterprise Class companies (companies with more than 1,000 employees).

The Forrester Wave Methdology
Using the refined Forrester Wave methodology that has been completed by many analysts before me, we’re nearly half way done with this 3 month research project to understand, and segment the community platform market. For this particular report, it doesn’t make sense to utilize crowd sourcing methods (although I’ve used crowd sourcing for other reports), the Wave method is already refined from the many analysts before me.

To date, we’ve created a detailed scorecard that involved a feedback loop with major brands who have recently deployed community software. This particular scorecard contains over 54 criteria that was assembled through client discussions, a panel of a trusted folks who have deployed communities, discussions with fellow analysts, and feedback from the vendors. Next, we collect data from the 9 vendors, each completing the scorecard for a total of 496 cells, then I create my own sheet of cells verifying what we found for a total of 992 cells of data collection.

Also, we’ve started interviewing and recording feedback from 27 brands that have deployed community software from these vendors, in order to find out what went right –and what could be improved from each of these nine vendors. Again, more spreadsheets and data collection.

Starting this week, we start a series of day-long labs with each of the vendors, where will be looking under the covers at the actual software, discuss their business strategy, and understand how their community offerings can best help marketers. We’re looking at the market from a variety of angles, to ensure that an accurate report is created.

Collaborative environment
At Forrester, an analyst never works in a vacuum, it’s collaborative and I’ve a lot of minds to lean on. It’s not just me alone, I’m getting help from analyst and my editor Shar Vanboskirk, analyst Oliver Young who knows the enterprise side of this space, analyst Suresh Vittal who’s completed many waves, analyst Laura Ramos, and constant support from research associate Sarah Glass (my guiding light, and detailed taskmaster) and research associate Zach Reiss-Davis. I’m under the guidance of my research director Christine Overby, and am in constant contact with our seasoned Josh Bernoff. Despite suggestions that some analyst firms do not have knowledge management strategies isn’t quite true. In fact, we retain the knowledge of our colleagues through tools like internal wikis, constant team communication, and most importantly knowledge and insights generated by reports will live on for colleagues and clients on the website.

Focusing in
That’s just the half way point: next I have to analyze, score, conduct follow ups to ensure all the data is correct, and begin the scoring process. You’re going to notice a decrease in my posting over the next few weeks, and my online activity start to wean off as I work hard to deliver a quality report later this fall that will help interactive marketers make the right decision.

Read more about this Wave Research project:

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

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Left Image: Here’s some sample data that is derived from NACTAS 2007 North American Social Technographic Online Survey.

Although I primarily rely on the proven Forrester Research methodology, when it makes sense, I tap into my network to discuss concepts and get examples. While only a part of methodology is evident to the public (what you see on this blog, or on twitter) this post will make it crystal clear what works –and what doesn’t.

Forrester methodology
For all of my reports, I follow the research methodology that many other analysts have used before me for the past 25 years. This tested process may involve analyzing Forrester’s large technographic and consumer data banks, work with our data research team, conduct interviews, surveys, talk with clients (buyers), talk with vendors (sellers) discuss with fellow analysts, venture capitalists, and research online –it’s a thorough way to see the market holistically.

A social computing analyst uses social technologies
As an analyst that covers Social Computing for the Interactive Marketer, it’s natural to use the very tools that I’m researching –in fact, it was one of the factors in how I earned the role. Using the tools is a great way to learn what works and what doesn’t, a key step before I make recommendations to clients. Also, this blog serves as a supplamant to clients as well as myself, for example I’m known for building many “industry index” lists in the space, it helps me to keep track of who’s doing what, and since I screen each submission, the signal to noise ratio is higher than a wiki.

In tune with my market: the Interactive Marketer
At Forrester, we’re client centric, and as such, I serve the Interactive Marketer. Recently, we ran a survey of my blog readers, and found out that the largest group of my blog readers (14k subscribed) are interactive marketers or work at an interactive agency. Also having a twitter network of 10k followers is an amazing resource. Fortunately, this audience is a match to the role that I serve, making the following two uses cases possible:

When crowdsourcing makes sense
These tools make it easy to flesh out concepts and find examples –but deeper research is always required, here’s some examples where it does work:

Use Case 1: Fleshing out concepts
I’ve found that asking questions from my blog and from my Twitter account are helpful for certain information gathering, but not for other needs. For example, I used a discussion on my blog and twitter from social media experts to vet a definition for the term “Online Community”, given this is the crowd of experts on this topic (and they are very willing to collaborate), this was an appropriate way to use this. I then scrubbed the answers, and was able to extrapolate the general key ideas (crowd sourcing is often rough on the edges) and come to agreement with my editor. In the endnotes of the report Online Community Best Practices we referenced the crowdsourcing effort. Please note in that report Online Community Best Practices, I interviewed 17 companies, and relied ton Technographic data, a standard procedure in report methodology –less than 5% of the report was crowdsourced

Use Case 2: Finding case studies and examples
Also, Forrester reports are chockfull of examples of companies doing it right –and wrong. Given my network is tuned into what’s happening with brands and social media, I can easily get an answer if I don’t know it. It’s a direct example of using a social computer (and since my coverage is on social computing) this is a good fit. Of course, finding the examples is just the start, often, I need to understand the case study, and that often involves a typical research phone interview.

