@chris2x I'd reframe that. Apple's strategy is to sell lots of media that is used on the iPad. in reply to chris2x 1 hr ago

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List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010

Categories: Community Manager, Industry Index, Social Media, Social StrategistPosted on January 30th, 2010

As an industry watcher, I look at trends, data, spending, technologies, yet what’s really important is watching the trend of professionals as they grow into these roles managing disruptive technologies.  Update: Brian Hayashi has created a spreadsheet of this with additional info –like Twitter handles. We’re staying coordinated so the data is matched, follow Brian on Twitter.

[Connecting with customers using social technologies is deceptively challenging, as most outsiders don't recognize the leadership to change internal cultural. Now, in public, let's recognize those who are paving the way]

Methodology: About this List
This 2010 list is an update from the original I started in 2008, it was woefully out of date as people moved around.  This list is updated, as I’ve separated the large technology section in HW vs SW and am only linking to LinkedIn accounts.

A majority of this data is based off submissions in the 2008 post, which most which are self-submissions or from their fellow colleagues and we only link to their already public profile in LinkedIn for verification.  We’ve spend days compiling this data, but due to the content ever changing, we expect there to be some inaccuracies, leave a comment if you see something that needs fixing. Thanks to Sonal Mehta a student at American University who I’ve hired helped me in this research.

Read Carefully: How to get on this List
In a world of noise, curation becomes very valuable, as a result, there are very specific requirements for this list, which include:  1) You must have a public LinkedIn profile page, as this is one of the best way to verify employment. 2) The profile indicates that social media is part of your full time employee role at the corporation–not just for personal or casual use.  3) You must work at an enterprise class corporation with more than 1000 employees, 4) Must be on brand side  5) You’ll kindly leave a comment below with the submission for review.   Due to excess volume, submissions by Twitter and emails or other channels will not be included, kindly leave a comment in this centralized area below.

In an effort to keep information in a tight scope, I’m not able to include folks who are doing great work in other sectors.  However, if you decide to create a list for other sectors, I’ll prominently link to it from this post.  Update: Here’s a growing list for non-profits.

Sign Up For Upcoming Free Report: Skillset of the Social Media Strategist
The Altimeter Group is developing a free research report, on “Skillsets of Social Media Strategists” and will identify the attributes, backgrounds, experience of this emerging role, if you’re interested in receiving a copy, please register on this form.  We will use portions of the data found in this post for the research report, so thanks for helping to update it.

Social Media Strategists at Corporations
The strategist is a program manager, who mainly focuses internally rather than being the external public face like the community manager. They are primarily responsible for resources, processes, teams, they are usually internally focused and ultimately, return on investment.

Airline

Automotive

Business Services

Consumer Product Goods

Electronics, Devices, Mobile

Financial Services

Health and Life Sciences

Hospitality, Food Service

Government, Armed Services, Education

Media and Entertainment

Retail

Technology, Hardware, Networking, Component, Computer

Technology, Software, Internet

Community Managers at Corporations
The  community manager is primarily externally facing, and interacts with customers as the public face of the company.  They are primarily customer advocates, evangelists, bloggers, community moderators,  and experts at using social technologies to communicate.  We honor them every fourth Monday of January on Community Manager Appreciation Day.  To keep the focus tight, this list is only of corporate community managers, and not those on contract at community platform vendors or service companies on contract.

Automotive

Business Services

Governement, Armed Services, Education

Hospitality and Travel

Electronics, Devices, Mobile

Financial Services

Technology, Hardware, Networking, Component, Computer

Technology, Software, Internet

Social Media Researchers and Social Media Product Managers at Corporations
When I started this list in 2008, I didn’t have a specific slot for researchers and product managers who are creating these products. These roles are not folks who are using the technologies for marketing, support, or other business use cases (end users) but instead are researching and creating the products that the above professionals will use in their jobs.

I’m passionate about what these folks do, as I, myself, was a strategist/community manager at an enterprise corporation a few years ago.

Posted in Community Manager, Industry Index, Social Media, Social Strategist | Comments

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A Collection of Social Network Stats for 2010

Categories: Industry IndexPosted on January 19th, 2010

For the third year running (see 2008, 2009) I’m going to aggregate stats in the social networking space on a single blog post, and update it through the year.  Data fiends should bookmark this post for future reference.

Stats are important –but on their own, they don’t tell us much
Stats on social networks are important, but don’t rely on them alone. Data is like fire, it can be used for good and bad, proper insight and analysis is always required. Beyond that, you’ll often see conflicting stats across the industry as everyone has different methodologies, as a result, this listing will help you to see the greater trends –not numbers without context.

How to interpret stats
Numbers don’t tell us much without insight and interpretation, in fact, you’re going to see conflicting numbers of usage from many of the agencies and social networks themselves. The key is to look at trend movements, don’t focus on the specific numbers but the changes to them over time. Put more weight on active unique users in the last 30 days vs overall registered, in fact, the actual active conversion rate will often range from 10-40% of actual users sticking around and using the social network, so don’t be fooled by puffed numbers. No single metric is a good indicator, you have to evaluate the usage from multiple dimensions, so you also have to factor in what are users doing, time on site, interaction, and of course, did they end up buying, recommending products, or improving their lives.

A Collection of Social Network Stats for 2010
I’ll be updating this post throughout the year, bookmark it, and share it with others.

Comparison: All Social Networks

  • “The data doesn’t deny that Facebook has come to dominate social networking in the US, and overtook MySpace in 2009. But MySpace’s 57 million US unique users are nothing to sneeze at – it’s still a top web property with users who are highly engaged. The second tier networks, such as Tagged, Hi5, MyYearbook and Bebo, still receive an impressive 3-6 million uniques per month, and users spend a fair amount of time on those sites. BlackPlanet users spent 3.6 minutes longer interacting with the site than the average Facebook visitor. MyYearbook and Tagged users were on these sites more than 3 minutes longer than the average MySpace visitor. There is definitely addictive behavior occuring on these other sites.” LeeAnn Prescott (Someone I personally trust), Feb 2009

By Region and Geography

  • Japan: This slideshare has data on Japan’s mobile behaviors, and demonstrates how most social networks are accessed through mobile devices, and discusses Twitter, Facebook, and other social network adoption. Japan’s Cellphone Edge, 2010.

Facebook

  • Facebook keeps it’s stats page updated, and boasts over 350mm users. Facebook, ongoing
  • Facebook has announced 400mm users, Feb 5, 2010.
  • Infographic on Auguts 2009 Facebook stats, including usage, size, adoption rates by Mashable, on Feb 12.
  • Facebook demonstrates growth in total number of visitors (now over Yahoo, for second place) and a high degree of attention (time on site) “Facebook has surged past Yahoo as the number two most popular site in the U.S., drawing nearly 134 Million Unique Visitors in January, 2010. It’s been two full years since we’ve seen a shakeup at the top – In February, 2008, Google overtook Yahoo as number one, and never looked back.” Compete, Feb 18, 2010
  • Usage of casual gaming (Farmville, mafia wars) is suggested to be by moms.  A PopCap survey reports that “The PopCap study showed that 55 percent of all social gamers in the U.S. are women, as are almost 60 percent of those in the UK. The average age in the U.S. is 48, which is substantially older than the 38-year-old average in the UK, and 46 percent of American social gamers are 50 or older, compared with just 23 percent in the UK. Only 6 percent of all social gamers are age 21 or younger.”  Via GigaOm, Feb 18

LinkedIn

  • Now has 60mm users, “Over the past year, network has seen a significant amount of growth, especially internationally. As of last December, the network had 55 million members, so its grown by 5 million in less than two months. In October, LinkedIn’s network’s CEO, Jeff Weiner, said in the post that half of LinkedIn’s membership is international. ” reports Techcrunch, Feb 11

Twitter

  • Hubspot luanches a report of Twitter.com registrations and shows a decrease in rate of adoption. There’s also useful data within the report about followers and their behaviors based on a sample methodology. Hubspot, Jan 19, 2010.
  • Sysmos launched a report about global usage of Twitter, with most adoption in US. Interesting that the key nugget is “… the number of U.S. unique users was 50.8%, a sharp drop from 62.1% in June. This suggests the use of Twitter outside the U.S. has experienced significant growth over the past six months.”, Jan 14th, Sysmos. Thanks Jean in the comments for the submission.
  • Data indicates that many Twitter users are not active. read “The number of Twitter users has climbed to a lofty 75 million, but the growth rate of new users is slowing and a lot of current Twitterers are inactive” ComputerWorld, Jan 28
  • Twitter themselves finally publish numbers indicating there are 50mm tweets created each day.  ”Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second. (Yes, we have TPS reports.)” Twitter, Feb 22

YouTube

  • Find out who is creating the top YouTube videos and who is embedding them. “The study also looked at the demographics of bloggers who embed these videos. In general, 20-to-35-year-old bloggers embed most of the videos (57%), followed by teenagers (20%) and bloggers over 35 (20%).” Including stats on average number of comments, duration and other tidbits, Read Write Web, Feb 15.

Mobile, Desktop and Social Networks

  • There’s a sea change in more people using social networks from mobile devices rather than desktop clients “more people are using the mobile web to socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. It appears that the mobile phone is actually a better platform for social networking than the PC.”  Ruder Fin via Read Write Web, Feb 2010

I’ll continue to update this page over time, please leave a comment if you have 2010 submissions, I’ll credit you.

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Ongoing List of Social Marketing Efforts from Vacation Destinations, Convention, and Tourism Bureaus

Categories: Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on January 13th, 2010

Oahu Sunrise: North Shore
Above: A photo I took on a recent trip to North Shore Oahu, inline with my plans to fulfill operation bluewater.

Recent data around interactive marketing spend indicates that the hospitality industry was ripe for spending on social marketing above all other industries.  Why?  This form of consumer marketing could be dependent on the human emotion and story telling between individuals, or through compelling word of mouth marketing campaigns.

As a result, Christine Tran, Altimeter Researcher and myself are kicking off this list, and encourage you to add  examples by leaving a comment.  The scope for this is list is a tourist destination –not a hotel, airline, or specific restaurant.

If you’ve got examples, please leave a comment below, with a description and URL, we’ll add.

Posted in Industry Index, Social Media | Comments

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To The Future! A List of Intention Enabled Websites

Categories: Industry Index, Intention Web, Social MediaPosted on December 17th, 2009

The web is quickly moving to real-time, people share the information about what they’re doing while their doing it. Yet the next step beyond real time, is future-looking data, which is called the Intention Web (get up to speed by reading this post). In an effort to map out this trend in 2010, let’s list out the vendors, companies, and beyond that will facilitate this type of forward looking data.

There are countless opportunities for people to connect with others with the same goals, or for companies that want to serve them as new technologies like Social CRM evolve and develop. Scope: These Intention websites facilitate a person to publish their future goals in the context of their community, or sometimes even in public. For example, an unshared CAL isn’t a qualifier.

To The Future! A List of Intention Enabled Websites

  • 43 Things: This “wish list”, they suggest that you make a list on 43 Things and see what changes happen in your life. They encourage you to connect with others with the same goals.
  • Coachsurfing:  Helps those traveling to other cities to find homes and couches to stay on, by organizing availability. (thanks jasminw)
  • Facebook Events: Facebook allows members to RSVP for future events, publish their own events, or see what friends are doing.
  • Localist: Allows those in DC and Baltimore to find events, publish their intent to attend, and organize with friends (thanks Mary)
  • Meetup: Encourages groups to organize events, plan events, and connect with others.
  • Plancast: Is a social network that allows members to publish their future plans. It allows people to see who is going to other future goals, and to publish to Facebook, and Twitter.
  • Tripit: This website allows travelers to plan out their travel itineraries. (thanks Sameer)
  • Upcoming: This Yahoo owned property allows people to find, publish, and share future events.

Leave a comment if you know of other technologies that meet this critia

Posted in Industry Index, Intention Web, Social Media | Comments

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List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings

Categories: Industry Index, Social CRM, Social MediaPosted on December 8th, 2009

Social CRM: A Growing Segment
Yesterday’s post on Social CRM vendors not walking-the-talk raised awareness of this nascent space.  However, not everyone was thrilled with the effort, as CTO John Moore gave us an A for effort but a C- for results, and Kim Kobza, the CEO of Neigborhood America (they were an early adopter) left a comment on John’s post suggesting we missed the mark (also, SAP ’s passionate team strongly represents).  Although we stand by our scoring, both John and Kim are right, our evaluation yesterday was only on a small subset of the industry, but a manageable starting ground, as we continue to unearth the variety of players.

Tracking the Market with an ‘Industry Index’
For a few years ago, I’ve created what I call my posts called the Industry Index (see all) lists to track companies in any particular vertical, it helps me, vendors, and buyers to track the space.  I expect this space to rapidly increase in size as social channels will be bolted onto CRM vendors, and many brand monitoring and community platforms are adding workflow, triage, and tracking capabilities. The purpose of this list is to quickly capture the vendors participating in this space, and to acknowledge those that were not on yesterday’s review, I expect there to be many more vendors who leave a comment, which we can quickly add to this list.

We owe it to the market to try to include as many as possible, although it’s going to be very difficult as this space quickly grows. So first, let’s try to put some scope around this space with a definition.

