by Josh Bernoff
One year ago, we began asking for entries for the Forrester Groundswell Awards, which recognize excellence in accomplishing business goals with social applications. We received 78 fascinating submissions and recognized the winners at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago. The winners were some truly amazing applications.
This worked so well [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Thanks to Groundswell clients, I got to spend a couple of
days at a hotel in the middle of a unique development in Southlake, Texas (near Dallas),
a place called Town Square.
I found Town Square disturbing at a visceral level, and exploring why actually carries some [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Thank you for buying so many copies of Groundswell.
According to the July 3 issue of Business Week, we were a bestseller in the previous week. Number 15 out of 15 spots, but hey, we made the list -- most business books [...]
by Josh Bernoff
As you can see from this graphic, the banner at the top of myBarackObama.com, Barack Obama is serious about people's ability to change the world. But we're about to see just what happens when his supporters don't support his decisions. There are lessons [...]
by Charlene Li
I was once asked what was the best career advice I ever received -- and it was
to plan for job obsolescence every 18 months, because research
showed that people typically master a job in that time period and fall into a
routine.
It's a testament to Forrester [...]
by Josh Bernoff
While we get a lot of press, this one is special.
Fast Company excerpted the book, with a very nice bit from Chapter 12 on wine, shoes, and what your life will be like in 2012.
Plus an interview with Charlene.
All in all [...]
by Josh Bernoff
If you see how fast corporate investments in social technology are growing, it won't surprise you to learn that Forrester is hiring. We're expanding our team in the wake of all the interest stirred up by Groundswell.
We're hiring for the positions of senior [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Everyone seems to want an answer to the question "When will Web 2.0 startups start making money?" The implication is that unless we can answer the question, the "bubble" of Web 2.0 will burst and all of us who believe in this stuff will [...]
by Josh Bernoff
More data from around the world -- and from Chapter 2 of Groundswell.
As a companion to our data charts of social networks and blogs and user-generated video around the world, here's a look at forums, ratings, and reviews around the world.
by Josh Bernoff
There's a lot of speculation about social networks, and predictions usually go in one of two directions:
(You could also call these the [...]
by Josh Bernoff
We're now entering our third month of traveling the country to meet Groundswell enthusiasts (and potential enthusiasts) everywhere. June is packed full of appearances -- and if you're in New York you have no excuse to miss us since we'll be there practically continuously in June.
Austin
Thursday, May [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Last week I asked how we could spread the ideas in groundswell to general business managers who don't yet "get it" -- like your boss.
This week it look like we are getting broader business and consumer press -- just what we need to get the word out.
Three [...]
by Josh Bernoff
So far, all of our Social Technographics Profile examples have used consumer behavior or attitude variables, like a comparison of car owners by brand or an analysis of Alpha moms. But we're finding, increasingly, that clients don't want to hear about the profile of the [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Seth Godin, in his post How to read a business book, recommends:
1. Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work. Then, as you’re reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn’t [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Do you ever get the impression that all of us "social media" types are just talking to each other? That we are reinforcing each others' ideas and supporting each other, but that we keep talking to the other insiders?
That the rest of the world looks at us as [...]
By Charlene Li
Thanks to the generosity of our publisher, Harvard Business Press, we have 100 copies of “Groundswell” to give away to the first 100 bloggers who respond, first come first served. It doesn’t matter what kind of blog you write – if you think your audience would be interested in [...]
By Charlene Li
I had the opportunity to sit down with Clark Kokich, the CEO of Avenue A |Razorfish last week at AARF's Client Summit in New York City. One of the things we discussed was AARF's great use of social technologies within the organization -- [...]
by Josh Bernoff
As you can see in my interview with Jackie Huba, I think the most common mistake made by people developing social applications is this: not focusing on objectives.
Why? Because unless you focus on objectives, you can't tell if you're accomplishing anything. And [...]
by Josh Bernoff
I've been thinking about data lately. This is partly because of Bill's comment on our last Data Chart of The Week (Seniors) and also the responses we got to Part 1 of our recent Webinar series. In the Webinar, I chose to focus almost exclusively on [...]