For both of the above use cases. additional follow-ups and analysis are required.

Traditional methodologies are core
Asking my blog readers and twitter followers to provide broad responses that represent mainstream North America, Europe, or Asia isn’t effective. Fortunately, Forrester has a great deal of Technographic data (we’ve large data teams) at my disposal around user behaviors and consumer preferences –I don’t need to crowd source crowd source to get this, and rely on this for my data collection. I’m currently focused on a Forrester Wave of the online community platforms, this particular methodology does not call for any social media use –I’m using a tried and true methodology, learn more about it on the Forrester site.

Sometimes, I engage in discussion on twitter that appeals to me personally: movies, music, events, art, sports, and occasionally politics. Being the curious individual I am, I’ve been known (before Forrester) to ask questions of my network and get responses –if’s a fascinating use of social media. Although some may not see the separation, it’s important to note that these discussions often have nothing to do with my role as an analyst.

Summary:
I primarily rely on Forrester’s data, process, and methodologies that have been tested and refined over the last 25 years. This includes input from our large survey data, interviews, client meetings, vendor briefings, and talking with fellow analysis. When it makes sense, I can rely on my large network of Interactive Marketers and Social Computing experts to flesh out concepts and find examples –although additional analysis is almost always required.

As I discover new ways to use these tools, I’ll update this post, I’d love to hear your responses

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A few months ago, I put a call out to the industry to submit to this catalog of the Community Platform space (also known as the White Label Social Network space), my interest in this space grew from a list I started over a year ago on my blog even before I was an analyst covering this space. The list continues to grow, as commodity software is fueled by market demand for brands to create their own hosted communities.

Forrester Report: Announcing Vendor Product Catalog of Community Platforms For The Interactive Marketer (part 1/2)
This report is the first of two, If you’re a client, you probably have access to the report, or you can purchase it on the site, we stand by our work and offer a money back guarantee if you’re not completely satisfied.

This Vendor Product Catalog which we’re launching today is more or less the “yellow pages” of the space, but unlike my generic list on my blog, the companies have been vetted and important information has been added such as:

Enterprise focus (percent of clients with more than 1000 employees)

SMB focus (percent of clients with less than 1000 employees)

Categorization of their business model (Breakdown of Hardware, Hosted Web Service, Services, Software, Support)

Top three industries the vendor is involved with

Focus on external/vs internal community deployment (customer/employee)

Brands should use this report to:
You should use this report to help narrow down specific needs and questions you have – given this is such a large industry, these key attributes will help you filter.

In the spirit of Social Computing, this report has rating and comment features, this way clients can rate and rank their experience with the vendors, much in the way CNET or Amazon.com does for consumer products. So if you’ve used these vendors –leave a comment and rank the experience.

There were almost 50 products submitted to this Vendor Product Catalog which is pretty amazing considering how young the market is. The data has helped us to select the vendors for my next report:

Vendors should use this report to:
If you didn’t initially submit to this catalog but feel you should be on it, you can submit their information online here and selecting ‘Community Platforms For The Interactive Marketer’ from the VPC topic drop down menu.

Underway: Wave Report on Community Platforms (part 2)
I recently announced my intent to complete a Forrester Wave report which will focus on the nine firms best suited for Fortune 5000 interactive marketers. This is currently underway. I’m gathering market requirements from clients and analysts to create a detailed and thorough scorecard which will be completed during in depth meetings with each of the nine final vendors. In order to keep the process simple, I won’t be disclosing who the nine vendors are until the report goes live in October. You can learn more about this and other Wave reports on the Forrester site.

In addition to thanking all the vendors who submitted, I’d like to recognize Sarah Glass who has been instrumental in getting this catalog done. Although you can’t often see, behind the scenes, there is a large research group here that supports the analysts – I’m grateful.

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It’s true, most social network marketing isn’t being done effectively, why? Many brands (and their agencies) are deploying “interactive marketing” (user to website) experience rather than relying on the tools of social networks “social marketing” (member to member). As a result, many brands are wasting their time, money, and resources to reach communities in social networks without first understanding that the use case is very different than a microsite campaign. Don’t just take my word for it, research from Deloitte also suggests the same –WSJ (link via Fabrice)

In this latest report, we created a scorecard (which you can use to checklist your own efforts) which amplifies the real opportunities of social network; the community themselves. This report is great for anyone brand deploying a social network marketing effort, or for agencies that are trying to enter this new world. Marketing efforts did best when the control was turned over to the hands of the community.