Social CRM Definition
We prefer Paul Greenberg’s definition of Social CRM, which he summarizes as:

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” (also read his 2009 review of this space on ZDnet)

It’s a broad definition, but the key criteria he lists out are enough for me to go on.

List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings: (34 vendors total)

Traditional CRM Vendors offering Social Integration (11 vendors)

  • ACT!:  This barely fits the scope of social crm, but ACT! allows a single individual to manage multiple types of information, including social, however if this product was extended across an enterprise, it fits the quota.
  • BatchBlue: While not a ‘traditional’ CRM like many of the others listed below, has traditional sales automation features, but also connect with existing social graph data, think social aggregation of contact lists.  After watching the demo, it looks like you have to manually enter feeds of contacts, rather than auto-finding data from social graphs by scraping.
  • Buzzient: Offers a CRM platform that provides social media analytics that can be used for web marketing, customer tracking, or reporting.  They have partnerships with Salesforce, Oracle, and SugarCRM.
  • Microsoft Dynamics:  Offers Accelerators (here and here) that “Allows business professionals to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites, and as a result, provides real-time status updates about their products and services” (thanks Menno, who writes on the topic) They are also partnered with Neighborhood America
  • NetSuite:  Offers social CRM with a partnership with InsideView and has Twitter integration (submitted by Paul Greenberg)
  • Oracle Siebel Social CRM: Promises the ability to provide insights based on the buying behaviors of similar customers, as well as shared content to be used between sales teams.
  • RightNow CRM: Offers several features in their suite such as Support Communities, Innovation Communities, Cloud Monitoring, and Social Experience Design. Rightnow recently acquired Hivelive an enterprise community platform.
  • Salesforce: Offers acces to Social Networking like Facebook and Twitter. Salesforce, like SAP is importing the Twitter “firehose” feed, and has offered social features like Q&A, and social networking like Chatter, and has lightweight LinkedIn integration.
  • SAP CRM: Imports the Twitter firehose feed, and
  • Sugar CRM: Offers “SugarCRM Cloud Connectors connect via Web Services to leading third-party data service providers such as Hoover’s, JigSaw and LinkedIn”
  • We Can Do Biz: Offers traditional CRM features (although their website is a bit difficult to navigate) for SMB, and has a unique Twitter scraping feature that filters down by some level of geography and organizes records in the database.  I had a briefing with them on Feb 2010.  Added Feb 2010.

Community Platforms Offering Social CRM (5)

  • Jive Software: Community Engagement, offers data integration from Radian6, encouraging management of the discussion.
  • Leverage Software:  I recall that Leverage offers built in integration with Salesforce, but I was unable to find it on their site.
  • Lithium Technologies offers the Social CRM Suite offering features such as Community Applications, Reputation Engine, Actionable Analytics, CRM Connectivity, and Social Web Connectivity.
  • Neighborhood America: Has had a partnership with Microsoft Dynamics, read press release, (they were early on in March 2009) and commentary from Paul Greenberg on ZDNet.
  • Concourse:  Offers a variety of integration modules to a variety of apps, including a CRM module that’s prebuilt. (via pjk54)

Brand Monitoring Offering Social CRM (4)

Social Media/Twitter Clients (2)

Social Customer Experience (4)

  • CrowdEngineering:  Helps to match experts to customer problems, by using a recommendation engine and skill resource set engine.
  • Fuze Digital Solutions: Provides a broad and modular multi-channel customer care solution using a community knowledge base as its foundation.
  • Helpstream: Offers tools that allow customers to submit questions to each other, with integration into SalesForce in addition to community driven knowledge centers.  see video.
  • Parature: Offers chat-like features for support reps to interact with customers, then measures sentiment.
  • Get Satisfaction:  Is an off-domain (all the support is done on their site –not yours) community that now offers premium features that offer ability to manage discussions.

Sales 2.0/Social Graph Aggregation (6)

  • Flowtown:  Allows marketers to prioritize targets to contact by a variety of influence scores, and their social graph.  It then offers targeted email marketing based on those two criteria.
  • Gist: Offers a way to track the social behaviors of your customers and prioritize.
  • InsideView: Offers some unique offerings that mine a business social graph to provide alerts as a plugin to traditional CRM systems, Watch this lengthy demo.
  • Roving Group: Offers a product called ‘Roving Contacts’ that aggregates the social graphs and contact information from your address book.
  • SocioToo: Not the typical corporate enterprise company, this Dutch company offers a search page (and no real corporate site –by intent) that mines social graph data in public.
  • Xobni:  This cleverly named (opposite of inbox) Outlook plugin scrapes your social graph and most frequently emailed contacts improving email utility.  This barely falls within the scope of social crm, but if the data was able to export to other systems, it could start to apply.

CRM Applications and Plugins (2)

  • Appirio: Offers the ability for companies to create applications on Facebook which then marry data back to Salesforce, called Cloud Connectors.
  • SocialCRMTools: Offers integration with Salesforce that imports, monitors, and manages Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. (via John Perez)

Social Networks and Others

  • Twitter: Has made motions they plan to offer premium services to brands, that would offer verified accounts, then management-like features. The specifics are still unknown, as they sort out their business model. They have partnered with Google and Bing.
  • Google has announced real time search integration, and Bing has shown some early integrations.  While far fetched we should not completely rule them out as eventually building a dashboard for brands to manage their namesakes, advertising, and website analytics, or Google alerts.  Historically, they generate money off content created by publishers, so this actually falls in line with ‘organizing the world’s information”.
Tracking Changes:

  • Feb 12,2010: Added WeCanDo.biz after a briefing, and Alterian.

Not on this list? Leave a comment, with justification why you fit in Paul’s definition with a link to your site explaining more, I’ll take a look and add to it, please be patient while I review.  Also, if you want to brief Ray and myself, please read and submit to this briefing form.

Update: Business Partner Ray Wang and I have created a more detailed matrix of this space for our clients.

Posted in Industry Index, Social CRM, Social Media | Comments

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How Brands Balance Their Diet With Social Media Supplements

Categories: Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on May 3rd, 2009

Developing a social strategy is a lot like having a balanced diet.  While the employees can learn from each other, additional external supplements must be introduced into the diet for a balanced meal.

Unlike other tried and true mediums that are used to connect with customers, social strategies come with implications and risk. While brands will ultimately drive and implement their own social strategy entrée they’ll still need supplments to ensure they’re getting a balanced and healthy diet for this marathon. The below is a list of methods that brands are getting their daily dose of supplements for their social programs.

[Developing a social strategy is a lot like having a balanced diet.  While employees can learn from each other, additional external supplements must be introduced into the diet for a balanced meal]

How Brands Balance Their Diet With Social Media Supplements
Brands ultimately drive their own strategy, but must have additional resources outside of their firewall to understand the rapidly changing social space.  For each supplement, I”ll define what it is, give an example, then suggest how to best use, these supplements include: 

Workshops and Webinars:

  • What it is:  Brands often bring in third party experts that have formalized workshop agendas, content, and workshop content to help them succeed. 
  • Examples: I know many of the community platform vendors like LiveWorld have such an offering, as well as most social media conferences.  Education hubs like Marketing profs have ongoing webinar series, as does Forrester’s teleconfernces.
  • How to use: Use these once internal stakeholders have buyin, and there’s momentum from groups that want to learn best practices.  Don’t apply too early –nor too late.

Ongoing Training/Internal Labs: 

  • What it is:  Brands are offering marketers ongoing training classes for social, that include a variety of external speakers, but coordinated by an internal resource or central team. 
  • Examples: Proctor and Gamble has the P&G social media labs which has provided a multitude of internal brands with resources, including a safe place to experiment.  See their recent “Tides of Hope” experimental campaign, which was a success in learning.   Secondly, PepsiCo, is leaning on Edelman Digital Strategy team (Rubel) for internal training, strategy, and recommendations.
  • How to use:  Large conglomerates or CPG brands will benefit first by having this ongoing educational program and curriculum.  Great to deploy when multiple teams need education –and need to benefit from synching from each other.

Social Media Advisory Boards: 

  • What it is:  Brands have a dedicated relationship with external thought leaders and practitioners, build relationships with them and seek their perspective. 
  • Examples:  Intel has a social media advisory board, dubbed the “Insiders” that has a broad collection of industry practitioners and commenters –I’ve noticed some of them get Intel sponsorships.   In some regards, Wal-Mart’s 11 moms program, which is non-paid sponsored conversations will result in similar benefits.
  • How to use:  Brands that want to develop long term relationships for programs, campaigns, should set these programs up, these are great stepping stones for influencer relations, esp in markets that take heavy criticism.

Councils and Clubs

  • What it is:  Brands join ongoing clubs and councils created by third parties. Some have member fees, and some are free, depending on sophitication.  In some cases, memberships are wide open for the public, and others have private membership 
  • Examples:  There’s a great number of councils and clubs from the: Social Media Club, Social Media Breakfast, BlogCouncil, Internet Strategy Forum, Forum One, Womma, EConsultancy among others.   IBM hosted a Tweetup in their  NYC office to meet and greet the social media community, although a one-off, a tweetup is an ongoing meeting across the world of passionate social users. At Forrester, we offer premiere clients the opportunity to join the Forrester Leadership Board for Interactive Marketers.
  • How to use:  Encourage practitioners to attend these clubs to learn from peers on an ongoing basis.  Host or sponsor these meetings at your own company to learn from folks.    

Research Firms: 

  • What it is:  Research firms provide brands with data, best practices, and recommendations that help them to make successful decisions. 
  • Examples:  eMarketer, Comscore, Nielsen Online, Pew Research, and Compete offer strong analytics.  Brands seeking strategy and advice could approach Society of New Communciations Research, Gartner or  Forrester, my employer.  Leave  a comment below if I’ve missed someone.
  • How to use:  Research is needed before crafting a strategy, as brands must find out who their customers are, how they use technology, and use for vendor and service vetting.    

Ongoing Social News

  • What it is:  News about the social media space is well, noisy.  Finding the right areas to find signal are key for every brand, as spending time scouring blogs can easily consume one’s day –and night. 
  • Examples:  You’ll find consistent summaries and digests from SmartBrief’s Social Media daily wrapups,  RWW’s weekly wrapups, or, my weekly digest of the social space.
  • How to use:  Be selective in your choices, you don’t have a lot of time during the day, once you find your credible news sources, be sure to encourage your colleagues to subscribe.    

Other Forms
Of course, this dietary supplement is an ongoing process, and not just limited to social, brands, leaders, and everyone need to constantly learn to stay fresh.   Additionally, brands should have internal training areas that employees can share their best practices and learn from their wins and losses.  Take for example Vignette’s Dirk Shaw, a recently appointed social media strategist who has an internal blog dedicated to helping their marketing and product teams and beyond learn social.  I purposely left out the extensive list of books on the topic,  and this large list of marketing related conferences.

Upcoming Research on this Topic
I’m working on a Forrester report to uncover “How companies organize for social media” and if you’re a large brand that wants to talk to me, I’d love to interview you for this Q2 report, contact me at jowyang @ forrester.com.

I hope this list helps you maintain a balanced and regular social diet, leave a comment with additional suggestions, I’ll add them in as appropriate and credit you.

Posted in Industry Index, Social Media | Comments

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Running List of the Five Eras of The Social Web

Categories: Future of Social Web, Industry IndexPosted on May 1st, 2009

This week’s post on the Future of the Social Web has created a tremendous amount of discussion –and I’m thankful for all the voices that chimed in. I’m going to create this post to track the eras as they appear, obviously this is going to take a few years, but hey, I’m not going anywhere.

Keep in mind that there’s a difference between an era starting, vs becoming mature, so read how I denote the differences below.

Running List of the Five Eras of The Social Web
For details on this report, access the high level blog post, or if you’re a client, access the full report on the Forrester site.

Era of Social Relationships (started 1995, matured in 2003-2007)
This era is mature.

  • AOL, 1995
  • eCircles, 2001
  • MySpace, Facebook, Twitter
Era of Social Functionality (started 2007, matures in 2010-2012)
These are prelimnary examples, but are not examples of maturity, as we’ve not seen true useful utilities to improve business.

Era of Social Colonization (started 2009, matures in 2011)
These are prelimnary examples, but are not examples of maturity when your entire digital experience is social.

Era of Social Context (starts in 2010, matures in 2012)
This era is certainly not in maturity, but we can see some early examples of demographic scraping.

  • There are no current examples
Era of Social Commerce (starts in 2011, matures in 2013)
These are prelimnary examples, such as Techcrunch’s crunchpad, but it’s not a true example of a crowd created, spec’d product.

  • There are no current examples

As you see examples, please leave a comment, describe why you think it belongs and which era, I’ll credit you as appropriate.

Posted in Future of Social Web, Industry Index | Comments

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Ongoing List of Social Media Marketing Efforts and Social Networks and Communities for Women

Categories: Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on March 6th, 2009

I’ve done a lot of other lists, for a variety of industries, verticals, age groups, but need to spend some time on women. Agencies and brands get to showcase their work (I’ve got great SEO in front of a social media audience) and it’s easy for women to find communities that are interesting to them. Lastly, to be honest, I don’t know that much about the women social space so I need to be educated, help me!