(Updated with correct URL for MASS TLC Breakfast)
We continue our relentless drive to bring Groundswell ideas to you, whatever event you're attending. In May you can meet us at:
Thursday, May 1, 12:00 pm (eastern)
Young Presidents Organization Teleseminar
Half Moon Bay, California
Wednesday, May 7, 10:45 am (pacific) Ziff [...]
by Charlene Li
Josh and I will be giving a series of four teleconferences over the next few weeks, examining various topics discussed in the book. These are deeper dives into the topics, and will also feature plenty of time for questions and discussions. (Please note that [...]
by Charlene Li
Google announced that it would be releasing Google Friend Connect this evening (link won't work until Monday evening.) The idea behind Friend Connect is to give Web masters the tools to easily add social features to their sites. This is what Google [...]
by Josh Bernoff
This week we'll look at a group that gets less attention online, seniors. (If you're new to this weekly data chart or the Social Technographics Profile, check out the previous weekly data charts.) This chart is from Chapter 3 of Groundswell.
by Charlene Li
Facebook just announced "Facebook Connect", which they position as the natural evolution of Facebook as an open platform, which started from their initial API in 2006 and expanded with Facebook Platform in May 2007. This is how they describe Facebook Connect:
"Facebook [...]
by Charlene Li
Josh and I will be doing a free webinar Groundswell: A Framework For Using Web 2.0 For Business Advantage on Friday, May 9th at 8am PT / 11am ET / 5pm CET.
We'll be reviewing the core ideas laid out in our "Groundswell" book, going [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Some of you like to read. Some don't. So we arranged to bring Groundswell out as an audiobook.
You can download it to your computer or iPod from Audible.com or iTunes. Now you can master social applications in the gym, or while [...]
by Josh Bernoff
In today's post we're showing off our international data capabilities with some data about participation in creating and consuming content in different geographies. This is the first table in Chapter 2 of Groundswell.
I find [...]
by Charlene Li
There was an audible collective sigh of relief that the Microsoft-Yahoo! acquisition soap opera was finally at an end. For three months, the tech world has been paralyzed by the prospect of Microhoo, believing that the deal was inevitable. Sanity prevailed on Saturday, as the two giants couldnt [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Even thought it's actually been available for a weeks, today is the "official" publication date for Groundswell. That means it's in stores all over the US and on iTunes and Audible as an audiobook.
We created this book to help people take advantage [...]
We continue our relentless drive to bring Groundswell ideas to you, whatever event you're attending. In May you can meet us at:
Thursday, May 1, 12:00 pm (eastern)
Young Presidents Organization Teleseminar
Half Moon Bay, California
Wednesday, May 7, 10:45 am (pacific) Ziff Davis CIO Summit
Charlene is on a [...]
by Josh Bernoff
In February we published research based on our expectation that interactive marketers should continue their investments in social applications with a recession potentially coming.
Today we published the results of new research that shows that many interactive marketers actually plan increases in the face of recession. (Forrester [...]
by Josh Bernoff
For today's weekly data chart we'll look at a different kind of data for a change -- not a Social Technographics Profile but some attitudinal data that's highlighted in Groundswell. Today's question is: whom do you trust?
by Josh Bernoff
Theres a fundamental contradiction at the heart of groundswell strategy.
Weve told you that its a big error to treat everyone in the groundswell as if they were the same. Thats why we find the beehive metaphor inappropriate. Peoples contributions are as different as they are.
On the other hand, corporate development for [...]
by Charlene Li
Yahoo! unveiled Yahoo! Open at O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo today. In a nutshell, Yahoo! is doing the following:
1. Rewiring Yahoo!. They are making it possible to create applications that can be shown throughout all of Yahoo!. That means search, mail, front page -- everything.
2. Open Yahoo! [...]
by Josh Bernoff
As we continue to promote Groundswell ahead of this week's formal launch at the Web 2.0 Expo, an amazing thing is happening.
We really do feel like we're becoming part of a conversation.
The simplest way to see this is to do a Tweetscan of "groundswell." You get [...]
By Josh Bernoff
Today we release our fourth data chart.
Our surveys cover hundreds of brands including retailers, computers, cars, and financial services companies. This allows our analysis to go far beyond what you can learn from demographics, like the profiles from our profile tool. For example, we recently published an analysis [...]
by Josh Bernoff
In Groundswell we promised to invite you to join the discussion.
Our discussion forum is now up and running. We'd love your participation. We're kicking this off as a place where businesspeople can help solve each others' problems in creating, implementing, managing, and promoting social applications.