[We tested marketing efforts on Social Networks using ‘Social’ criteria (rather than traditional marketing tactics) that meets the needs of the community, sadly, only 1 out 16 brands passed]

We took a multi-industry approach, and reviewed 16 firms from four industries: automotive, media, technology, and consumer products. Sadly, out of this 16 contenders that were appropriate, only the BMW Series 1 received a passing grade, and half of the firms scored a zero or lower. We also tried to find examples in many social networks including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Imeem, and Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces. I was already asked on Twitter if there were B2B examples, unfortunately, we only found one that made the report, Microsoft Live Server.

Despite these dismal scores, there were some great examples such as the The Dell/Microsoft (Red) program provided a rich media theme that was easily sharable, Sony’s BMG page for Alicia Keys was personable and interactive, and Kraft’s DiGiorno Pizza delivered a unique interactive experience with its members. To improve social network marketing, brands must develop community-centered content and activities, measure success based on new criteria, and be prepared to participate.

Forrester Report: Best And Worst Of Social Network Marketing, 2008

If you leave a question on Forrester report page, I promise to respond to the best of my ability.
If you’re a client, you can download instantly, or if you’re not a client, you can purchase the report, and if you’re not fully satisfied you can return with no questions asked –we stand by our work.

Also, I propose we do away with the term “campaign” when it comes to social networks, it derives images of military movements, and short term commitments –exactly what not to do when it comes to communities.

Although some of them have changed since we first started to judge the 16 social network marketing efforts are:
Note: A passing score is a minimum of 8.

Automotive
BMW 1 Series scores a 9 (Pass) read more
Mazda3 scores a -1
Chevy scores a 3 (who sponsored the effort at the time)
Ford scores a -4

Media
HBO’s Entourage scores a 2
FOX News scores a -4
Disney: Enchanted Movie scores a -4
Sony BMG’s Alicia Keys scores a 7

Technology
Samsung’s Blast scores a -3
Dell/Microsoft (RED) scores a 6
Microsoft’s Windows Server Live scores a 6
Intel scores a -5

Consumer Products
Nike scores a 2
Kraft’s DiGiorno Pizza scores a 5
Pepsi’s Aquafina scores a -2
Mars: Skittles & Starburst scores a 0

The whole process was a tremendous amount of work, we spent hours testing, reviewing, and compiling data, you should use this report as a benchmark and a checklist for your future efforts on social networks. It was a lot of work, but should really help you to all move forward and reach communities even more effectively.

Lastly, I use social media tools as a small percentage of my research methodology, for example, I asked the 12,000+ readers of this blog (and 9000+ on Twitter) to help define what they think are success metrics for campaigns, some of this was factored into the scorecard requirements. At Forrester we serve different roles, mine being Interactive Marketers, it’s also important to know the largest segment of readers to this blog are Interactive Marketers according to a recent survey. So I use the same tools that I cover, and try to practice what I preach. Last by not least, thanks to Christine Overby, Harley Manning, Sarah Glass and Scott Wright at Forrester for all their help.

Scope Clarification:
Update: One brand was unsure of the scope of this research report. To be clear, this report encompassed only the marketing efforts on a social network. It does not include blogs, podcats, youtube, communities that a brand may create on their own site, or efforts within the intranet. Also, some brands may have had multiple marketing efforts on social networks, this report would have only examined and graded one.

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Blogging the status of my research agenda has become an efficient way for me to communicate with the market I cover, as well as signal to clients new areas of expertise.

Fortunately, much of the market I cover (or their PR firms) read this blog and my tweets (and vice versa), making my job as a researcher very, very efficient.

Many weeks ago, I made a call for the vendor product catalog in this market, (and via email and twitter) that document, is a detailed index of over 40 vendors in the space, (aprox 50% of the market) and will be available to Forrester clients and those who submitted to it in the coming days.

My research agenda for this quarter is to complete a Forrester Wave (learn more), which is a market segmentation and prioritization report that will help clients (Fortune 5000, Interactive Marketers) determine which vendor is right for them. (I get asked daily in one medium or another who to buy). The primary purpose of this report is to aid my clients to efficiently come to a short list or decision on who to buy. The lingering side effects could also signal to the VC space who to fund, as well as within the industry who will want to partner from a CMS, ERP, CRM, widget, services aspect.

Due to the rigorous methodology (there will be thousands of excel cells created, analyzed, and weighed among our team) The Wave will only include several vendors. During this 10 week process, I’ll be following the guidelines set before me (we’ve done many Wave reports) this consuming activity will meet my entire report coverage for the entire quarter. This coupled with the changes in our team, will keep me very busy, I hope it doesn’t impact my other duties, as well as blogging.

From time to time, I’ll post updates about where I am in developing this product (reports are one of our products), in that spirit, I’m now whittling down the big list to the core vendors that can stand the rigors of enterprise requirements (Fortune 5000) and are primarily suited for interactive marketers (mainly external deployments) who I serve.

If you’ve already submitted to the vendor product catalog, I’m already reviewing with the team. However, if you have an extensive track record for the Fortune 5000 interactive marketer (perhaps with references), and did not submit, you ought to let me know, email me at jowyang at forrester.com . I’ve already reached out to a few who I think could qualify.