If you do submit, please leave a comment with a URL and a brief description. See my other industry indexes for a variety of other social media efforts tagged industry index.

Demographics, Technographics
Stats related to women and social media.

  • Imedia shows stats showing how women are quickly becoming a dominating demographic in social media
  • Forrester’s technographics can segment women’s use of social media by age, and in some cases, country

    • Ongoing List of Social Media Marketing Efforts and Campaigns for Women
    These instances are more on the shorter term, and are clear examples of social media efforts of brands wanting to connect with women online using social technologies. Sometimes the branding is obvious, sometimes I had to take a deep look into the contact us, or sales page to figure it out.

  • Luvs: Created this sponsored blog to provide tips and tricks to mothers
  • BlogHer Conferences: Multiple brands sponsor the conference, and provide product demos or giveaways
  • Dove: Beauty campaign was integrated, however the YouTube video has strong recall
  • CVS, For All The Ways You Care: allows caretakers to submit stories
  • Pampers Village: A community for mothers with young children, content extends to lifestyle.- Link via Jessica
  • BabyCenter: A community owned by Johnson and Johnson Jessica
  • Mom Logic: AOL’s content portal for women – link via Don
  • Shine: Yahoo’s portal for women, thanks old friend Robyn!
  • Tampax: Being Girl: A community and conversation focused on helping young girls go through adolescence.

    • Marketing Resources
    Trying to reach women from a brand perspective? These resources will help.

  • She-conomy: A guy’s perspective to marketing to women from Stephanie herself
  • Reaching Women Daily: This blog is focused on marketing to women. thanks Andrea
  • She Speaks: Interesting, product review community. thanks Andrea

    • Networks and Communities For Women
    This category tends to lean on the longer term effort from a blog network, online community or other social destination, expect the above category to try to merge with the below and vice versa.

  • BlogHer: The community for women that blog
  • Sugar Network: Our fresh, conversational and witty editorial voices inform, connect, inspire and entertain an audience of over 8 million monthly unique visitors
  • Cafemom: A community and resource for expecting mothers –and beyond!
  • DiveTribe: A Women’s Community of Strenth, Support, and Creativity
  • Suicide Girls: This alternative view is the antithesis of the playboy beauty and shows a truly raw look at beauty defined
  • The Frisky: “Which is why it totally boggled our minds that out of all the gazillions of love, sex, dating, and, um, smut sites for women on the Internet, none of them were relatable. Enter The Frisky” -via Courtenay Bird
  • Jezebel: Celebrity, sex, fashion, for women-via Bukola Ekundayo
  • Kirtsy: Interesting, this is a digg for women. Submit stories, tips, or products.
  • Wowowow: The women on the web, appears to cater to the professional and power women on the internet. -via Bukola Ekundayo
  • TwitterMoms.com: A growing-like-wildfire community for digital moms who blog and tweet. Link via Jessica
  • Moms Like Me: A social network that connects local moms, interesting. via Chris Kieff
  • Geek Girl Camp: Tech savvvy women who like unconference. I think I’ve walked into one of these, and know many of these women. Link via Susan Koutalakis
  • She’s Geeky: A technology conference for women. If I were a woman, I would certainly go to this one. Thanks Rachel
  • TwitterMoms.com: A growing-like-wildfire community for digital moms who blog and tweet. Link via Jessica
  • MomBloggersClub: A community directed at mommy bloggers. Spinoffs include Gamer Moms and Pregnant Moms. Link via Jessica
  • I’m not Obsessed: “Gossip, without the guilt” clever tag line.
  • I Know Politics – A community for women who either are or wish to become involved in politics around the world. The site is run by a group within the United Nations. link via Devlin Dunsmore
  • Closet Couture: A focus on fashion, outfits, stylists, and other services- thanks @aihui
  • Savvy Auntie: This community helps aunt’s with their relationships with newphew’s and nieces. – thanks Stephanie
  • Girls in Tech: A network for women in business in the technology space. – Thanks Susan
  • GirlGeeks: A community for women in tech –Thanks Christine
  • GirlGeekDinners: network for women to meetup, as you would guess, over dinner. –Thanks Christine
  • Women’s Ties: Network for women entrepreneurs. Thanks Yvonne
  • International Women’s Day: Focuses on a celebrated holiday for decades. Thanks Yvonne
  • Women entrepreneur’s blog Simon Graduate school has this resources for their grads. via Tom.
  • Recipes.com: This site indicated that this is aimed at women.

    • Status: For now, I’ve updated this list up to comment #28, and will update when I get time, so far, it’s a very strong list.

    Leave a comment below with a URL and I’ll credit you.

    Posted in Industry Index, Social Media | Comments

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    A Running List of Sponsored Conversations

    Categories: Ethics, Industry IndexPosted on March 3rd, 2009

    Sponsored conversations are happening, yet we insist on it being done right and ethically, that means disclosure and being authentic. This post, which I’m updating frequently, will serve to show there is a long history of sponsorship, the many forms of sponsorship, and an ongoing list of these transactions.

    I make lists to track what’s happening in my industry, in fact, you can see many of these famous lists on the ‘industry index‘ category. While some are taken aback by companies sponsoring conversations, I’m going to list out many brands and bloggers that are involved, this is clearly not going away.

    Some of these examples get very gray, it’s hard to tell where the editorial line starts and stops, or would these bloggers have talked about a brand if they weren’t sponsored? Our solution is simple: they must meet the requirements of disclosure and authenticity we recommend.

    Sponsorship in other Mediums
    It’s important to see where sponsorship has come from, in order to see where it’s going. I added this section later as it gives more context.

  • Celebrities: Stars, musicians and actors often receive sponsorships, gifts, and often endorse products
  • Sports: Nascar slams more brands on a car, they know that TV airtime during aired events will imprint the brand on consumers. Athletes are often sponsored, one notable example is Tiger woods and Accenture.
  • Radio: Talk show radio host Paul Harvey was known for “Harvey also blended news with advertising, a line he said he crossed only for products he trusted.”
  • TV: Product placement without disclosure has become an mainstay in TV
  • Movies: Since 1927 product placement (Hersheys) has occurred in movies
  • Video Gamers: Popular video gamers have received sponsorship, even brands like Johnson and Johnson
  • Search: A few years ago, when ’sponsored search results’ appeared in the editorially clean search results, it caused an uproar from the community. Now, it’s part of life.
  • Podcasts: Podcasts are often sponsored, or even allow a word from sponsors to appear in the show, radio does this, and even the popular For Immediate Release Podcast that often discuses ethics in social media
    • Many Forms of Sponsored Conversations
    There’s a wide range of how brands and bloggers meet in a transaction. Consider this section a work in progress, and I added after I published this post.

  • 1) Access : Blogger is sponsored, Example: A brand sponsors a blogger trip, or conference. Example: Wal-Mart sponsors bloggers to visit HQ, but does not pay them anything else.
  • 2) Incentive: Discounts are offered to bloggers or other incentives to get them to buy, Example: Chris Brogan’s trip to a NYC hotel
  • 3) Thank you: Brands sponsor events or blogger conferences, and the blogger thanks them in the editorial stream. Example: Mashable thanks it’s sponsors
  • 4) Product Demo: Bloggers are loaned products, or they are demod to them, Example: Nikon blogger program
  • 5) Advertorial: A blogger discloses that they are promoting a company or brand, and writes in the editorial stream about the brand or lifestyle. The difference is, that it impacts the editorial and generally is questioned as being authentic
  • 6) Paid Reviews: Bloggers are given products or money: Example: Sears, Kmart sponsored shopping spree, or Google hired bloggers to review widget products. Unlike 5) Advertorial, it may not impact the editorial and could be authentic. Disclosure is mandatory
  • 7) Junket: Bloggers are treated to a special dinner, event, trip or lounge at a conference, event, or other venue. Branding may range from light sponsorship, product demos, to PR pitching. Example: Blogger trips like what Israeli Foreign Ministry or blogger lounges like BlogHaus. Often transparent, but credibility could be questioned if product is involved.
  • 8] Payola : Bloggers are paid to blog, but are not mandated to disclose or be authentic, in fact, the FCC has rules on this, and Forrester is against this.
    • Running List of Sponsored Conversations
    This list, which will grow from community submissions and shows a variety of sponsorships: The gambit ranges from product giveaways, contests, shopping sprees, reviews, discussions, advertorials, to endorsements.

    By Blogs

  • Read Write Web: While against the premise of paying bloggers, has a blog post in their blog editorial stream written by a paid sponsor. It meets the requirement of disclosure and authenticity, they’re one example of doing it right.
  • Mashable: I want to point out that some of the other large tech blogs that have conferences, often do a ‘thank you’ post to their sponsors. While it’s clear this isn’t to trigger a discussion, the sponsored vendors are called out in the editorial stream, with marketing hyperbole intact.
  • Techcrunch: While this clearly is not an endorsement, vendors are mentioned in the editorial stream to thank them for sponsorship, which is separate from the advertising column, as you know, this site has incredible influence in SEO and traffic. This is pure in transparency and authenticity.  There’s been some discussions whether or not Techcrunch writers have been involved in sponsored conversations, it’s not clear to me if it’s true.
  • Blogher: Dozens and Dozens of brands from Bertolli, Sesame Steeet, Leapfrog, McCain Foods, Merci Chocolates, TNT, Bare Minerals, VTech and others offer giveaways to bloggers at this popular women’s blogger conference. Note: not all of the giveaways were products, but some were the usual conference schwag.
  • Gizmodo: Thanks it’s sponsors in the editorial stream, such as Nike, Microsoft, Lenovo, interesting there are no links, perhaps to avoid any ‘no follow’ issues with google
  • AdRants: the most popular ad blog is currently offering sponsored posts for $565
  • Chris Pirillo: One of the top geek bloggers is available for sponsored posts at $843
  • Chris Brogan: a well known social media marketer, is available for sponsored posts at $565
  • Julia Alison: a NY socialite, much like a celebrity is available for $517. Brands have been sponsoring celebrities for years, now it’s just online.
  • ZDNet: As listed below under HP, Dana Gardner’s analyst content is sponsored by HP with full disclosure.
  • Guy Kawasaki: borrows an Audi, and demonstrates the car features via images and video

    • By Twitter

  • Mashable: has created a way to insert sponsored tweets into a twitter widget, they’re monetizing twitter in a transparent way.
  • Magpie has been experimenting with inserting ads in the Twitter stream, while not truly ’sponsorship’ it’s inserting it right into the conversation stream. See my experiment.
  • Sponsored Tweets: Izea (formerly pay per post) has launched Sponsored Tweets.  Kim Kardashian, Chris Pirillo, and Carrot Top are among those who will be paid to Tweet.