We've added [...]
by Charlene Li
In an effort to listen to our readers and to improve this blog, we've created a survey to get feedback on this blog, as well as several other Forrester blogs (Forrester's Marketing Blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang, and Being Peter Kim).
We'd like to [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Since we've been talking about Groundswell we've developed a base of fans and followers. Just like the fans of your brand they are a creative and powerful force. And also just like the fans of your brand, they make you ask yourself what you really stand [...]
by Josh Bernoff
The community folks at Mzinga/Prospero have hired me to do a Webinar. It's free to attendees, and will cover community best practices.
If you're interested, sign up here. I'm looking forward to speaking with you.
It's Wednesday, 16 April, at 2:00 PM eastern [...]
by Josh Bernoff
For our third data chart, we wanted to show how some clients are using the Social Technographics Profile to make decisions about their social applications using our data.
In this case, were looking at Alpha Moms, a group that includes mothers with above-average incomes and a favorable attitudes towards technology. [...]
By Charlene Li
Kudos to O'Reilly for organizing a women's networking event during the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo. I'm going to be attending the event (details below) and am really looking forward to it.
There's a tremendous need for this -- I attend and speak at many technology events, and while our numbers are growing, it's still [...]
by Josh Bernoff
As we distributed copies of Groundswell at Forrester's Marketing Forum in Los Angeles this week, several people asked an interesting question: how did you get started with the book?
This made me think back to when we did get started, in December of 2006. And I think we [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Concurrent with the release of Groundswell, I've begun writing a column in Marketing News, the magazine of the American Marketing Association. I'll share these columns with you as a regular blog feature.
Here's the column from the April 1 issue. If you're [...]
by Josh Bernoff
We continually get asked by our corporate clients: why do people participate in social activity online? What drives them?
In Groundswell we tried to collect as many reasons as we could, to reflect the diversity that drives all this participation. In this post I'll list as many [...]
by Josh Bernoff
This is the second our series of weekly data charts taken from our research and from Groundswell.
Today we look at girls age 12 to 18, data taken from our Youth surveys. This was the age group that Procter & Gamble's beinggirl.com was trying to reach in [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Groundswell is now in stock and shipping from Amazon.com and BN.com.
We'd be quite pleased if you buy a copy.
Please let us know what you think. Contribute a review to Amazon or BN's sites -- reviews make a big difference to buyers [...]
By Josh Bernoff
Its a truism in the marketing world that you dont, in
general, talk about your competitors. The apotheosis of this was reached in those silly old
soap commercials that compared the companys product to Brand X which it beat
hands down. As a consumer, your reaction was [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Thanks to everyone we've been meeting with lately -- bloggers, press, and just interesting people -- for being so interested in Groundswell.
We're just beginning, but looking at only people who've actually read the book, a few early tidbits have appeared in Dan Greenfield's BernaiseSource and the [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Today we introduce a new feature once a week, on Mondays, well share a data chart from Groundswell or from our research, and talk about its significance for social strategists..
Our interactive social profile tool is great if you want to profile your customers by country, age, and gender. [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Join me for a talk about Groundswell and how to build and run a successful community, sponsored by Lithium. Sign up here. The Webinar is at 1:00 eastern, 10:00 pacific.
Many companies use Lithium communities for Supporting their customers, one of the [...]
by Charlene Li
In my work, I often find that companies eager to create a social strategy
often struggle with how to get started. One of the key recommendations we have
in the book is to find the spark, champion, and evangelist within the company --
the person who is most passionate [...]
by Charlene Li
Today I tried out Starbucks' new customer feedback and idea generation site at mystarbucksidea.com, which is powered by Salesforce Idea (it's the same product that's behind Salesforce's own Idea Exchange and Dell's Ideastorm). Josh and I feature these two sites in our Groundswell [...]
by Charlene LI
This time, it's my turn to trek to the East Coast. I'm going to be in New York City Monday, March 31st along with Josh Bernoff and we'd love to meet other bloggers. The goal is the same as our San Francisco blogger meet up: to have a [...]
by Josh Bernoff
In 2007, an amazing groundswell of support did what many thought was impossible -- persuaded CBS to retract its cancellation of the show Jericho and promise to air it again in 2008.
We wrote about this in our Sloan Management Review article, [...]
by Josh Bernoff
As you can see, we've made a few changes here at the Groundswell blog. As the availability of our book inches ever closer (about two weeks away now) we've put the blog in the context of a broader site with [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Does your company reject change?