You’ve already shown that you know what analysts do, but how we do it is a shrouded mystery, so now, you’re getting a behind the scenes tour as I trek forward –a little transparency should help you to better understand what we do.

Read more about this Wave Research project:

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

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I just got back from Forrester’s Finance forum, according to one of our long term attendees Steve blogged it was a success. This is one of the perks of the job, being able to meet interesting folks and hearing how you’ve helped them be better at making decisions.

For those that have been reading for a while, or following me on Twitter, you’ve noticed I’ve been very busy helping clients, conducting research, and sharing what I’ve found with the press and media. After 8 months as an analyst the questions from the market have just increased, between helping clients and managing this blog, I’m operating at an efficient speed where things go very well. Having successfully launched their book Groundswell fly even more than I do, delivering the POST methodology to individuals that want to learn how to approach social computing and social media.

I’ve received news from Cliff Condon (my boss boss) that based upon client needs, we’re expanding the team. We’re going to be adding some additional roles in the Analyst and Researcher position (each job performs a different function) in order to meet our clients needs. The job descriptions are available for the Analyst and Researcher position, and if you’re qualified, please submit your resume to the website, and reference that you saw this from my blog.

I can’t speak for the researcher role, but being an analyst was the logical step for me in my career, while a very challenging job, you’ll have the opportunity to touch all parts of the industry, make sense of chaos, and define a path for companies to ventures towards. You’ll have access to Forrester’s immense survey data, work with smart people, help clients, travel, and grow your career a few steps up, I often tell folks being an analyst is like a “Living MBA program”. Not only do you study business, you get to help clients apply your knowledge.

Josh provides a bit more information about the jobs, do read his posting.

I’ll update this post when we fill the position, so you’ll know when it’s filled.

I hope you apply!

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This is an advertisement for Forrester services. I share a lot on this public blog, and we should be thankful my employer is so gracious to encourage this, so please show the same respect as you would to my other posts. For some history, I promote other events, workshops and conferences that are not ours, as long as I think they will help you.

But first, a story: A few weeks ago at Forrester’s Marketing conference my CEO George Colony (he blogs too) in front of everyone (hundreds in the room) asked me how I approach blogging. This was during his keynote, and he handed me a mic, I told him that companies can give away the appetizers for free, in order to entice customers of how great the food is inside the restaurant. To me, this blog is the appetizer, but the full meal with dessert and wine (literally) is at our 1:1 sessions, conferences, and consulting.

One of the ways that we are able to fuel our research, reports, and this blog is by generating revenue from giving workshops. Forrester Research has a 5% off Discount for those that want to attend my upcoming workshop (with Peter Kim) in San Francisco on July 17, 2008 San Francisco, CA.

We’ll cover the POST Methodology (how to approach social computing/media) from a high level perspective, and show data of how consumers actually use these tools. Then we’ll get into the weeds and discuss the five different objectives: listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing along with several case studies for each. During this interactive session, you’ll be able to ask questions, get answers, and network with industry peers in this small classroom setting.

Social Computing Workshop
To get the 5% discount: Call 1 Call +1 617/613 – 5905.

At the end, groups will break out, dig into exercises and come forth with actual strategies that could eventually apply back at the home front. The last one we conducted, the ratio was two instructors for a class of 10, you’ll get a lot of specific questions answered.

If you’re not planning to attend, you know I give away a great deal of information on this blog at no cost, thanks for taking the time to read this. Hope to see you there!

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(Left: New analyst, Steven Noble and John Cass, Online Community Manager, stroll with me in Cambridge after work)

A while ago, I mentioned a public call for resumes for Forrester’s Community Manager role, we even heard from the hiring manager, Michele Frost, who is our ‘web strategist’ responsible for our corporate website.

I’m pleased to introduce you to John Cass, who’s in Boston, has a long background with SNCR, has done research (making him a good fit for the culture) and is an all around nice guy. I enjoyed having him in my recent social computing workshop class in Boston, then went to dinner with him and our new Australian analyst Steven Noble (also focused on marketing with a focus on social computing).

Read from John himself why he chose to join Forrester, and how he’s going to use these tools to connect with our customers, so we can provide more value to our clients. You can also find him on Twitter.

If you wanted to learn more about community managers, read all my posts tagged community manager, or if you seeking to become one, or hire one, start here at On the Move.

Lastly, thanks to all who submitted resumes, I wish you the best of luck going forward.

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If you’re a Forrester client (many readers here are) I’m encouraging you to exercise your right as a customer.

If you’ve read the Groundswell, then you’re familiar with the term Embracing, in which employees and customers work together to build next generation products and services.

For each report (one of our products) we’ve a rating system, and the ability for customers to leave comments. Quite frankly, I only see a few, and I’d like to get more feedback. Why? I want to improve and make sure that I’m doing everything I can to help our customers answer questions about my coverage area in social computing.

So, if you’re a client, and have read my reports, I’d love your feedback: rate and/or leave a comment on the report of what you liked and what could be improved. I promise to read and respond to any questions to the best of my ability.