    • By Brands

  • Seagate: Robert Scoble’s Fast Company show is sponsored by Seagate, and he toured a factory in China, give away seagate products, and mentions them from time to time in his blog.
  • Symantec: Pays BlogHer bloggers to review products, and this example is disclosed and transparent
  • Panasonic: Sponsors Bloggers like Chris Brogan to attend CES on their dime, and a conversation spreads to many social sites.
  • Ford: Is allowing bloggers (update: actually just one) to drive their new car, the flex for one year
  • Disney: Worked with influencers and sponsored conversations for paid movie reviews that they’ve released.
  • WalMart: creates a section on their website for 11 mom (and Dad) bloggers. They are not paid, but their travel expenses were paid to visit HQ, and they are given products to review, and to give to their readers.
  • Sears: Gives away $500 gift cards to bloggers, who can also give another $500 to readers.
  • Kmart: Sponsors bloggers to visit its stores and shop with gift certificates, then share another gift card with their readers and has success. One blogger, Chris Brogan took a lot of heat for it.
  • Microsoft: This one was under scrutiny. This was an early example, but they sent one of their top “Ferrari” laptops to top bloggers. Some, like Scott Beale chose not to keep it.
  • Microsoft: This campaign was slammed for not being authentic. Hires Federated Media, a network of top blogs, who recite a slogan from a Microsoft campaign, this one was controversial and included many top bloggers, even a VC.
  • Nikon: Let’s blogger photographers borrow their DSLR cameras, but they have to return them or buy them later.
  • M&Ms: has a chocolate product giveaway to this blogger and her readers.
  • Hewlett Packard: Provides the Blogher community a printer, that resulted in 227 comments. Actually Angela from HP says the results were much greater.
  • Hewlett Packard Sponsors Zdnet Dana Gardner’s blog and podcast. Dana, who’s a trusted IT analyst is sponsored by HP and provides full disclosure.
  • General Motors: Sponsored “five moms, Aviva, Devra, Jill, Meagan and Sarah, will make their way across the nation from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, in a Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid”
  • JCPenny: Offers bloggers a $500 gift card for Blogher bloggers to share their shopping experience.
  • Mercedes: Let a mother who blogs use Mercedes GLK, and gift certificates were given to readers each day.
  • Quaker Oats (Pepsi) According to Ryan Stern in the comments, Quaker Oats had a contest for recipes and gave product to bloggers.
  • Dairy Queen: Encourages bloggers to publish for a gift certificate
  • VMware: According to John from VMware in the comments, VMware sponsors bloggers to attend their conference, and advocates receive gifts.
  • White Pages: Reached to David Berkowitz as a sponsored blogger as they invited him to Seatlle.
  • American Express: AMEX has Guy Kawasaki as a guest blogger on their OpenForum community site, it’s not clear if he’s paid, but his editorial is in line with all the rest of his content.
  • Intel: This chip giant wants to reach tech adopters and influencers, esp those that talk among each other, as a result they’ve sponsored projects for these communities at Digg (visualization tool that resulted in buzz) and a conversation and Slashdot (I don’t have a link, but was briefed by the team).
  • SAP: Tech giant sponsored interviews from Shel Israel, who was conducting interviews on the topic of social media. This was a perfect example of sponsorship as it was disclosed and transparent, and Shel’s editorial was never changed.
  • Epson: Sponsored bloggers to attend blogworldexpo a popular conference for new media folks, and the bloggers have chronicled the experience
  • Kohler: Kohler worked with Federated Media to create this H20 blog to discuss using sponsored bloggers from the FM network.
  • HP: Created a resource site called SMB Marketing Guide and featured a variety of prominent bloggers from the FM network.
  • Luvs (Proctor and Gamble): The MomSpeak is a sponsored blog where mommy bloggers come share their tips and tricks to help other moms, project by Federated Media
  • Google: Google Japan paid bloggers to review their widgets, and true to Google’s stance on sponsored posts, penalaized their own arm from a page rank 9 to a 5.
  • Nokia: Has a blogger relations program where 50 bloggers received their latest N95 phone.
  • Roger Smith Hotel (NYC): Offers a blogger special discount, encouraging bloggers to stay at the hotel –and even get upgrades.
  • Israeli Foreign Ministry: Sponsored the “Traveling Geeks” to tour Israel, who blogged, tweeted, and took pictures. It included high profile bloggers such as Cathy Brooks, Craig Newmark, Deborah Schultz, JD Lasica, Jeff Saperstein, Renee Blodgett, Robert Scoble, Sarah Lacy, Susan Mernit
  • Cheetos (Fritolay/PepsiCo): While looking more like an ad, this blog post on Mashable shows the Cheetos logo and encourages comments in the conversation. they also sponsored Boing Boing creators to produce some entertaining videos.
  • Intuit: Sponsors AppGap which provides a best practices and tips for the desired audience with paid bloggers (see comment #35)
  • SeaWorld: Bloggers were invited to try to blog about why they would want to go to Seaworld, in this blogging contest.
  • Lenovo: Lenovo’s head of Web Marketing has clear lines about where sponsored conversations start and stop suggesting that payola wrong, product giveaway ok. However Lenovo, provided free laptops and cameras to olympic bloggers to use to share their story, and created a sponsored site where their voices are heard. Appears to be transparent and authentic, this is a good example of a sponsored conversation.
  • General Mills:General Mills offers up to 900 bloggers product reviews and are not paid, through this very large program. AdWeek explores that while bloggers can write anything they want, the program seeks positive reviews.
  • Sprint, TNT, Powerbar, Body Glove, Showtime, Colgate, Coca Cola. Social Vibe is a vendor that allows sponsors to connect with users, who will promote a campaign or cause on the social vibe site and on their social networking profiles.
  • 1928 Jewelry: While not a large brand like the ones above, 1928 Jewelry sponsored a giveaway to bloggers and shares her results, see comment #1 below.
    • Special Case Study: Google: Google’s Matt Cutts will penalize blogs that are doing sponsored conversations he insists those that don’t use the ‘no follow’ tag will be penalized. Interestingly, Google sponsored Blogher in 2007, and Blogher did a sponsored post thanking them in their editorial stream, with marketese, and did not use ‘No Follow’. Will Google penalize Blogher, who they paid for sponsorship? Where does the line start and stop? Update: Google Japan has paid bloggers to review their products –and was penalized by their own company. It’s clear that bloggers that care about page rank need to use ‘no follow’.

    Resources

  • The Blog Council has a disclosure Toolkit
  • Word of Mouth Marketing Ethics Code of Conduct (The “WOMMA Code”)
  • Sean, the author of the report that triggered this discussion, shares additional insight, and compares ‘in stream’ vs ‘out stream’ of editorial
  • Disclosure Policy: Generate your own disclosure policy

    • There will be plenty of other examples to come, if you know of large brands or popular blogs that are doing this, please leave a comment with a URL.

    Posted in Ethics, Industry Index | Comments

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    Layoffs in the Social Media Space

    Categories: Career, Challenges, Industry IndexPosted on October 10th, 2008

    With the financial crises impacting not just US but global markets, as an industry analyst focused on social computing, I’m going to watch how this impacts layoffs in the tech and social media space.

    While I take no joy in seeing jobs get cut, I do feature recent ‘on the moves’ and have links to many job sites related to social media. It’s only fair that I point out the new hires as well as the exits.

    To be clear these layoffs aren’t just hitting the social media space, but will hit other industries. Most recent at the top, in some cases these are hard to confirm as sources from company feed rumor sites, so take them as you will.

    Layoffs in the Social Media Space

  • Oct 14: Jive lays off around 20% of worforce
  • Oct 13: Redfin lays off 20% of workforce leaving 75 (link via TomCummings)
  • Oct 10: Fast Company, which has social network for website and popular videoblogger, lays off 20
  • Oct 10: Seesmic, a video conversation player lays off 7
  • Oct 6: eBay to lay off 10% of workforce to streamline after recession.
  • Oct 3: Gawker blog network lays off 19, and brags about it.

    • Leave a comment below with a submission, or watch these tweets with the tag #techlayoffs, there are three there now

    Techcrunch has a layoff tracker, it’s like we’re seeing f-d company all over again.

    Posted in Career, Challenges, Industry Index | Comments

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    List of Social Media Marketing Awards

    Categories: Groundswell, Industry Index, Web IndustryPosted on September 20th, 2008

    Celebrating the hard work that companies invest in social media efforts is not only a way to feel good about our accomplishments, but also a way to learn from the successes of others.

    The following list of social media awards gives agencies, brands, vendors, and consultants their chance to strut their stuff. Please leave a comment if you know of other awards.

    I realize there are many awards for startups (like Demo or Techcrunch 50), but this is awards for successes that brands have done using social media

    List of Social Media Marketing Awards

    Forrester’s Groundswell Awards (I’m a judge)

    Society for New Communications Symposium and Awards

    Womma Awards

    If you like this list, then you should check out my other industry indexes –lists are helpful.

    Posted in Groundswell, Industry Index, Web Industry | Comments

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    List of Enterprise Microblogging Tools: Twitter for the Intranet

    Categories: Enterprise Web, Industry Index, MicroMediaPosted on September 8th, 2008

    With the popularity to Twitter and other Microblogging tools, we should expect to see a flurry of simliar tools for project and program mangaement for the enterprises.

    Stemming from commodity technology, I’m sure I’ll have a hard time keeping this list up to date over a few months –expect IM vendors, blogging vendors, community platforms, enterprise 2.0 vendors, and a flurry of startups to offer similiar features, first read up on the pros and cons as well as some potential use cases.

    It’s interesting to see the need to justify enterprise needs of such tools that are already being adopted by consumers, typical of enterprise settings (I’m a former enterprise intranet manager). With that said, let’s start the definitive list.

    List of Enterprise Microblogging Tools
    I’ll be making lots of updates to this post as comments come in.

    Prologue, by Automatic, makers of Wordpress
    Announced in Jan 08, Prologue allows users to, “…can post short messages about what they’re doing”, even in a secured environment GigaOm has adopted it for his news network, recently covered by Venturebeat.

    Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment (ESME)
    This pet project which was given birth by the “Demo Jam” at SAP labs (This is an SDN Community Project initiated by SAP Mentors, not part of SAP), was recently covered by Read Write Web.

    Yammer
    Simply detailed as: “What’s happening at your company? Share status updates with your co-workers.” recently reviewed by webware. This in depth review answers many questions. Launched in Sept 08.

    SocialCast
    A friendfeed and twitter tools for the enterprise, this has been covered by Webware.

    Laconica – The Open Microblogging Tool
    This open source application can be installed on servers and potentially used within the firewall. Link via Nick Cowie via comments.

    Status
    “Status is part of a new trend of LIGHTER communication tools. When you need to get up to date with your group, a single screen shows what everyone is doing and where they are. This means you can stay in touch on your own terms, without using heavy attention-stealing tools like email.” link via Frank. added Sept 9, 08.

    Trillr
    “Trillr is a service for co-workers, partners and customers to communicate and thus stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What’s on your mind”. By CoreMedia. Link via Pistachio Consulting (focused on Micromedia), added Sept 9, 08.

    I Did Work
    This task based update tool provides teams with abiity to leave status messages. “The work log that shares Keep a history of your work, and share it with your team” Link via Ralf via comments.

    OraTweet -Oracle
    Oracle’s launching a Microblogging tool internally, then for external clients: “…OraTweet is seeing companies, universities, and organizations running their own OraTweet instance, allowing them to keep their information private yet strengthening their own internal communities. It should be the same way we do email and instant messaging: We manage our own information, which allows us to broadcast messages safely in our own microcosm.” Added Sept 9, 08.

    Joint Contact
    This collaboration suite has microblogging features, and hooks into titter: “…A better way to Twitter. As a small business owner you’ve added micro blogging to your list of daily marketing activities. In the past few months you’ve come to appreciate how easy and effective tools like Twitter can be to communicate project status and to inform followers of upcoming events. You currently manage your postings using a desktop Twitter client. It would be great if you could somehow link your “Tweets” with your project management system.” Added Sept 9, 08.

    BlueTwit-IBM
    An internal only twitter client has been deployed for some time, and has been providing some colleagues with relief from email flare-ups. It was recently covered in BusinessWeek (link via pistachio) –BlueTwit has been around since 2007.

    Present.ly
    “Present.ly is a micro-update communications tool for your company. Give your employees the ability to instantly communicate their current status, ask questions, post media, and more.” Via comments of Pistachio, added Sept 11, 08.

    Mixin
    Spanning both the internal and external worlds, Mixin: “… lets you share your daily activities and intentions
    to get together more often with your friends”

    Headmix
    “HeadMix has powerful messaging and social networking features that promote the capture, sharing and discovery of the knowledge trapped inside employees’ heads.”

    I’ll stop managing this list after a few weeks, I know an onslaught of features will appear in just about every imaginable software package, you can leave comments below, as always, if someone creates and index, I’ll point to it.

    See this list of opensource twitter vendors. Also, Laura “Pistachio” has now started a form to populate her database of vendors. She’s now published a spreadsheet on mashable.

    Also, I should add that Forrester is watching this space, aside from our CEO and many employees using these tool, we’ve a report with data showing use of microblogging tools.

    Have you deployed this at your company?
    Rafe of Webware and I would love to know, please contact me if you have, my email is on my contact page.

    I already know of a some community platforms that are experimenting with similar tools, expect this to be a bolt of feature that many will provide in the next few moons.

    If you know of others, leave a comment below, oh and if you like this list, you’ll love these.

    Posted in Enterprise Web, Industry Index, MicroMedia | Comments

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    Ongoing List of Social Media Strategies from Enterprise Corporations

    Categories: Industry Index, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on July 7th, 2008

    Ongoing List of Social Media Strategies
    A social media strategy is a long term plan utilizing all of the resources at hand using two way social tools. In the early days of 2005-2007, developing sophisticated strategies were limited to just a handful of tools such as blogs, forums, and online video. Now with so many resources being available from Twitter, Upcoming, Facebook, Widgets, and more, the opportunities –and level of coordination will vary. This post will be an ongoing list of enterprise size companies (over 1000 employees) that share their social media strategies, plans, online –hopefully in slideshare, as it’s easier to communicate.

    I expect contention
    What’s interesting is how the language of corporate folks describing these tools is often very different than the language purists use. I expect some contention from this, and this will make for healthy discussion below. I too understand the need to meet business needs, but at the same the needs of customers, do leave your opinions below, or on the blogs or slideshares.

    Why would a brand publish their social media strategy?
    Well, for a few reasons. These programs are designed to reach customers, partners, and colleagues in an open and transparent way, why not share with them in public? Secondly, by showing these companies are sophisticated in their approach, they demonstrate thought leadership. Lastly, by opening up for a public dialog, there’s so much to learn, gain, and grow from the larger community.

    Requirements for this list
    If you want to share (this could potentially be useful for Forrester reports) please leave a comment. Your blog post, slideshare, video or podcast should explain what your enterprise company is doing in the social media realm, thinking both long term, and considering the many resources and tools available to you.

    Sun Microsystems: Social Media is for Everyone
    Lou Ordorica and Linsa Skyrocki
    June 2008

    Access the slideshare directly, use full screen mode

    While I enjoy the holsitic view of the multi-departmental opportunities, it’s important to note that social media is not for everyone, as if you look at our technographic data, you’ll find inactive in nearly every demographic cut. I’m pretty sure they are suggesting that it’s for each department, so if that’s the case, then the statement is correct.

    Cisco: Building a Community with Social Media and Web 2.0
    LaSandra Brill, Manager, SP Web and Social Media
    July 2008
    Access the slideshare directly, use full screen mode

    I reviewed and provided feedback to LaSandra to this prior version, I enjoyed her lessons learned.

