Social Networking and Web 2.0

This is my last post on this blog. Radio Userland has served me well since I started blogging in 2003. I will post more details on the transition, at my new blog - for now I just wanted to make this announcement, and provide the new url and feeds.

The new blog will also be called Conversations with Dina - it’s just a new blogging platform - but the same old blog! I do hope you continue reading and feeding it. 

My old blog will be archived at its old url (http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/) and I will keep the archives going. Stuart, who has worked out the platform for Conversations with Dina on Wordpress has done some neato hacks - one that I love a lot is that the search function will not just search the new blog archives, but also my old Radio blog archives. And he has managed to transfer some of my posts over too. That’s so cool!!! Lots more needs doing there … and that will emerge I’m sure.

Its been quiet here too long ……. the result of many many shifts. A new home, getting things to work smoothly, much travelling, transferring from a PC to a Mac, not being able to figure out how to get my Radio blog easily onto a Mac (Paolo has very graciously offered to help after I left a comment at his blog)….

And mosoci β

Mosoci is more than an idea - it is a beta platform, an emergent plan.  It is jazz, bricolage and serious play.  It lets us play a little music where chaos, creativity, diversity and complexity are all welcome. It fulfils our desires and needs which are driven by the fundamental experiences of our souls, to live and work in an emergent, globally connected community.

What it is not, is a formal traditional organization.  We hope the lifestream we have built at the Mosoci blog demonstrates this.  We want it to be more than just the two of us.  Stuart spells this thought out really well:

“We
know we would not be doing this without everyone that has read our
blogs over the last few years. Social Media built the platform for our
collaboration and the sense that our network and community would
support, participate with us and help us grow. Now it is beyond an idea
and yet it is still being formulated. We certainly don’t want to end up
as just the two of us. Today though we are happy to feel like we are in
a constant state of beta. That’s the zone where it is a real rush.



Thank
you for your support, praise and interest. Our blogs and blogging will
evolve just like our other social media activities are. For example we
are really enjoying bringing our bookmarking
into the feed. For now our tweets are there too. That may be
overwhelming. Then it may also be helpful. We’ll let the readers tell
us.

It is born out of our curiosity, passion and deep belief in the strength of social technologies to make a real difference, our willingness and drive to share, learn and grow allowed us to experiment with and use those very technologies to communicate and collaborate on several projects over the years. More details from Stuart:

“Much happens today by chance. Things also emerge and we find ways to
jump on them and adapt. Over the years Dina and I have enjoyed telling
parts of our story. We first met in an online forum. I set her up
blogging “Conversations with Dina” with install instructions over an IM chat session, long before voice and video connections were possible. Skype
also helped to revolutionize our collaboration and connectivity. Open
channels between India and the US made collaboration around Learning
Journeys, research, and just Links and interests possible. Working in
India for most of the last year, attending some conferences together
around the world and we knew we were at the point where where 1+1 makes
more than two.

Mosoci is the platform of our collaboratory around the interests we
love, are passionate about and to reinforce the direction and learning
we need to go in. We won’t be successful without our network and our
community and the power of social media. Blogs, wikis, forums, twitter,
bookmarking have enabled who we are today.”

You may ask, what does Mosoci do?  Simply put, a) we immerse ourselves in research and deep dives, b) we facilitate change and help re-frame value for organizations.  The time and opportunity to conduct and deliver research and strategies in new ways is here. We constantly push the boundaries with emerging
social tools (blogs, wikis, SMS, RSS, social networks, beta
communities), with clients when and as appropriate.  We want to take this practice, this method of working, along with others who are doing some excellent work in this field, to the whole world.

Let’s create that map together, in the hope that the map will bring forth the features of the territory. We want your comments, perspectives, and just plain old honest
help and advice to make this a success. We are open to suggestion and
really don’t want to stop at just a few of us.

It would be great if you would jump in on the conversation at Mosoci and add Mosoci Feed  to your reader. We’d love your feedback and suggestions.

I will be in the US from July 18th to 27th - am attending meetings in Cambridge MA on the 19th and 23rd. Have some free time over the weekend July 21-22nd. Am meeting up with Yazad who touched base with me on Facebook when I mentioned I was going - and looking forward to meeting him on Sunday. Would love to meet up with bloggers and other folks in the Boston area who are interested in the social media scene or in qualitative research and ethnography or just want to hangout and yak!

I will also be in London for a few days on my way back - July 29-31st where I am going to hangout with friends. Again, would love to meet anyone who’s free on those days.