We’ve made a two-way channel for you to respond, I’m listening. Here’s a list of my reports on the Forrester site.

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(Rather than theorize on the Community Pyramid, you can create your own ladder for free on the Technographics Profile Tool)

Respected Don Dodge has an interesting post where he segments communities by a taxonomy of: 1 creators, 10 synthesizers, and 100 consumers.

It’s a good rule of thumb, but it isn’t applicable to all communities. The good news is, there’s no need to theorize over the pyramid shape, as we’ve provided a ladder than you can access now –for free.

For Creators, I’m pretty sure we use the same nomenclature to describe a creator. You can learn from the links below how we define that individual. Don uses the term synthesizers, but doesn’t define it, I’d guess it’s a hybrid of what we define in detail as collectors and critics, but I’d need to know more to find out.

A consumer is likely what we call a Spectator, someone who consumes social content, within a community this of course would equal 100% as he denotes. Lastly, our data isn’t restrictive to one tool only (social networks) but looking at the macro picture of how people behave.

I love working at a Research company, there’s plenty of access to data, fortunately, we’ve made a portion of it available at no cost to you see the Techongraphics Profile Tool to learn more and actually see the REAL percentage numbers of a creator by age, regions, and gender.

You’ll then be able to see how many creators are available by each of those demographics, and how many are critics, collectors, and joiners. The total percent adds up to more than 100% in some cases, as you can be in more than one rung (except for inactive, of course)

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How to access Forrester Technographic Data:

First, understand that Social Technographics classifies people according to how they use social technologies, read these 8 slides.

Next, go to the profile tool, and experiment with many of the drop downs and toggles.

Then, you can determine which social media tools to use, based upon understand those you are trying to reach. It’s always dangerous to build your house starting with a hammer (tools), first, figure out who you’re building it for, then build a plan.

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Data comes from the following surveys:

US: Forrester’s North American Social Technographics Online Survey, Q2 2007, 10,010 respondents.

Europe: Forrester’s European Technographics Benchmark Survey, Q2 2007, 24,808 respondents.

Asia Pacific: Forrester’s Asia Pacific Technographics Survey, Q1 2007, 6,530 respondents.

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As an analyst at Forrester focused on Social Computing, I’m creating an online catalog for clients that lists out the many players in the White Label Social Networking space, a market I’ve been covering before I even joined the company.

If you work at one of these 100 White Label Social Networking sites (a social network that any company can rebrand) then you’ll want to be included in this catalog. Later, this catalog will help me determine the vendors that will be involved in the Forrester Wave document, which will segment out vendors by strengths.

If you want to participate in this Vendor Catalog, follow these steps:

1) Email Scott Wright swright at forrester.com (Update: Please send to Sarah Glass sglass at forrester.com)with your request: Subject line should be “VPC”
2) He’ll send you instructions, and you can then fill out the short excel sheet.
3) Return it to us by June 4th

If you know someone who works at one of these companies, please forward this post over to them, thanks. I’ve emailed those that I have on hand, but that’s clearly not the entire list.

Update, May 31: Important note about privacy.
Many vendors have expressed concern about how revenue numbers will be used, as many are private companies. The final report will show “price brands” such as 1-5 million, or 6-10 million, just as examples.

It’s important that we place you into these buckets so buyers will know which vendor matches to their particular need. We will use your specific revenue numbers for internal research purposes only, and not publish or share outside of our company. If you still have questions email me at jowyang at forrester.com

Update June 10th
A few days ago, I announced the call for White Label Social Networking vendors (I cover the social networking space at Forrester, for the Interactive Marketer) to complete a spreadsheet and send back to me. Thank you all for completing it, the following companies will be in the Vendor Catalog (A report for Forrester clients):

I used to have a list of vendors who submitted to the report, instead, you can now access the report directly on the Forrester site, or read my background info on my blog.

Of course, each of those vendors who submitted will receive a copy of the report, which will be published in late June 08 or sooner.

If you didn’t submit in time, you’ll have a chance to apply for the vendor catalog, watch this post, and my blog for details.

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Just finished reading the official Groundwell book poolside in the warm CA sun. I’ve actually read the book, but before it was even close to print, that version was slightly different and incomplete than the one on bookshelves today.

Before I started at Forrester, Charlene suggested I be one on the advance readers, she stopped by, handed me a spiral bound print out, and asked me to read it and provide my input. I read the book during my trip to Hong Kong, and marked the book up, some of my suggestions I hope were helpful, I do know that one of my examples made the book. The example about Scoble’s wiki not working well was my submission.

If you’ve read the book, you’ll realize it’s based on a solid methodology, case examples, and cites data from Technographics, this is a practical version of previous social media books. Which books in particular? Cluetrain, then Naked Conversations are really desktop references and preludes to this book, I recommend all of three of these.