    Social Media at IBM – Beyond Blogging
    View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: e20 e2)

    IBM’s Adam Christensen shares this slide deck of IBM’s approach on social media. I’ll be meeting with him to discuss it in early Oct 2008.

    Intel: Intel Forming “The Insiders” Social Media Advisory Team
    Ken Kaplan, Broadcast and New Media Manager, Global Communications Group at Intel Corporation
    June 2008

    In this blog post, Intel calls for a board of advisors to reach and assist to them for their social media efforts. If you’re not aware, Intel is already doing a lot in this space, much with success. I give them a tremendous amount of credit for taking risks, quickly learning, and then making iterative changes.


    EMC: Applying Personal Social Media Techniques to Corporate EMC
    Dan Schwabel, Social Media Specialist at EMC Corporation
    June 2008
    In this post, Dan Schwabel shares the many different tools that are used at EMC and how they related to the overall change in personal and corporate branding. He examines events, CEO activity, and the many different social technologies used in their approach.


    SAS: Online communities for SAS users and SAS professionals
    Alison Bolen, sascom magazine’s Editor-in-Chief
    July 2008
    In this post, Alison lists out the many ways that customers can communicate with each other.

    Your Company
    Leave a comment below with URL and description.

    Related Posts:

  • See this list of full time Social Media Strategists and Online Community Managers at enterprise companies
  • Applying a Social Computing strategy to your entire product lifecycle

    • Posted in Industry Index, Social Media, Web Strategy | Comments

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    Ongoing list of Social Media Efforts from Banks, Credit Card, Financial Institutions and Lenders

    Categories: Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on June 23rd, 2008

    I’m here in NYC, one of the financial nerve centers in the world, attending Forrester’s Finance Forum. With loyalty to brands decreasing over time, companies need to figure out how to reach customers where they are, where many, are discussing their financial past, present and future online.

    During today’s panel and speaker discussions, I heard a lot of trepidation, fear, and uncertainty from many of the brands. Most are answering the first two of the five questions (“what” and “why”) I use to gauge company sophistication. Some mentioned they want to toe-dip and get out if it didn’t work well, others mentioned they were monitoring, and some feel threatened by the peer to peer models that cut out the middle man.

    The finance industry has a unique challenge, hindered by government regulations and often a conservative culture, they have a real challenge embracing the online conversation that’s already happening between customers.

    Criteria: Although there are many finance startups and consumer review sites, this list is really about the financial institutions, large brands, and banks that are adopting social media to reach customers.

    Ongoing list of Social Media in the Financial Industry

    Wells Fargo
    The first and greatest case study to date is of what Wells Fargo has done with their multiple blogs, starting with the Guided by History blog, Later, they launched the Student LoanDown blog, and a virtual world called Stagesoach Island Community that lets members learn and experience financial management.

    H&R Block
    This company has done quite a bit with blogs, virtual worlds, Facebook campaigns, and social media programs and campaigns. During tax time, there was a significant upswing of activity from Facebook applications, and they engaged in online dialog in Twitter by first monitoring keywords and directly responding to members.

    Intuit
    Online communities are nothing new to Intuit, this customer-focused brand let’s customers self-support each other, as well as communicate to them using blogs. Quickbooks (financial software) has extensive growth for SMBs who want to connect to each other.

    Chase +1
    This credit card company used Facebook to find out about what customers desired, laying the foundation for delivering a customer-focused product

    Ernst & Young
    This large accounting services and consulting firm is anxious to reach new hires fresh out of college, by creating a sponsored Facebook group, they have online dialogs with graduating students starting the interview process online. Smart way for each party to learn for each other.

    Royal Bank of Canada
    Launched this ongoing blog called the Innovator Blog, which goes back to October 2006. Link via Trevor Cook. Also, they’ve a Facebook page, (link from iljazz)

    ING
    Trevor Cook has more details, listing that ING has an Asia / Pacific blog, My Cup of Cha, a microfinance blog, and a Chinese blog. They’ve also created a microsite called I need to go, that has a spreadable widget.

    Fidelity
    Using map mashups and podcasts, Fidelity is reaching to it’s customers using new channels. (from Benjamin Ensor, Forrester)

    Genworth
    Springboardforum – From Genworth – you need to get an account to see it (free) “Genworth has partnered with Dow Jones, Time Inc., Bloomberg and Source Media to provide you with tools & resources that may support your business”(tip from Jay Bryant)

    HSBC
    This online community from HSBC Business Network is for SMB and entrepreneurs (tip from Jay Bryant)

    Alberta’s Commonwealth
    Online community for Alberta’s Generation Y provides a lifestyle platform for youth to self express and support called Young & Free.

    Discover
    This lifestyle portal provides helpful content for Discover customers, called Discover Edge, it delivers expert best practices for money management. It’s difficult to see if this has social features.

    American Express
    This website called OpenForum provides a dialog for customers, Chris Brogan has the details.

    Capital One
    This social network for small businesses, called Slingshot, allows people to connect to each other, promote their services, in this ‘yellow pages’ type of marketplace.

    Canada’s Largest Credit Union, Vancity, launches blog
    This blog, called Change Everything, is intended to spread feel good messages and videos to attract Vancity’s community, and interesting project.

    MyVault by Scotia Bank
    This ‘dashboard’ style interactive application allows members to manage their money, gather feeds, and communicate with community members via forums, called MyVault.

    IT Counts by the Institute of Chartered Accountants
    This community site ION, yields blogs by thought leaders on the topic of technology, sponsored by Microsoft.

    Young & Free Alberta (Groundswell Award Winner, 2008)
    The program launched in October 2007 with a two-month search and competition to find a dedicated Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson. The winner, Larissa Walkiw, became a paid employee of the credit union, working full time with the job description: talk, type and tell good stories. For her nine-month term, Larissa was essentially a full time blogger for the credit union. Learn about the award.

    Charles Schwab (Groundswell Award Winner, 2007)
    “In January 2007, Charles Schwab worked with Communispace to launch their “Money and More” private online community made up of 350 25-to-40 year old Generation X non-Schwab clients. Based on insights from the community, Schwab lowered account minimums to $1,000, introduced Schwab’s high-yield Investor checking account with a high yield, and developing an online landing page specifically for the Gen X target. Schwab has added 32% more Gen Xers YTD when compared to similar timeframes last year.” –see the award page

    Who else? Leave a comment, of if you’re shy, send me an email. I’ll keep this updated until I can’t scale further

    Related Resources

  • Social media for the insurance agency
  • Social media for the automotive industry
  • List of social media strategists and community managers at enterprise corporations

    • Posted in Industry Index, Social Media | Comments

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    List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Jobs and Professionals

    Categories: Career, Community Manager, Industry Index, On the move, Social Media Job, Web TeamPosted on June 20th, 2008

    If you’re interested in jobs for this space, please read the “on the move” posts.

    Understanding how companies staff, organize, and prepare for social media/computing is one of my top interests personally and professionally. Having been a former Online Community Manager at Hitachi Data Systems, I want to make sure companies do it right. I’m often asked which companies have one of the two emerging roles, (companies love to benchmark against their peers) so I’ve decided to start a list, not only to back my research, but also for those wanting to show to their companies “hey this is starting to happen for real”.

    The first role is the Social Computing Strategist, the second is the Community Manager, although the titles vary, and sometimes it’s a part-time function, there’s clearly a trend as corporations staff.

    It’s important to note, that in the end, these skills (the ability to communicate online) will disperse and grow to many employees. Generation Y comes to us with these abilities built it as a “digital natives”– yet the need to organize will still occur, it’s a knee jerk reaction to every corporation.

    This list, which I realize is going to be a lot of work, will be an ongoing index of these professionals, I will only do this for a limited time (probably till end of 2008, or until I can’t scale).

    Requirements
    Unlike a wiki, I will be vetting this list to ensure quality. Kindly leave a comment but first read the requirements:

    1) This is your full time (and current) job even if you have a variation on the title –you are not a consultant. Sure, you do more than social media alone, but the organization realizes you’re on point as the expert.
    2) You’re at a large corporation, in fact, a Fortune 5000 company, or you’ve over 1,000 employees. I can easily list out thousands of community managers at startups, but I’m trying to demonstrate how large corporations are moving forward.
    3) Provide reference: You must provide your title, and a link to your blog/profile/linkedin that indicates your role and title, perhaps a post that announced your title or intentions.
    4) Indicate which role you are, a Strategist (inward focused) Community Manager (externally focused), or Research of Product focused (developing a social media product/service for sale)
    5) This is primarily for external efforts with customers and prospects –not internal
    6) If you do not meet the requirements to meet this list, you can create your own, and I’ll prominently link to it. Update: April 2009, Ted has created a list for community managers that focus on internal communities.

    I’ve you’re a social media professional (at a smaller company, agency, startup) I’ve a list for everyone on my “on the move” posts.

    Ongoing List of Social Computing Strategists at Enterprise Corporations
    The Social Media Strategist, whose job is to lead the internal charge, develops the program, gains resources, convinces management, and measures success.

    Key differentiator for this group? They are primarily internally focused program managers.

    Technology

  • Ken Kaplan, Broadcast and New Media Manager, Global Communications Group at Intel Corporation
  • Bob Pearson, Vice President, Communities & Conversations at Dell
  • Chris James’s Experience, Social Media & Community Strategist, Advanced Micro Devices
  • Gunjan Rawal, Worldwide marketing manager at Intel Software Network
  • Adam Christensen, Social Media Manager, IBM Corporation
  • Bryan Rhoads, Sr. Digital Strategist at Intel Corporation
  • Brian Ellefritz, Sr. Mgr, Social Media Marketing at Cisco Systems
  • Todd Watson, Social Media and Search Marketing Manager, IBM Software Group
  • Rawn Shaw, CoE Lead – Social Software Programs & Enablement at IBM
  • Vanina Delobelle, Global Product Director, Monster
  • Jeanette Gibson, Director of New Media, Cisco Systems
  • Karen Snyder, New Media Program Manager, Verisign
  • Marc Sirkin, Sr. Marketing Manager – The Microsoft CIO Network at Microsoft
  • LaSandra Brill, Manager, Web & Social Media Marketing at Cisco Systems
  • Tac Anderson, Social Media – CRM – Search, HP
  • Adam Gartenberg, Team Lead, Social Marketing Initiatives at IBM
  • Christopher Haro’s Experience, Social Media Manager, Premiere Global Services
  • Justin Kestelyn, OTN Editor-in-Chief, Oracle
  • Richard Binhammer, Senior Manager, Dell
  • Deanna Bell, New Media Program Manager, Cisco
  • Dave Mastronardi, Program Manager / Implementation Architect at Raytheon
  • Jamie Pappas, Social Media Strategist, Evangelist, and Enterprise Community Manager, EMC
  • Michael Brito, Global Social Media Manager, Intel
  • Annie Rodkins, Social Media Manager, Intel
  • Lorna Li, Web Marketing Manager , Social Networking & Social Media, SalesForce
  • Kelly Colgan, Media Relations Specialist, Schneider Electric
  • Dan Schawbel, Social Media Specialist, EMC
  • Bob Duffy, Senior Social Media Strategist, Intel
  • Mark Yolton, Senior Vice President, SAP Community Network, SAP
  • Steve Mann, GVP, Social Media & Customer Experience Strategy, SAP
  • Bob Duffy, Senior Social Media Strategist, Intel
  • Fred “Fritz” Alberti, Senior Manager of Social Media, Salem Communications
  • Tilly McLain, Community Manager, MyBlogLog, Yahoo
  • Diane Davidson, Sr. Manager of Customer Success and Community Program, Cisco, the WebEx Technology group
  • Rick Reich, Sr. Mgr, Social Media & Technologies, Citrix Systems
  • Rachel Makool, Sr. Director, Community Development, eBay

    • Electronics

  • Mark Squires, Head of Social Media Communications, Nokia
  • Marcie Cohen, Sr. PR Manager, Sony Electronics

    • Hospitality

  • Cassandra Jeyaram, Social Marketing Manager for InterContinental Hotels Group

    • Automotive

  • Chris Barger, Director, Global Communications Technology, General Motors
  • Scott Monty, Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager, Ford Motor Company
  • Christopher Barger, GM Director of Global Communications Technology, General Motors
  • Sylvia Marino, Executive Director Community & Social Media Operations, Edmunds.com Inc.