Do drop in a comment here or send me email to dina(dot)mehta(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to meet up.

Had an interesting interaction with an FMCG Client for whom we are setting up some presentations and workshops around how they can take their brands into the social media realm. I sent a client a detailed note on what we could provide, and she forwarded it to one of the marketing guys who felt it is exciting, but perhaps too focussed on blogging and not enough on youtube!

This is not just an international phenomenon - a recent study
in India revealed that 85% of active internet users claimed to read
blogs regularly! This is their growing influence. Today most news
channels in India have a list of bloggers they call
upon on general stories they are covering - to get the buzz on what’s
going around on the web. When Sunita Williams and her safe return to earth was the big thing on TV, I was asked by a TV Channel to participate in a show on it - I turned it down, as it was not really relevant to either blogging or my areas of interest - but that’s a different issue. A lot of civic and political action is now
being mobilized through mobile phones and online. Many of these use
blogging platforms for their causes, and build large communities around
them by taking them into Orkut and Facebook.

Bloggy thought three. Something I was mulling over for a while, even shared in a completely inarticulate manner with Rajesh yesterday, who by the way awarded me with the Thinking Blogger Award.  He shared with me some Links that report on the recent IAMAI Web2.0 conference, with the comment - “am getting a bit restless with marketers”!  Then I got a call from a journalist, who wanted to discuss ‘unconferences’ - and I took off on her a little and told her how I dislike the term - any activity that is prefaced with an ‘un’ makes me feel not-so-nice about it.  Anyways, it also reminded me about another phrase or term in the social media realm that I generally dislike —- user-generated content and I started my rant on her! 

I particularly dislike it when I hear mainstream media and corporate organizations get a high on the phrase ‘user-generated content’.  In India, many times, its shortened to UGC (the only UGC I know of is the University Grants Commission!) and it bugs me no end. 

I dislike it, especially when, in the background, I hear their minds ticking away the rupees they can generate, behind all this buzz and excitement around the term.  When they have not really embraced it themselves.

I dislike it when they distance themselves from it - it’s something other people — oops users do.   How many of them have actually generated content themselves?

I am happy with adopting the term when I am talking about content that is created by users of a service - so there is user-generated content on Youtube, or on blogging platforms, or on wikis.  But I dislike it when marketers, PR agencies talk about the ‘potential’ in harnessing user-generated content for their brands, products and services through advertising messages on the user-generated content spaces or sites, and then believe they are really using social media in their strategies.  Am not knocking advertising based strategies - I just feel they are skimming the surface of the true potential in participating in the conversations, co-creation, community and collaboration that occurs when there is user-generated content.

I think they have it wrong, when they feel that getting onto the user-generated content bandwagon is a quick-fix for their social media strategies. Inherent in the phrase is a division, the notion or assumption of ‘us vs them’.  They have got to see themselves as co-participants and partners rather than marketers or advertisers who are ‘using’ user-generated content as another media opportunity.

I simply loved Toby Bloomberg’s rant at Unilever which so well illustrates what I am trying so hard to articulate!

“So I really want to see that ad. I really Need to see that ad. What do I do? Do I search for Lux? Do I go to the Unilever website? Nope. I head for YouTube and sure enough here it is! It’s a must watch. Oh and the Unilever Lux site?
Good I didn’t head that way, my coffee would have turned cold looking
for any mention of the campaign. Anyone for integrated marketing?

Questions To Ponder
Does a marketing campaign have to be “social” to be successful?
Is traditional advertising dead?
Is there room in the proverbial marketing mix for the good old 60 second TV spot?

Diva Marketing Thoughts
Marketing 101 tells us to hang where our customers hang. For some the “tube” means television and for others it means YouTube. And for many people it means Both. 

Bonus link: Here’s Jon Udell on why he dislikes the term per se.

Bloggy thought two. It’s not worth it, if it’s not searchable. Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel seem to feel so. Am actually feeling the contrary only because of my recent experiences with Facebook and Twitter. The other day, I was chatting with a young friend who is 18, and he told me a few things around Facebook. His dashboard and homepage is Facebook - all his social interactions happen around it, along with a few IM clients. He doesn’t really use email very much. And most pertinent to this post, was his comment that he was disturbed that his whole family including aunts and grand-aunts could ‘peep’ into his entire life. In fact, it was so funny when he related a story about how an aunt actually sent his grandma some pictures of girls who wanted to ‘marry’ him. He’s now got most of his family on ‘limited’ profile — but his friends have full access to him!