This Thursday, I’ll be speaking at the 10 year anniversary of the Cluetrain event, Doc Searls to give the keynote at SAP in Palo Alto, hope to see you there. I was with Shel and Robert at their book launch party for Naked, and then started to learn under Shel, he taught me a great deal. Now, I’m working with the Groundswell authors, it’s an amazing adventure.

I’m somewhat biased being a Forrester employee and working with the Groundswell colleagues, but I’ll tell you what it’s missing: tactics. This book is a strategic framework, a real methodology that tells you the right way to approach social media. It doesn’t give you specifics on technologies, and how to use them, which of course would make the book have a very limited shelf life, so the tactics will be found on blogs, twitter, podcasts, that you, and you, and you, will write.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Groundswell book, what did you like and dislike? Will you apply the POST methodology at your workplace? What did your boss say?

Related note: If you have one of my latest business cards, turn it over for a mesmerizing effect.

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About my use of social media in my research
I use my blog, (and other social media tools like Twitter) as a percentage of my research methodology (around 15%), it’s not the only contributing factor but is an effective way of me using a real-time, global, inexpensive user group. While I do benefit from the flexibility and speed of this format, it also has it’s risks such as lack of identification, biased sample, or often lack of controls. Forrester encourages me to use these tools, it’s helping, and I’m living the space that I cover “Social Computing”.

Social media is only one small sliver of the methodology used to generate the reports.

I’m working on two research reports, the first one is a catalog of the White Label Social Networking vendors (it will list out all the players) then I’ll be segmenting, rating and ranking the leaders in the space by creating a Forrester Wave report. The Wave is a very heavy duty report, and will take me at least 10 weeks to complete, it’s very thorough and will influence buying and funding behavior of the market.

Whenever I ask you for help or conduct research in public, I’ll return the favor and give my findings back to the community, it’s only fair, and encourages you to participate, it’s dang fun too.

1) I asked you what you want
Earlier, I asked me readers (who I know many are in the market for social networks) what do they want in a white label social network vendor.

2) The weighted results are now available.
Thanks to Scott Wright (He’s on Facebook), our Research Associate on our team, he did a quick weighted average based upon responses, they are the following:

---

What you said you wanted in a White Label Social Networking Vendor:
The number represents a weighted score, as respondents were asked to prioiritize only three requests, the first response was weighted at “3″ the second weighted a “2″ and the third response weighted a “1″.

Ease of use/customer experience = 22
Customizability = 21
Pricing = 21
Reliability = 12
Integration = 7
Features = 6
Flexibility = 4
Ease of implementation = 4
Company Strategy = 3
Privacy = 3
Reporting = 2
Revenue Drivers = 2
Support = 2
Dependability = 1
Entertainment = 1

---

Insights
Quite a few responses around functionality to have a great user experience, be easy to use. As the term “white label” applies (an application you can rebrand and reshape) there’s no surprised that respondents wanted a software package that could easily morph into the look and feel of your corporate site or microsite, we could have easily coupled the 4 results for flexibility in the bucket, if we had a forced drop down survey, (this was open ended, by design) Lastly, pricing was important, as you know the vendors go from free to 20,000 a month, installation services range from 5,000-200,000 fixed costs with varying degrees of service, support, and software features. Many strategists made it very clear that they work at Fortune 5000 companies that reliability was so important, as many brands sell performance based products, their community site could not be down, it’s just embarrassing.

Thanks for responding, although this is only one factor in determining requirements, it’s certainly a good kickstart, and great confirmation.

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NOTE: The weighted findings are now available on this followup post.

I’m preparing for an upcoming report to help segment out the many vendors in the White Label or Private label social networking industry. Essentially, these companies allow brands to create their own social network (like Facebook) for customers, partners, or employees.

Are you a decision maker for corporate websites? Maybe you’re a web strategist, a web architect, a web marketer, or a web developer in marketing, I want to know what you think is important.

As you select a White Label Social Networking vendor, what THREE criteria are important to you?

Example: Features, Pricing, Support are important to me because: X

If you don’t feel comfortable leaving a comment, sent me an email at jowyang@forrester.com

As with previous times I’ve asked you for your opinion on reports, I do share what the community findings were, and how I’m going to proceed. For what it’s worth, this is just one element that I’ll factor into my research, there’s other methods that I’ll be using to find out the criteria. Thanks for crowdsourcing with me.

Update: A Community Manager (Thanks Tom) are sending me their Request for Proposals (RFP) if you wanted to send that to me, that will really help, I’ll credit you in the final report. I’ll assume this is confidential however, and will ask for your permission before sharing outside of my immediate team.

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You’ll frequently see me rant on this blog about how not to start your social media program at your company by selecting a tool. When you’ve only got a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Instead, at Forrester, we prescribe you focus on the people and the relationships they have with each other, rather than starting with tools. Besides, two years ago we were hot on blogs, and this year, we’re shifting to Facebook and Twitter, new tools come and go.

Develop a strategy based on having real business objectives: Listening, Talking, Energizing, Supporting, or Embracing, rather than having a “blogging strategy” or “email strategy”.