Of course not. You love change, dont you. Change is good. Thats how companies grow. The bigger the company, the more a little change will do it some good.
Baloney. You all know the truth. Companies are like organisms with immune systems. If youre a [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Thanks for all your responses on the scale I posted. Recall that 10 is an extreme purist (power to the people!) and is an extreme corporatist (power to the corporation!). I saw people coming in all over the scale.
Here's what I learned:
1. Nobody likes to be pigeonholed. [...]
by Josh Bernoff
What is blogging? People will tell you "it's different based on who you are and what you want to accomplish." But I realized this weekend that it can be different for different audiences, even if you are the same person. A lot of people I know have more [...]
by Josh Bernoff
My post on Purists and Corporatists kicked up some dust. WOMMA put it on their list of stuff to read. And Shel Israel explained that he's not a purist, he works with companies. But I still think there's some difference between his position and mine. [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Jennifer Jones of Marketing Voices inteviewed me for Podtech.net about social applications in a recession. They featured this on their home page for a while.
I've embedded the Podcast here for your convenience.
Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at <a [...]by Josh Bernoff
(Cross-posted from our blog at harvardbusiness.org.)
People are not insects. So why is it so popular, in analyzing the surge of social activity online, to compare them to bees?
Here you see the covers of two recent books about social technologies, Barry Libert and [...]
by Josh Bernoff
I am so jealous of Seth Godin I can't see straight.
By the way, the Blendtec story leads off Chapter 6 of Groundswell.
[...]by Josh Bernoff
It's time for me to weigh in on the question: can companies be part of the social world?
This is in part a reaction to Shel Israel's comments of a few months back and my colleague Jeremiah's Owyang's responses. But it's an ongoing issue that comes up [...]
As you might imagine, we're ramping up our speaking schedule in March and April in support of Groundswell's April release. Here's where you can see us coming up. Please stop by, share stories, interview us -- we want to connect! All times are local -- any of these may [...]
by Charlene Li
On Monday, I gave the kick off speech for the Graphing Social Patterns West conference on the topic, The Future Of Social Networks (slides are available on SlideShare, summaries available on News.com, ReadWriteWeb, and allfacebook.) Note that this is still ongoing research, so I welcome [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Months ago, I signed up for my.barackobama.com just to check it out. I've been getting emails from the candidate's people regularly, including notices about his appearances in Massachusetts, where I live. Yesterday I got one that started like this:
Dear Josh,
Yesterday, supporters all across the country responded to [...]
by Josh Bernoff
I got a nice email from Jennifer McClure, Executive Director of the Society for New Communications Research. They're doing a survey on Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age Of Social Media.
Go ahead, take it yourself. They'll send you a free [...]
by Josh Bernoff
ZDNet is holding a live Webcast Wednesday about how your company can use the social world to improve product innovation. It's free with registration.
Here are the details:
Date: 2/27/2008
Time: 2 eastern, 11 pacific
Participants: yours truly along with Colby Dyess, Product Manager from Endeca
For my [...]
by Josh Bernoff
When Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht invited me to watch their live Diggnation podcast recording in St. Louis (we were both there to connect with some of Anheuser Busch's marketing staff) here's what I imagined: a camera set up in a bar [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Forrester's interactive marketing group is research attitudes among marketers towards different marketing channels. We'd love to hear from you. If
you or one of your colleagues is involved with interactive channels
(e.g. email marketing, search marketing, display ads, social
networking, blogs, widgets, mobile) take the survey here.
Well [...]
by Josh Bernoff
What does the groundswell of social technology mean for management? That's the question we had to ask ourselves when MIT Sloan Management Review invited us to write up the research in Groundswell.
I'm delighted to report that you can now read the [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Jake offered a paean to Cluetrain. Read my description -- see how many Cluetrain ideas you can see.