    • Airline

  • Paula Berg, Public relations specialist, Nuts about Southwest Blog, Southwest Airlines
  • Brian Lusk, Manager Customer Communication, Nuts about Southwest Blog, Southwest Airlines
  • Morgan Johnston, Manager Corporate Communication, JetBlue Airways
  • Alma Dayawon, Electronic Communications Manager, The Boeing Company

    • Aerospace

  • Ariel Waldman, NASA CoLab program coordinator

    • Finance and Insurance

  • Ed Terpening, VP of Social Media Marketing at Wells Fargo
  • Matthew Anchin, Vice President, Online Communications, American Express
  • Christine Morrison, Social Media Marketing Manager at Intuit’s Consumer Group
  • Scott Wilder, GM – Online Communities at Small Business Division, Intuit
  • Paula Drum, Vice President, Marketing, H&R Block
  • Alan Edgett, Sr. Director of Advanced Marketing Systems, Experian Interactive
  • Justin Gibbs, Online Marketing Strategist, Manager, Experian Consumer Direct
  • Annalie Killian, Director of Collaboration, Intranet, Communication and Innovation at AMP
  • Shawn Morton, Senior Consultant for Social Media at Nationwide Insurance
  • Matt Anchin, Vice President, Online Communications, American Express
  • Matthew Lehman ,Web Experience Director, Progressive Insurance

    • Consumer Products

  • Jim Deitzel, Sr. eMarketing Manager at Newell Rubbermaid
  • Lindsay Lebresco, Public Relations & Social Media Manager at Graco Children’s Products/Newell Rubbermaid
  • Bert DuMars, Vice President E-Business & Interactive Marketing, Newell Rubbermaid

    • Retail

  • Todd Feldman, Sr Manager, Emerging Marketing Channels, Circuit City Stores, Inc.
  • Stephanie Pike, Manager, Content and Community, Circuit City Stores, Inc.
  • Gary Koelling, Sr Mgr Social Technology, Best Buy
  • Steve Bendt Sr. Manager of Social Technology, Best Buy
  • Denise Garciano, Online Content & Community Specialist, PacSun
  • John Andrews Emerging Media Sr. Manager at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc

    • Research

  • Yemil Martinez, Director, New Media Marketing and Web Strategy, Institute for International Research (IIR) a subdivision of Informa
  • Michele Frost, Director, Web Marketing at Forrester Research

    • Heathcare

  • Marcus Frank, UX Strategist & Creative Director, National Cancer Institute
  • Burt Lum, Business Relationship Manager, HMSA
  • Shwen Gwee, Lead Business Analyst, Health Informatics and New Media at Vertex Pharmaceuticals

    • Media Gaming and Entertainment

  • Jessica Baker, Marketing Manager, Interactive Media, American Greetings Interactive
  • Michael Hall, Community Product manager, ABC.com
  • Charles Miller, Director, Inbound E-mail Operations and Blog Outreach, DIRECTV, Inc.
  • Eby Ghafarian, Manager, Product Engagement & Community Development at Hachette Filipacchi Media (Elle.com, caranddriver.com, roadandtrack.com)
  • Jean Fahmy Director, Director, Digital strategies, Transcontintental Media
  • Jason Richman, Director, Digital Product Strategy, NBC Universal
  • Daniel Thornton, Community Marketing Manager at Bauer Consumer Media
  • Charles E. Miller, Director, Inbound E-mail Operations and Blog Outreach, DIRECTV, Inc.

    • Agency

  • Shiv Singh, Vice President, Social Media & Global Strategic Initiatives, Avenue A Razorfish
  • Brad Mays, Senior Vice President (Social Media), Fleishman-Hillard
  • Jon Burg, Emerging Channels Specialist with Digitas

    • Services

  • James Davidson, Web Strategist, Creative Services & Branding, Manpower
    • Ongoing List of Community Managers at Enterprise Corporations
    The Community Manager, who’s job is to primarily be a community advocate is a social media user, and is externally focused, they are primarily the face to the online community. As companies scale, I expect to see these types or roles appear often for each product group at larger companies, they often report directly to the strategist or at least have a dotted line.

    Key differentiator for this group? They are primarily an externally (customer/community) facing role.

    Technology

  • Lionel Menchaca, Community Manager, Dell
  • Anton Chiang, Web Communities Manager, Juniper Networks
  • Lacy Kemp, Social Media Communications Specialist at RealNetworks
  • Stephen Spector, Sr. Program Manager, Xen.org Community, Citrix
  • Michael Sandoval, Global Communities Manager, Texas Instruments
  • Vishal Ganeriwala, Sr. Manager of Citrix Developer Network, Citrix
  • Amie Paxton, Channel Community Manager, Dell
  • Angela LoSasso, Community & blogs strategist, HP
  • Tom Diederich, Social Media/Web Community Manager, Cadence Systems
  • Bill Pearson Bill, Manager, Intel Software Network, Intel
  • Josh Hilliker, Community Manager of the vPro Expert Center, Intel
  • Robyn Tippins, Community Manager, Yahoo! Developer Network at Yahoo!
  • John Summers, Community Manager at NetApp
  • Mario Sundar, Community Evangelist at LinkedIn
  • Tom Ablewhite, Community Manager, Thomson Reuters
  • Craig Cmehil, Community Manager for the SAP Developer Network
  • Lou Ordorica, Social Media Producer at Sun Microsystems
  • John Earnhardt, Senior manager, media relations and blogger in chief, Cisco Systems
  • Deirdre Walsh, Community Manager at National Instruments
  • Rachel Luxemburg, Community Manager at Adobe
  • Aaron Tersteeg, Software Developer Community, Intel
  • Josh Bancroft, Software Developer Community, Intel
  • Jeff Moriarty, Software Developer Community, Intel
  • Cathy Ma, Yahoo Community Manager, Yahoo Europe
  • Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Swami , Network Solutions
  • Ian Kennedy, Product Guy, MyBlogLog, Community Manager, Yahoo
  • David Kim, Manager, Online Marketing and Communities at Symantec
  • Marilyn Pratt, Community Evangelist, SAP Labs
  • Scott Jones, Community Manager and Content Strategist, SDN at SAP Labs
  • Badsah Mukherji, Sr. Community Manager at VMware
  • Jon Mountjoy, Community Manager & Editor-In-Chief at Salesforce
  • Senior Director, OTN & Developer Programs Oracle
  • Jake Kuramoto, Oracle Apps Labs, Oracle USA
  • Kelly Feller, Web Marketing Manager leading the IT Community site Open Port, Intel
  • Erica Kuhl, Sr. Producer & Community Manager, Salesforce.com Community
  • Aaron Tersteeg, Community Manager (Multi-core Development) Intel Software Network, Intel
  • Jeff Moriarty, Community Manager (mobility) for the Intel Software Network, Intel
  • Alison Bolen Editor, Sascom voices blog, SAS
  • Melissa Daniels, Community Manager for All-Star group for Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo!
  • Amy Barton, Strategic Programs Manager, Intel Software Network, Intel
  • Holly Valdez, Community Manager, Cisco, the WebEx Technology group

    • Electronics

  • Ray Haddow, Blogger Outreach, Nokia
  • Charlie Schick, Lead on Nokia corporate blog, Nokia

    • Media, Gaming, Entertainment

  • Kellie Parker, Online Community Manager at Sega
  • Kristopher Shaw, Community Manager at MTV Networks UK
  • EM Stock, Senior Community Manager at Sony Online Entertainment
  • Katie Hamlin, Community Manager, Fodors.com, Random House
  • Justin Korthof, Community Manager at Microsoft
  • David Cushman, Digital Development Director, Bauer Consumer Media UK
  • Laurent Courtines, Community Manager at Games.com AOL

    • Research

  • John Cass, Online Community Manager, Forrester Research

    • Finance

  • Scott Moore, Senior Online Community Manager at Schwab Learning
  • Jose Antonio Gallego, Community Manager at BBVA (Spain)
  • Amy Worley, Director, Marketing Manager, HR Block
  • Fran Sansalone, Community Manager for the Open Calais Web Service, Thomson Reuters

    • Automotive

  • Karen Spiegler, Community Manager, Edmunds.com, Inc.
  • Alicia Dorset, Blog editor, General Motors

    • Retail

  • Slaton Carter, Online Community Development Manager, Whole Foods Market
  • Winnie Hsia, Online Community Moderator, Whole Foods Market

    • Consumer Goods

  • Jennifer Cisney, Chief Blogger, Kodak

    • Agriculture

  • Christopher Paton, Social Media Team Lead, Monsanto
    • Ongoing List of Social Media Researchers and Social Media Product Managers
    It’s become evident there are other roles within large enterprises that focus on Social Computing, in fact, these folks are researchers, analyzing online behavior or creating specs for future products. Expect large enterprise software companies to offer these features in their product suites in the coming future.

    Key differentiator for this group? They are researching or building social media products that will be brought to market.

    Technology

  • Jonathan Grudin, Principal Researcher, focused on the adoption of emerging (social computing) at Microsoft
  • Marc Davis, Social Media Guru, Yahoo! Corporation
  • Kingsley Joseph, Sr. Manager, Successforce.com & IdeaExchange, SalesForce
  • Jamie Greenly, Product Line Director Salesforce Ideas at Salesforce.com
  • Lawrence Liu, Senior Technical Product Manager for Social Computing, Microsoft SharePoint
  • Frank Gruber, Principal Product Manager for AOL in the social networking & platforms group, AOL
  • Alan Lepofsky, Senior Strategist at Socialtext
  • Filiberto Selvas, Social Media Strategy Director at Avenue A Razorfish
  • Marty Collins, Sr Product Marketing Manager, Social Media Strategist Windows/Windows Live, Microsoft
  • Matthias Zeller, Group Product Manager, Project Genesis, Adobe Systems
  • Moz Hussain, Director of Product Management, Unified Communications Group, Microsoft Corporation
  • Suzanne Minassian, Product Manager for IBM Lotus Connections, IBM
  • Steven Tedjamulia, Sr. Business Product Manager at Vignette Corporation
  • Dan Truax, General Manager for the Microsoft Server and Tools Online (STO) group, Microsoft
  • Dick Costolo, Social Media, Google
    • Related Resources
    I’ve kick started this list with a few that I know, please be detailed in the comments, as I’ll be reviewing to ensure accuracy. If you’re seeking a job, or wanting to hire folks, start with my “on the move” series of posts. Also see the New PR Wiki list of CEO blog. Shel Israel’s Global Survey of interviews on text and video have stories of many of these folks. Mario Sundar has a list of community mangers of all industries and sizes. Connie Benson left this list of community managers on twitter.

    What and How to Submit
    First, read the requirements stated above. Then submit Name, Title, Company, Which category (see descriptions), URL to bio that describes body of work. I prefer a link to your LinkedIn account that shows your role, as well as description of social media program or project.

    If you’re shy, send me an email at jeremiah_owyang@yahoo.com, subject line should be “social media role” (I get hundreds of emails every day)

    Update June 24: Bear with me, this is a major undertaking and I’m reviewing each entry. I also found quite a few comments being withheld by wordpress, I approved the ones I could find (using keywords to filter 25,000 spam comments). Please, carefully read the requirements before submitting, some I cannot add due to volume. If you wanted to create a list for SMB or internal folks, I’m happy to link to it.

    Also, someone I respect suggested that this list is ‘outing’ those that may not want to be bombarded by vendors, most of these are submissions, and all records are public and found on LinkedIn. The kickoff list was a handful of people that were cited in public reports, who blog, or were in books. If you don’t want you name on here, simple email me and I’ll have it removed.

    July 30th: Over a month since I started this list, it continues to grow and grow. I think we’ve gotten past the major influx, and now just a trickle of users are being added.

    Posted in Career, Community Manager, Industry Index, On the move, Social Media Job, Web Team | Comments

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    List of Communities, Virtual Worlds, and Social Networks for Youth, Boomers, Retired, and Beyond

    Categories: Generations, Industry Index, Social Networking, Virtual WorldPosted on June 11th, 2008

    I’m doing research around how different ages using social networks, communities, and virtual worlds by age, and will compile this list as it grows. I’m looking for established community sites that are mature enough to work with brands.

    There is already so much coverage on mainstream social networks like Bebo, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn that we forget about the other smaller niche networks. First, understand technographics (how ages use social media 18+) by accessing Forrester’s profile tool, available for free.

    If you know the demographics for any of these, please leave a comment.

    Youth
    I’m primarily seeking communties that are under 18, beyond just MySpace.

    Club Penguin, Disney
    8-12, Virtual World

    Stardolls
    Young Girls 10-17, Social Network, virtual dolls

    Barbie Girls
    6-16, Virtual World

    WeeWorld
    Youth, Avatar based Social network

    Zookazoo
    6-10 year olds, Virtual World

    Club Penguin, Disney
    8-12, Social network, virtual dolls

    Gaia
    Teens, Virtual World

    Habbo Hotel
    European Youth, Virtual World

    Cyworld
    South Korean youth, (and now global), virtual/social network

    Neopets
    Youth, Virtual Pets

    Pixie Hollow, Disney
    Young Girls, Virtual Pet

    Teen Second Life
    Teen, Virtual World

    Webkinz
    Youth, Virtual World

    Piczo
    Teens, Social Network

    Dizzywood
    Youth, Virtual World/games

    Shining Stars, by Russ
    Youth, ‘name a star’

    Puzzle Pirates
    Youth, Gaming, Virtual World

    50+
    Now of course, boomers and retired are also going to be on lifestyle social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, but I’m seeking examples that are focused in on reaching these folks.

    Eons
    50+, Social Network

    BOOMj
    50+, Social Network

    Tee Bee Dee
    Boomers, Social Network

    AARP
    Boomers, Social Network

    There’s a larger list of Boomer sites, many I’ve not heard from.

    Departed
    Someone suggests this in the comments in Friendfeed, makes sense.
    Legacy
    Respectance
    Tributes.com
    SweetMemoriesSite
    ChristianMemorials
    PreciousMemoriesAndMore

    For what it’s worth, I hope this blog lives on past my time here.