Colleague Peter Kim and I will be hosting a full day workshop on understanding social computing for your business. We’ll teach, step by step, how brands can understand what the Groundswell is and then how to approach the POST methodology of understanding People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technologies to develop social media strategies.

We hope to see you at the Social Computing workshop on June 5th in Cambridge Mass.

I don’t just recommend our services, which quite honestly are for the large corporation with large budget, but also take a look at the good work the Marketing Profs have been doing, such as this upcoming workshop with Chris Brogan, or check out the Conversation Group, who are also doing good work and put on presentations and events.

Just as I pitched my services on this post, I’m absolutely ok with you offering any webinars or workshops on the topic of social media for business, leave a comment below, but always remember to add value to the conversation.

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In 2008, Business Adoption Of Web 2.0 Tools Is Expected To Grow Strongly

Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast
On Monday, colleague Oliver Young (I was involved with the report) published a forward looking report on the growth of Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise entitled Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013. As I mention with every report, you can purchase it directly from the site, or if not satisfied, obtain a refund, as we stand by the quality of our products.

Who should read this report?
Anyone investing in the space such as VCs, leadership at Social Media companies, or those involved in purchasing at corporations for social media tools.

Caveat: Sans services and “organic” sites
It’s important to note that calculations do not include properties such as ‘organic social networks’ like Facebook (which is valued at $15b), nor do they include services (a report I hope to do soon), so the numbers, in our opinion are just a slice of the overall technology sector. For example, in 2008 we project enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technology to account for just 0.2% of the $364bn global corporate spending on software and to barely even register as part of the $1.7 trillion we expect to see spent on technology overall is a useful piece of context. When you think about social media tools for the enterprise, most often, these commodity technologies are cheap, easy to deploy, and often free.

Web 2.0 Expo, a Physical Manifestation
I spent the last two days at the Web 2.0 expo (I was an advisor to the show), where 7000 people from this market assembled into one building. Who are these people? they are the ‘market’;, vendors, clients, analysts, press, media, and users. It was clear to me many mainstream businesses were attending, I’ll take a guess that many early adopters within the enterprise (I was that guy at Hitachi Data Systems) are dragging their boss, and colleagues who were once nay-sayers to the conference to learn. I saw many Fortune 1000 brands there trying to learn and understand how to use these tools for business.

Mainstreaming
To me, last year’s Web 2.0 expo was far different, it was a geek fest, where live streaming was prominent, and there was much more fascination over the tools –rather than the business impact. This year, many of the questions and folks I met were interested in using these tools to improve their business, they weren’t enamored with the latest widget. On the show floor, I spoke to two CEOs who read the report and commented that the numbers looked in par to their expectations.

Technology Infrastructure moves in
SUN (Who’s had the startup essentials program for a few years), HP, NetAPP, EMC were all present on the show room floor. What do they have to do with Web 2.0? In most cases, this is not their core business, but they realize this growing market will need infrastructure and technology to power these websites. I was pushing for this nearly 3 years ago at the data storage level, but I guess I was too early. Another change is the strong presence of an analyst firm, in this case it was Forrester, we were involved with four sessions, hosted a party, and launched a book. I guess this movement really is headed mainstream now.

What others are saying: in agreement and disagreement
Our friends at ZDNet may have misunderstood what we were actually sizing, at first it was assumed it was just “enterprise 2.0″ (internal) purchases, but in reality, this sizing encompasses externally facing (marketing), and is the largest piece of the pie.

The above and following image was posted on many blogs on Monday, where I encourage you to following the conversation and analysis. First, start with Read Write Web (Oilver and I are big fans of this blog), then Andy Beal takes Here’s the Reason Why Small Businesses Won’t Adopt “Enterprise 2.0″, and for a counterpoint, the respected Dennis Howlett The problem with Forrester’s $4.6 billion prediction, I always enjoy Dennis’ contrarion position, it’s needed in the industry. (update: Oliver Young left a comment on his post)

(This post was reviewed by colleague Analyst Oliver Young, who published the report)

Forecast: Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Spend By Technology, 2007 To 2013

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I’m proud to announce my latest report on OpenSocial. If you’re not familiar with that, check out How to Explain OpenSocial to your Executives.

I interview Google, developers, and social network platforms to find out their ideology and experience with converting applications to the OpenSocial protocol, and I quickly learned that while the promise is indeed a powerful one, in reality, it will be very difficult to achieve. In some cases, developers tell me that widget code needs to be modified up to 50%.

For clients, you can access the short report on the Forrester site, or you can purchase it on the site. As much as I’d love to share this research to everyone, like you have your products, this is ours, and there are costs associated.

Google’s OpenSocial: Good News For Marketing Widgets But No Silver Bullet Google, along with a congress of more than a dozen social networks, plans to launch OpenSocial, a set of standards that will allow widgets to be built once and run on any Web site compatible with OpenSocial. What’s in it for interactive marketers? The ability to efficiently create engaging branded experiences that reach millions of new communities. However, don’t expect your widgets to universally proliferate, as adoption will vary based upon the demographic and technical characteristics of each online community. Interactive marketers should deploy widgets using OpenSocial standards, yet they should also plan — and budget — for rapid iterations and flexibility.