Jake McKee told us the incredible story of what Lego was like before engaging with AFOLs (adult fans of Lego), and how it changed as a result of his introduction [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Doc Searls started his talk at the Cluetrain @ 10 event talking about the genesis of The Cluetrain Manifesto. This was fascinating to me. He started with reflections of the overblown 90's (Push, Pointcast). "Customers treated as plankton." A reaction to the overblown venture investments in "capturing eyeballs" [...]
by Josh Bernoff
I got a fair amount of pickup on my recession post, including articles in AdWeek and MediaPost, and mentions a bunch of blogs including Logic+Emotion, Web Strategist (my colleague Jeremiah), Micropersuasion, ZDNet, and even Techmeme. There was also this interesting [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Is a recession coming? Don't ask me -- I'm not an economist, and even the economists don't really know. But if it's anything like the last recession, advertising will plummet and experimental media will crater. (In the 2001 recession, US advertising dropped 9% and Internet advertising plummeted [...]
by Josh Bernoff
My colleague Jeremiah Owyang created twitter.com/superbowlads so we could all rate the Super Bowl ads live. Twitter.com/superbowlads received over 2500 tweets during the game. As Jeremiah pointed out in his blog post, it was incredible to be a part of this, but a bit unwieldy to [...]
by Charlene Li
Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, a 62% premium over the current stock value of the company. Yahoos board is looking at the deal. When rumors surfaced last May, Yahoo! quickly pushed back and said that it wasn't interested in being acquired. Things [...]
by Josh Bernoff
I'm just curious -- corporate social strategists: Are you getting pushback in the face of the potential recession? Are your budgets being cut? Or maybe increased?
Add your comments here or email me at jbernoff (at) forrester.com -- I'd love to hear from you.
[...]by Charlene Li
The 60 Minutes segment on Facebook is being well covered by the usual players TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, et. al) and Kara Swisher has an excellent summary. Here's the video as well, so you can see it directly.
Reading the reaction to the video, especially [...]
by Charlene Li
In December, I received a call from the producers of 60 Minutes, the longest running news program on broadcast TV. They were doing a segment on Facebook and wanted to know if I could provide background for the story.
Wow. I [...]
by Charlene Li
The Data Portability Workgroup (DPW) announced today that Google, Plaxo -- and the big surprise -- Facebook, will be participating in discussion on how users can "access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems."
This couldn't [...]
Facebook finally launched Friend List, a way to organize your friends into different categories. This is not to be confused with the Facebook application Top Friends which allows you to identify your best 32 friends ( an activity fraught with consequences, IMHO).
I've been waiting for this feature [...]
by Josh Bernoff
We don't normally do political polling. But when we did our last Social Technographics survey I got sneaky. I asked people who they were voting for. The result is a fascinating peek into the minds and social behaviors of voters. The full report is available to Forrester clients [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Charlene's April post about the Social Technographics ladder got picked up by hundreds of bloggers -- no surprise since it's some of the only hard data out there about how different people participate in social technologies.
Now it's time to show how that data can be put to [...]
by Josh Bernoff
Interested in our report "Objectives: The Key To Creating A Social Strategy?" The report describes the POST method in detail (see previous post).
I'll send a review copy to the first 100 bloggers to email me at groundswell@forrester.com.
Include your blog's URL with [...]
by Josh Bernoff
What do most companies do wrong when they enter the social world? No, it's not that they're being fake, or don't "get it." It's that they don't really know their objectives.
Is your company doing its social strategy backwards?
If you started by saying "we should do a blog" [...]
by Charlene Li
As a parent, I've been privy to the burning question this holiday shopping season -- how do I get my hands on a Wii? I've had one for a while and can honestly say that it is by far the best console for a family with young kids. [...]
by Charlene Li
I just received word from Facebook that they will be making significant changes to Beacon. I've included the full text of their statement below.
As you may know, I had a situation with Beacon where information from Overstock was sent to Facebook without my knowledge. Because I [...]
I put a lot of trust in sites like Facebook to do the right thing when it comes to privacy. After all, the only stuff that gets out into the public is the stuff that I actually put in.
Until now.
Earlier this week, I bought a coffee table on [...]
by Charlene Li
The video highlights from our Consumer Forum 2007 are now available. Josh and I were keynotes and we spoke in details about some of the key highlights from our book. Below is a summary of the [...]
by Josh Bernoff
The only live TV I watch is sports -- and since AT&T Wireless blanketed the airwaves with it's "we work where you live" campaign during the Red Sox's triumphant march to the World Series, I got a chance to see a lot of it.
Now [...]
by Josh Bernoff
When it comes to blogging, faster is often perceived to be better. GigaOm and TechCrunch are all over the trends, covering the same announcements, often within minutes of each other. I've become even more aware of this as I've spent some time with Jeremiah Owyang, [...]