I still believe that what you write or say or show on the web is there for everyone to see, read or hear, and I like that openness and transparency of the web. Still I am enjoying the levels of privacy that Facebook offers me. When I blog, I do sometimes (not when I am feeling particularly ranty) wonder whether what I write will come back to bite me some day or how people will view me as a result of what I write. I do feel more ‘responsible’ about what views I share on my blog - perhaps this happens when you have been blogging since 2003 and when your blog becomes your single-point public profile, for the whole world to see - family, friends, clients, potential clients etc.

But on spaces like Facebook and Twitter, I feel so much more comfort - I can rant, I can be silly, throw some food at a friend, hug someone else, share when I am upset or ecstatic. I don’t ever ‘think’ too much when I am on Facebook - my mode is a more feely one. It’s more about me and who I am. And less about my thoughts on a particular subject and less of the ‘Dina’ I want to project or promote or share around what I do.

I loved this comment at Steve Rubel’s post by Ryan McKegney - it resonates:

I was driving back from a meeting when I had a few bloggy thoughts … long drives in traffic and beating rain tend to do that to me! It was a good meeting - regular (I actually said that!!!) qualitative research project among IT students and professionals to understand motivations that drive them to join certain sorts of organizations in a highly competitive field, to figure out a strategy to draw them to my Client’s organization. As we were discussing the research, I suddenly felt - wow - this is the perfect case for a social media / new media strategy —- you have young professionals, in the IT industry, probably heavy users of the internet, a captive target audience that must be familiar with blogs, social networking sites, youtube and the like! When you think of motivations and drivers for this segment, how can you not think of The Influentials, who help them frame their opinions. Am waiting eagerly for my copy which is winging its way here currently. It would be neat to figure out who or what they are in the project I am doing. So somewhere midway in discussing sample definitions, I broke away and asked my client - do you have a social media or blogging strategy - you need one! She was interested I think, particularly since one of her marketing objectives is to build a powerful corporate identity in order to attract the best talent.

Now am hoping it’s a qualitative research +++ project!!  Am beginning to believe any organization or brand that is targeting an audience that is ‘online’ must have a social media strategy.  Social media is in-your-face today, no web user or surfer can really escape it.  

OMG this is soooo funny - a supermarket going web 2.0!! Thanks Toby.

Refuses to block Orkut under political pressure!

The New York Times had similar thoughts.  Check out this really neat article there on how a daughter is pissed off because her mum gets a Facebook!

While I wonder about how the younger generation will react as more of us ‘oldies’ go in there, I must say I am really having a blast at facebook. After a long time, a social networking site has really drawn me in.  Along with a few others, I thought I had reached the limit way back in 2003, when there was this mad scramble to invite all your friends to every new social networking site that came about.  This time, when I got my own Facebook, I find myself behaving  differently.  I find I am not inviting all my friends in there, or sending out one of those blanket join me at facebook sort of message to everyone.  I find a lot of my family, old and young, in India and abroad, are in there and we’re having fun peeking into each others’ lives and reconnecting in ways we haven’t done via email or even chat.  Many of my close blogging buddies are in there too - and I am enjoying learning about so many new facets of their lives with applications like Trip, Last.fm, Ask a question, books, movies, photos etc.

Facebook also lets me feel I own my own page there - something Ryze lost a long while ago with its new UI. Stuart had expressed this feeling so eloquently then:

“There’s

no sense of art in a place where artisans play
no sense of personality in a realm of personalities.
no sense of canvas when everyone paints
no sense of action when everyone chatters
no sense of our place just structured space.”

Facebook today offers me that sense of art where artisans play, that sense of personality, that canvas for me and my friends to colour on, that sense of my space (pun intended!).  And its all happening in my time at ease, without that pressure to be really active on it that there was while many of us were indulging in some Serious Play at other networks.

Google is not merely moving towards “owning” the internet, its also beginning to “own” me.I had a friend over this weekend, and I was setting up a blog for her on Blogger. I had to sign out of my Blogger account to set her up. During the process, I wanted to check my mail, and clicked on my Gmail tab in my browser - and I was shocked to see that it opened up her Gmail account instead. Should have expected it - its logical - but it disturbed me. It’s convenient, it’s quick - but I want the controls and the ability to decide which ones I want auto signins for and which ones not.