I interviewed:
Google’s OpenSocial Team, IBM’s Lotus Team, KickApps, NewsGator Technologies, Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr, Six Apart’s David Recordon, and Nick O’Neil of SocialTimes.com

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Designing For Engagement, Kerry Bodine, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Sitting in the front row from Forrester’s Marketing Forum 2008, the theme for today’s event with over 800 attendees being Marketing’s New Imperative For Success: Engagement

Voices from the Audience:

• UK’s Hayden, who was our virtual guest who’s question was asked and answered in the Ustream Channel enjoys participating.
• David Berkowitz watches the chat room from NYC
• Adam Cohen reveals that The Future Will Be Televised…With Social Media
• David Deal comments on George Colony’s keynote in Your employee, your blogger

Live Streaming the Morning Keynotes:
Harley Manning (Setting the Stage) and Kerry Bodine (Engagement), 52 Minutes

MicroBlogging: Twitter
Members are using their laptops and mobile devices to interact with each other using Twitter, a form of Microblogging.  Some of them are tagging their posts (called "tweets") with the event tag, you can view them all here.

Select Tweets include:

• MichelleBB : Working to get all FedEx Kinkos up to standards of brand. They welcome that feedback.  Only way they’ll get better.
• MichelleBB :  Ouch!  Kerry just called out Harley’s fanny pack
• melmcbride
  : Kerry Bodine’s talk about emotional connection is
  amazing. I want to blog it once the vid is available as an embed
• Rumford :  @worleygirl you give away the appetizers and sometimes the dinner. people love the knowledge sharing and become loyal
• nickhuhn :  forrester CEO George Colony re: his blogging: i can’t believe MSFT isn’t behind typepad or wordpress as bad as they are

Pictures:
Below are select images, but to see all public photos peruse this flickr tag ForrMarketing08,also see Jeremy Pepper’s set, and Forrester Research’s set.   Select photos, including those from Jeremy Pepper:

Cross posted on the Forrester Marketing blog

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(Above Photo by Jeremy Pepper)

Jeremiah Owyang:  Sitting in the front row from Forrester’s Marketing Forum 2008, the theme for today’s event with over 800 attendees being Marketing’s New Imperative For Success: Engagement

Voices from the Audience:

• Rodney Rumford is excited to blog from the Forrester Marketing Forum in LA.
• Rodney’s live blogs Brian Haven’s Engagement presentation
• Marianne Richmond couldn’t attend, but writes Forrester Marketing Forum 2008: Engagement and I.
• David Deal of Avenue A Razorfish wraps his thoughts on Engagement
• Rather than Blog, Amy Worley used Twitter for her whole experience

Live Streaming the Morning Keynotes:
Harley Manning (Setting the Stage) and Brian Haven (Engagement), 54 Minutes

Speaking of Engagement… As we live streamed from the front row, we responded to questions from the Ustream chat room.  One virtual attendee from UK (named Haydens30), asked a question on Engagement, which was then asked by Josh Bernoff at the live event and answered by Brian Haven.  There were hundreds that watched live, and over 70 were in the chat room, you can watch the keynotes in the player below:

MicroBlogging: Twitter
Members are using their laptops and mobile devices to interact with each other using Twitter, a form of Microblogging.  Some of them are tagging their posts (called "tweets") with the event tag, you can view them all here.

Select Tweets include:

• adamcohen : next speaker: Emmanuel Brown of Nike Jordan brand - he’s wearing Air Jordans, love it
• adamcohen :  Engagement is the4 i’s:  level of involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence over time #forrmarketing0
• Jeremy Pepper: 
  Engagement is close to becoming just a buzz word bc of overuse.
• Robert Scoble
  @jowyang ’s CEO called him into the office. Now if he were REALLY hip
  he would have sent a Twitter message. :-)  (George reads this blog, so
  he’ll see this)
• Alex Nesbitt
  @jowyang - why such an anti-social conference? You guys needs a way for
  people to ask unfiltered questions or text in questions. (my respone)

Pictures:
Below are a few pics I’ve taken, but to see all public photos peruse this flickr tag ForrMarketing08,also see Jeremy Pepper’s set,

Eating Our Own Dog Food
At Forrester, we preach to our clients to follow the POST Methodology, here at the forum, we’ve set up roles, processes, and have identified the key objectives we want to achieve by using social media at our forum, have a written plan with success metrics, and will report back to our stakeholders how the event went –both good and bad.  In the spirit of transparency, here’s some of what the plan that was shared among the internal team: Energizing, rather than create most of the content, we encourage our attendees to publish, we’ll link to it from this blog post.  Supporting: We encourage attendees to join our Facebook page and network with each other.  Embracing: We’re using this feedback from attendees to learn how to improve our future events.

Select photos (some from Jeremy Pepper)

 

Cross posted on Forrester Marketing Blog

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