    Related Resources

  • Danah Boyd has a great PDF on Youth and Social Networks (PDF)
  • Many reports (260) on Forrester site tagged youth

    • Posted in Generations, Industry Index, Social Networking, Virtual World | Comments

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    Ongoing List of Social Media Examples in the Auto and Car Industry

    Categories: Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on June 9th, 2008

    Social Media Marketing adoption has spurred forward with the technology industry, as well as with consumer and lifestyle products, when people are passionate about a topic, the want to talk about it. The auto industry in the United States crosses so many of those themes, it’s ripe for social media marketing (providing your technographics indicates your customers are going to engage).

    Here’s an ongoing list of Social Media examples, and resources:

    Chevy Tahoe “Create you ad” – 2006
    Perhaps one of the earliest examples (and boldest) was the advertisement where anyone could create their own Chevy ads. Many anti-SUV/Auto ads appeared, and some suggest it was a failed campaign. I believe it was a success for the very reasons it was criticized, at least GM took a bold move to embrace what everyone was talking about, aside from the residual buzz from the campaign itself.

    Jeep’s Have Fun Out There
    To me, this is really a great way of reaching with these tools, rather than create all the content themselves, Jeep has aggregated content from the community. I’m sure it’s been filtered, so nothing inappropriate is added, but it’s a good way of letting the community ‘drive’ their own agenda. Essentially they are “fishing where the fish are” by linking and aggregating communities where they already exist on flickr, youtube, and facebook.

    Honda/Acura
    Has launched several campaigns such as this ‘create your own profile‘ for your social network, featuring Honda Pilot. Other examples inlcude Acura TSX Facebook page, and a Honda YouTube channel that features a variety of innovation lead videos.

    GM launches a Community program -2008
    From Neville and Shel of the For Immediate Release program (podcast) “GMnext is more or less a year-long online initiative around the 100th anniversary of the company. Here’s a bit of an overview in the event it’s close to what you’re looking for. Shel did a few podcasts when they launched.” Aside from this community initiative, GM continues to push the envelope and has created a ‘social media newsroom‘.

    Chrysler Listens with Insight Community -08
    Forming an online community is one thing, but using it to listen to customers, then making changes is another. Chrysler has launched a Customer Advisory Board that allows customers to be involved in a two way dialog to make suggestions. This one was powered by Passenger, see list of other insight vendors.

    Mini’s Owners’ Lounge
    By creating an extranet for customers, Mini has let their owners self organize, self-express, and communicate.

    GM’s many blogs
    This Chrysler auto focused blog is rich with media, appears to be frequently updated, by void of many comments. Of course many of you know the GM Fast Lane blog, which has been around since 2005, authored by employees such as Bob Lutz, and the GMNext blogs.

    Jeep’s Patriot Adventure: Choose your own Adventure -2008
    Really an example of interactive marketing, not social media (aside for videos going on Youtube) Jeep launches an interactive campaign where members can direct which choices video actors make. If you don’t know the difference, you can read the many forms of web marketing.

    Ford’s Social Media Press Release
    I’ve never really understood the value of the social media press release, as I’d rather see corporations/employees joining the conversation, as the level of trust will be higher. In any case, Ford has developed a social media press release for it’s cars, the layout and visualization of the cars looks fantastic.

    Toyota: Master of Africa -2008
    I applaud this community site that talks about 4X4 best practices and sharing, as it discusses not only the sponsored brands’ discussion of their products, but other companies. Great way to really join the authentic conversations that the market will already have, and attempt to build trust.

    Scion Speak let’s owners self-express
    By encouraging owners to create their own personalized emblem, they strengthen member affinity. This is really an example of interactive marketing, not social media. Now, if members were able to take that emblem to their social networking site, then it could spread. Also, there should be a way to print out that emblem and adhere to car.

    BMW 1 Series Graffiti Facebook campaign -2008
    This is perhaps one of the best case studies of brands getting social media right, like the Dell Regeneration campaign (both by Federated Media) BMW reaches to existing Grafiti users to draw what they think the BMW 1 means to them “What drives you?”. The result is astounding, thousands of beautiful pieces of art created, and spread across Facebook.

    Saturn gets Community -2008
    I’ve always been impressed with the friendly Saturn brand, from user group sponsorships to the no pressure selling, they offer more of an easy going lifestyle brand. Now, their online community reflects their ethos, with groups, member profiles, and other social networking features

    Nissan Finland launches Social Map Mashup
    This interactive map let’s members upload their destinations and images and let’s them share with others. It’s themed around the various offroad vehicles, trucks, and SUVs by Nissan. It looks like it’s a flash app, but I question if that’s very useful for mobile users.

    United Auto Workers Community
    The UAW, according to Chuck Gose, “allows workers to submit their stories to about what it means to be a part of the UAW and then other readers can comment or rate the story. They can also submit video.”

    Castrol runs a social networking site for car enthusiasts
    This ‘gear head’ community gives an outlet for those passionnate about auto mobiles, see the in depth profiles, featured cars, and discussions at motoraddicts

    Daimler launches German blog
    This German blog by Daimler appears to slowly get traction, a smattering of comments, and posts since Oct 2007, this could be a great way to reach a unique audience. Thanks to Stefan for the submit.

    Various Brands: Social Networking Campaigns
    Many of these are too minor to point out individually, but there are dozens of brands that have created social network marketing groups or campaigns, and thousands of groups created by owners themselves, a few examples:
    BMW, Facebook

    Staffing and Resources

    Ford has hired Scott Monty to lead the Social Media Practice -June 2008

    Additional Resources


    AARF: Headlight
    Avenue A Razorfish, an intractive firm that is now focusing on Social Media under the direction of Shiv Singh has a blog focused directly on the innovation of the auto industry, when it comes to marketing.
    iMedia has an article on what Social Media Marketing means to auto brands, worth a read.

    Minor Social Networking Campaigns
    Of course, it’s important to note there are hundreds, if not thousands of online communities created from avid owners, such as this, and dozens other that create groups within social networks. Quite frankly, many brands are missing the opportunities on social networks, when the apply the traditional marketing efforts to a social environment. Go to Facebook, MySpace and do searches in groups and on the search bar to find more.

    Owner created Communities
    Of course, it’s important to note there are hundreds, if not thousands of online communities created from avid owners, such as this Mini, and Acurazine, both thriving passion communities. There are marketing opportunities, but most brands monitor, but don’t participate. Apparently, an owner created community called VW Vortex has been supported by VW themselves. (if you’ve details, please leave a comment)

    Ratings and Reviews Sites
    This list can be long, so I’ll just give a few examples such as Edmunds Forums, Yahoo Autos, and I’m sure there are hundreds more.

    If you’ve other examples of Auto companies using social media to connect with customers, please leave a comment.

    Posted in Industry Index, Social Media | Comments

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    A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media

    Categories: Challenges, Groundswell, Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on May 2nd, 2008

    A list of companies that were blind-sided by the internet, they didn’t understand the impacts of the power shift to the participants, or how fast information would spread, or were just plain ignorant.

    Criteria of “Punk’d” includes a situation where the story would have not been told if social media was not available, or if social media enhanced the situation.

    This doesn’t include fake blogs, companies who deliberately tried to cheat the system get their own honorable mention.

    Although this punk’d list is the one to stay off, the one you want to get on is the Groundswell awards.

    Update: I’ve added severity status for some of these Punk’d using the Categorization of Brand Backlash Storms)

    2010

    iPunk’d: Mainstream News Falls for iPad “Beta Tester” Hoax
    Flamboyant CEO and internet celebrity Jason Calacanis tweeted he was an early beta-tester for iPad, and ‘leaked’ out fake specs.  Mainstream media, who were hungry to break any news, published mis-stories, with a variety of accuracies. Among the over zealous journalists includes The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, CNN Money, Reuters, Macworld, ComputerWorld, and Joystiq (couldn’t find article), more from Valleywag. Just goes to show that any lead is a story worth starting, fact checking not required, and Jason knows how to catch a media wave. (Category 2)

    Cleanup in Aisle 8: Digital Fingerprints Exposes Wal-Mart’s Paid Supporter
    A vocal online supporter of Wal-Mart opening in Chicago was allegedly unearthed ties back to Wal-Mart’s PR firm. In an era of digital footprints, the IP address was matched to the agency that represents Wal-Mart, the Chicagoist has some of the alleged discussion, on display. There’s three lessons here: 1) transparency in fiduciary relationships isn’t only ethical, it’s probably the law, when lobbying for a company while on payroll on the web (although FTC regulations tend to be fuzzy in my opinion) 2) This erodes trust of communities and the social web. 3) It’s disappointing to see Wal-Mart (or it’s partners) on this list again (see below) this is a good time to send a disclosure memorandum to all agency partners. (Category 2)

    2009

    Pepsi’s AMP iPhone App Encourages Guys To Score –Yet Results in a Penalty
    Pepsi’s AMP brand which caters to young males created an iPhone application that arms studs with pickup lines for different categories of women.  This application gives young men to categorize women (geek, cougar, band girl and beyond) and offers pickup lines, useful information to relate to them and a ’scoring’ system after they’ve done the deed.  Unfortunately, a groundswell emerged from blogs and mainstream press forcing Pepsi’s hand to remove the app –and the offensive material. (Category 3)

    Honda Product Manager Crashes Into His Own Comments
    An overzealous product manager at Honda promotes his own product but fails to disclose his own relationship with the company –till the community calls him out. Honda responds by sheepishly removing his posts, due to lack of disclosure and not being a company representative. It should be recognized that every employee is a representative of the company –official or not. What’s needed? Training, internal policies, and a safe place to practice. (Category 2)

    Digerati Dooce Sends Maytag/Whirlpool to the Cleaners
    Consumer activism or celebrity abuse?  Popular blogger and Twitterati (over 1 million followers) had problems with her brand new Whirlpool machine and took to her social tools to discuss, complain, and suggest a boycott till her machine was fixed, read her chronicle, and what happened next as it spread to Forbes.  Not sure what Whirlpool could have done to avoid this –all customer experiences good and bad are exposed on the social web, how does a brand know when they’re talking to an influencer?  They don’t. (Category 3)

    Property Manager Sues Over Moldy Tweet –Infecting Their Own Brand
    A tenent in a Chicago apartment who had 20 followers in Twitter was sued by property manager for saying: “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s OK.” is being sued for $50k for defamation.  As a result, this incident has received global attention on the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and major news outlets.  This may have caused self-damage to Horizon as prospective customers may search Google for Horizon and see how they publically sued a customer.  Horizon later issued a statement regarding their intention to “sue first, ask questions later” (Category 3)

    Decrescendo For United Airlines After “Breaking Guitar” Song
    A musican scorned is a scary thing –add YouTube and the whole world can see.   Dave Carroll claims he saw United baggage handlers toss his custom guitar, then complained with no resolution.  He turned to what he knows best, and created a song and shared it with the world.  More from LA times who says that after the song started to get popular, United changed their tune from minor chords to major, thanks to Mark for submitting. (Category 3)

    Fire Sale: Furniture Company Habitat Self-Evicts on Twitter
    Stylish furninture maker Habitat jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, but this time, tags it’s self-promotionary tweets with popular trending topics such as the Iran election.  What’s this the same as?  Parasite marketing.   As a result, the Twitter community strikes back, and Habitat retreats.  To their defense, they’re just the ones that got called out -there’s a bunch of spammers doing this now.  Thanks Mark for the submission (Category 2)

    Contest for Bloggers Results in Asus Losing
    Computer manufacturer Asus hosted a sponsored contest where bloggers could review their products –then the community could vote on the best review.  Asus, not happy with the honest (but not that shiny review) review from one blogger, decided to shift the rules to benefit a more positive review.  Backlash ensues, read comments, link via Ian Fogg (Category 2)

    Snotty Dominos Employees YouTube Themselves To Court
    Millions are grossed out by two Dominos employees who uploaded a video to YouTube of them blowing snot on pizzas at a Dominos stores. Interestingly, the crowd was able to pinpoint their location, they’ve now been fired and are facing felony charges, NYTs has more. Thanks to Josh for the tip. (Category 3, and perhaps 4 if this doesn’t get cleaned up)

    Buying Friends? Belkin pays for Positive Reviews
    This scandal leaves consumers not sure if they can trust the positive reviews about Belkin products. As one employee offered to pay users of Amazon’s Mechnical Turk to write positive reviews. As Belkin was exposed, they issued a mea culpa suggesting this was an isolated event, but now, it’s suggested that these orders came from executives. (Category 2, yet if the Fed gets involved, it go to Category 3 or 4)

    2008

    Motrin Gets Headache From Twittering Moms
    A well-intended Motrin ad launched towards baby carrying moms triggered them to revolt on twitter. On this quiet weekend it spread to blogs, YouTube, and then mainstream press. Some argue the moms were acting more like a mob, Motrin didn’t test it’s copy with the target audience up front –leaving everyone with a splitting headache. (Category 2)

    CNN Falls For Rumor –Sinking Apple Stock
    A rumor created by community created news site iReport that falsified CEO Steve Jobs having a heart attack spread to mainstream media website CNN, and caused a dip in stock price. User generated content will always have the risk of falsified content. (Category 4)

    Exxon Mobil Brandjacked in Twitter
    The twitter community (myself included) was eager to embrace “Janet” a no holds barred up front in your face corporate representative that was ready to tackle the hard issues –sometimes without grace. Unfortunately, to the Twittersphere’s surprise and Exxon, Janet, is not an official company representative she claimed to be. Read the story to unravel the multiple angles to this unique case. (Category 2)

    JC Penney Brandjacked by Fake “Sex” Ad
    We’re seeing more ads being created. In this case a ‘third party vendor’ (agency, I think) created this and submitted it to Cannes. JC Penney wasn’t happy and had it removed from YouTube. Unfortunately, blogs picked it up and it will never go away, video is here, I know you want to click. (Category 2)

    Louis Vuitton gets Brandjacked in Anti-Genocide Campaign
    Artist creates and sells T-shirt demonstrating how the media turns a deaf ear to real world tradgeies such as genocide in Dafur, infringing on LV logo. LV fires back, with lawsuit, a groundswell begins. Submitted by Søren Storm Hansen (Category 2)

    Burger King exec trash talks using daughter’s email
    Not sure why he didn’t just create a new email address, that would have been a lot safer. Submitted by Hilker. (Category 3)

    Johnson and Johnson to bloggers: Hurry up and get dis-invited
    Sounds like a mis-coordination, bad timing, and not a well thought through process that ended up getting scobleized, and Maryamized. (Category 2)

    Anonymous Unmasks Church of Scientology
    The church of Scientology has been criticized by an anonymous group, a faceless mass that has created videos, staged marches and protests, and is subvert the Church from around the internet. (Category 2)

    Marvel nearly cuts of bloggers from Iron Man screening
    Techcrunch (700,000 + subscribed) who intended to host a screening for loyal tech readers (perhaps a perfect audience of tech bloggers) were cut off by Marvel. Techcrunch is known for copy and pasting legal notes right onto the blog, fortunatly, things were quickly resolved. (Category 2)

    Target-ed by Bloggers
    A blogger complained about an indecent ad that portrayed as demeaning to women, complained and was shoved off by a Target representative. Story now on NYTimes, little things, can be big.

    2007


    Target’s Rounders program “This is our secret game”
    Target encouraged it’s premier members in the rounders program to pump up it’s brand in a Facebook group, sadly, the covert operation ended up on blogs and then mainstream media

    HD DVD Decoded by Digg, unDugg, then Dugg again
    Digg users publish HD code, industry freaks out, Digg maintains stance.

    Wholefoods CEO caught being a troll
    Whole Foods CEO, was anonymously trashing competitors and pumping company up on Yahoo finance boards. (Category 3)

    Delta holds customers hostage
    What’s worse than being held prisoner on Delta’s dirty plane? (Video), watching the crew getting off da plane. Oh, and no food, crying babies, but one talented videographer. (Category 3)

    Taco Bell’s infestation crawls into YouTube
    A minor rat problem moved it’s way to YouTube, spreading faster and farther than expected, a total of more than one million views for all videos. Submitted by Graham Hill (Category 3)

    Facebook Party with Molson ends up with Hangover
    Molson invited folks to share party pics in Facebook, including with youth, which resulted in a backlash from community and parents. Molson withdrew the campaign and went home early –no more Facebook partying for this brand.

    2006

    Data storage blogger posts industry price lists, sales reps cry f#ck!
    Robin Harris, one of the most well known of the data storage blogosphere posts price lists that were received from various customers.

    Dell Laptop Explodes, news at 11 –via YouTube
    More bad news for Dell, as laptops explode in Japan, all can see online.

    ZZZ… Comcast suffers from Narcolepsy
    Sleepy Techician caught on YouTube, then fired. Also see Comcast must die blog, submitted by Jeff Jarvis. (Category 3)

    Hitachi “Hell” Gets The Finger
    Angry customer gets bad service, writes long experience, and flips off HQ in picture, he’s also an influencer in the gaming community. (Category 2)

    The Naked NOKA Chocolate Uncovered
    A premium chocolatier (Noka) had a tremendous markup ($309- $2,080 per pound) of their secretly re-packaged chocolate, was exposed as a fraud and spread on blogs. And their google results is really painful. Submitted by Whitney.

    AOL Holds Customers Hostage –Then Gets Canceled
    This guy really bothers me, I can see why Vincent Ferrari was miffed. It’s clear, he was dealing with the customer retention department. Nothing worse than the feeling of being held hostage. Submitted by David Alston.

    Airplane Fiasco’s Spread Online: JetBlue
    There are so many examples, such as a YouTube testimonial about JetBlue’s 8+ hours stranded in terminal. Related: JetBlue’s CEO responds after flights are cut months later due to storm.

    Starbucks Brandjacked by YouTube Video
    Who wants a tasty frappuccino when there are kids starving? This was one of the first cases of brandjacking we saw.

    2005

    Why we Dwell on Dell Hell
    Jeff Jarvis launches blog post that sends a flurry of PR negativty at Dell’s poor service, it’s since been improved.(Category 3)

    2004

    Kryptonite unlocked
    Locks were disabled using a simple bic pen cap, spread on forums and blogs, one of the earliest examples that got mainstream attention. (Category 3)

    Wives of EA beg for spouses back on blog
    Call HR? Forget it, call Livejournal. This early incident from a wife of a game developer complains on a blog –getting national attention from press and media. As a result, EA did make some changes to their work and lifestyles of their employees. (Category 3)

    2003

    The Barbera Streisand Effect
    Singer star tries to remove content from internet, it all goes downhill from there. I actually learned about this from reading my colleagues Groundswell book (Category 2)

    2001

    Apple’s dirty little secret plastered over NYC
    Apparently, 18 months is all the iPod will run before you’ll need to buy a new one, says this video, where street teams went around defacing ads. Submitted by David Churbuck (I got his name right this time)

    Also see: 8 Groundswell Examples: News, Education, Religion, Cops, Restaurants, Music, Conferences, and Analysts

    I know I’m missing others, please leave a comment, and I’ll credit you

    Update: I added CNN in April 2009 to the punk’d list for their CNNbrk account, I found out later, that it indeed was not an example of a brandjacking, but instead CNN helped foster the relationship with the non-employee creator James Cox, who sent me an email and explained.

    Posted in Challenges, Groundswell, Industry Index, Social Media | Comments

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    Insurance Industry Explores Social Media, But Nothing To Write Home About (Blogs, Forums, Social Networks)

    Categories: Challenges, Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on April 26th, 2008

    I’m doing research for a client, to find out any examples of insurance companies using social media to connect with it’s customers. I’ve done some scanning over a 48 period of time, and asked my twitter (a social computer) followers, who gave a tremendous amount of helpful links. Since I’ve received many links from the community, I won’t hoard my findings, but share them in public. I’m thankful for those that help me, and I try to give back on this blog.

    Overall, without surprise, this industry has not adopted these tools, as one would expect. Whether they should or not should start with by answering these questions:

  • Are their respective decision makers using social tools to find answers about products and services?
  • If so, which tools are they using, and how are they connecting?
  • Would insurance customers benefit from asking and answering questions directly to each other?

    • I did find a few examples, yet just small blossoms in the field, no clear wins that would make a case study of complete success or failure, among them include:

    Pick Your Advisor, India
    This website allows users to select a financial or insurance advisor using a friendly personable interactive selector. Each of the advisors has a picture asscoiate with them, and a psuedo blog. As I looked closer, most of the blog data was not being used, or was being used like a chat room.

    Allstate Community Forum
    It appears this forum (code suggests it’s powered by lithium software, see the whole list) which launched in late 07 is a great example of a company embracing it’s customers using community software. Sadly, there’s very few messages and discussions. The forum is segmented by role (singles, couples, parents) and you can start to see some Q&A occurring. In my recent report on Online Community Best Practices, I found that companies must have a kick start plan to get their communities going.

    esurance fan opportunity
    Esurance’s aggressive online advertising of it’s cartoon like superhero “Erin Esurance” is causing some fandom, and some are dressing up like her. Mack questions if esurance should embrace some of these fans, but I’m not so sure. Is the goal of the cartoon campaign to drive awareness, or involve in a discussion about insurance. Some have mixed reactions on interacting with fake personas, so perhaps a different strategy would be needed.

    Embrace Pet Insurance, Facebook
    For those of us who have pets, care can often be expensive for family members, as a result, embrace pet insurance launched this Facebook group. There are 83 members in the Facebook group, few discussions, a handful of wall posts and no applications.

    Various Blogs
    Perhaps the most interesting insurance related blog is Singapore’s Tan Kin Lian, a former CEO who is “I write this blog to educate the public about insurance, finance and current affairs in Singapore”. The archives go back to 2005, and there are a handful of comments on many of the recent posts. He posts frequently, and is using it in a Q&A type format. On the other hand, there are new blogs appearing, such as this one from Golden State Life Insurance (only 3 posts)

    Enterprise Collaboration
    In a recent Forrester report, Oliver Young’s case study highlights how Northwestern Mutual benefits from internal collaboration using the Awareness platform. I’m sure there are many other examples, but this industry is often not forth coming. Shel Holtz has additional commentary.

    Rehashing of Commercials on YouTube
    Liberty Mutual launched a TV commercial series called “Pay it forward” that was published on YouTube (it doesn’t appear to be sanctioned from the brand), with 150,000 views. They could easily take this campaign to the people by creating a campaign letting the community share their stories view text and video. Interestingly, a few folks decided to take the time to parody the video. Update: I’ve just been notified about the Responsibility Project by Liberty Mutual, a video campaign with a blog (comments enabled), I don’t see much community aspect.

    Active Forums
    Perhaps the most vibrant examples are these various forums. Insurance is likely not a daily activity, and members may prefer to ask questions anonymously to each other. In this forum for insurance agents, called Insurance Forums (top thread has over 60,000 views and 1000 responses regarding a convention). AM/PM insurance has a thriving community, appears to be a customer community. Kiplinger an financial analysis resource has a forum for general insurance discussions.

    Geico’s Caveman
    This isn’t a great example of social media, but Geico’s caveman has interactive marketing elements where you can visit his “crib”, also the character appeared in real life at a recent SXSW party I attended.

    Zuzzid, Norwhich Union’s Community Ratings
    To me, this is the perhaps the promising program, a website where community members can speak out about, rate, and rank insurance agencies. Sadly, this community has had little traction, just a few postings, and if you read the bottom line it’s created by an insurance agency, UK’s Norwich Union (which coincidently has the highest rating) for this to work, it’ll have to be from an independent source.

    Pemco wants to be like you
    Pemco, a Northwest insurance agency in US, launched am interactive marketing site called were a lot like you that shows many profiles of potential prospects, and allows members to upload theirs. While it appears most of the content is created by the agency or the company, there’s very little area for member to member interaction (what social media is about). A good start, I hope they take this to the next level, and let the community really take hold and drive, create, and discuss the content.

    Findings
    There really isn’t much activity happening in the insurance industry to use social media, and where it may be successful, it could likely be behind the firewall, impervious to public viewing. Update: Jeff Jarvis is also on the hunt for industries that are somewhat impervious to social media, I’ll agree, social media isn’t great for everything, let’s use our heads, not everything is a nail..

    Lastly, I’ve received half a dozen emails and tweets in total saying they are working with a client on social media, but can’t disclose the details, or will ask the client, or the project has ended. A very quiet industry, indeed.

    In general, most financial and insurance industries are going to fall just behind the curve of mainstream adoption when it comes to social media tools, they rightfully will wait and vet out what works and what doesn’t.

    If you see any other examples of insurance companies solving real business problems using social tools (I’m not as interested in toe-dipping), please leave a comment.

    Related: I did this same list for the Finance industry, see Ongoing list of Social Media Efforts from Banks, Credit Card, Financial Institutions and Lenders

    Posted in Challenges, Industry Index, Social Media | Comments

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    Companies that Track Discussions in Forums and Communities

    Categories: Industry Index, Social Media MeasurementPosted on April 25th, 2008

    Marketers and individuals know how important it is to track conversations in websites, especially where peers connect to each other (sometimes, where the highest trust occurs). A handful of new tools are starting to emerge that give specific tool based search, which I’ve started to list out below.

    This list is specifically for tools that track discussion boards, forums, and communities, for a broader reach, see this list of companies that measures brands on the social web.

    How to use these tools? Plugin your company name, product name, executives names, for your own company and your competitors, to see who is saying what about your brand.

    Companies that Track Discussions in Forums and Communities:

    Boardtracker
    “BoardTracker.com, a Pidgin Technologies property, is an innovative forum search engine, message tracking and instant alerts system designed to provide relevant information quickly and efficiently while ensuring you never miss an important forum thread no matter where or when it is posted. Boardtracker brings the most targeted audience closer to the boards, by being a search engine only for boards and by supplying a categorized and highly effective searching and browsing experience to users.”

    Linqia
    “Linqia creates an independent search for online communities and groups with user ratings and comments. From the biggest and most famous online community to the smallest most hidden group, Linqia surfaces existing online communities and groups which can either be uploaded by our users or just commented and rated according to YOUR opinion and experience.”

    Twing
    Our goal is for Twing to work perfectly every time, and that you’re quickly and easily able to find exactly the information you’re after. But should you need help, we’re here for you. After all, online communities are about people helping each other, so as a community search engine, we take the same approach.

    If you know of any others, please leave a comment, and I’ll add it to this list.

    Posted in Industry Index, Social Media Measurement | Comments

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