Say, if I have Google Reader running - and I have signed out of Gmail — if someone else tries to log into their Gmail account - they can read my mail. Or if they want to check their scraps on Orkut - they get to see mine instead. Google Maps can show pictures of your front door and look through your window
- very cool - yes - but it makes me uncomfortable too. Although I need
not worry as I live in a city where its going to be very difficult to
get everything ‘on a map’ as there is so much chaos in the planning.
They have my presence info (limited tho) through Gmail
and Gtalk, they have my social network on Orkut, they dish up ads in my Gmail which make me feel a little
uneasy about privacy. I have been doing many studies recently with youth, and when I ask them how they use the internet - the response is Googling, Orkutting (note - not search and social networking) and chatting - Gtalk hasn’t yet managed to become a verb!

In countries like India however, where for the large part, computers are shared at work and home - this could become a problem. Not everyone has the know-how or the presence of mind to set up different logins and user accounts at boot up.

Look at Google’s acquisition over the years - they are buying up the best really. And our lives are enriched and simpler as a result. I love using many of these and it makes my life better. But yesterday’s experience with setting up my friend’s blog got me thinking in the longer term - and I kept pondering over - what cost?

Eric Schmidt , Google’s CEO was quoted in FT. Do I really want my computer to tell me what I should do tomorrow, or what job I should take?

See this video, although a little dated - it looks forward to a Google world in 2014 - EPIC. Robin Good has a transcript:

“On Sunday, March 9 2014, Googlezon unleashes EPIC.

Welcome to our world.

The ‘Evolving Personalized Information Construct’ is the
system by which our sprawling, chaotic mediascape is filtered, ordered
and delivered. Everyone contributes now - from blog entries, to
phone-cam images, to video reports, to full investigations. Many people
get paid too - a tiny cut of Googlezon’s immense advertising revenue,
proportional to the popularity of their contributions.

EPIC produces a custom contents package for each user, using his choices, his consumption habits, his interests, his demographics, his social network - to shape the product. A new generation of freelance editors has sprung up, people who sell their ability to connect, filter and prioritize the contents of EPIC.

We all subscribe to many Editors; EPIC allows us to mix and match
their choices however we like. At its best, edited for the savviest
readers, EPIC is a summary of the world - deeper, broader and more
nuanced than anything ever available before.”

With the recent acquisition of Feedburner, Google just bought over access to not just us, but our readers as well. They even acquire the internet in year 2017!!

Google has my past, and it’s rapidly ‘taking over’ my future. My actions today, in the present, are building the tracks for that future. A dystopian Brave New World, or Utopia?

Should I really care? Does it bother you at all?

So everyone is talking of Facebook.  My Twitter is abuzz with it. My aggregator is bursting with blog posts around it.    The social media blogworld is freaking out in it.  Even my 79 year old aunt who sent me an add as friend invite!  Reminds me of the old days when we all moved from one social networking site to another.  This one’s different of course - its more than small pieces loosely joined and the potential is immense with the opening up of their platform.  Widgets and plugins around VOIP, presence, twitter, music, video being created with a frenzy. A great platform play.  I like this play - although I haven’t done much with it yet.

Still, I can’t help wondering, with all the attention it’s getting and with this invasion of geeks, social media analysts and older folk like me, how the youth on Facebook are going to react!   Ironically, they are the ‘older’ Facebook users - we are the newbies. Will they see us as an intrusion?  Will they build their own walls now that it’s less of a gated community?  What might those walls be? Will they revolt, as they did last September when they felt their privacy was compromised by the addition of new features? Their definitions of what’s public and what’s private is different from ours.  Will the more geeky among them, who would like to build on the platform read the fine print and get put off?  Will the opportunity for marketing and advertising that it’s going to encourage put them off? Or will they embrace this change and build their own worlds on the platform? Will there be a massive shift from Orkut and MySpace into Facebook?

Hmmmm.  Interesting to see how this one progresses.

I’m going live on CNN-IBN in half an hour, at 8.30 pm.  They’re doing a show on how a community on Orkut is helping in collecting aid for an ailing lyricist.  They’ve asked me to comment on the positive aspects of social networking.  I hope we don’t go thru the usual pros and cons of social networks, an angle most channels approach the issue from.

I’ve been using Twitter a lot again recently. And yesterday, when Jace wondered

“Twitter. Jaiku. Twitter. Jaiku. What to use?” I found myself thinking about why I tend to be in Twitter more than Jaiku. I know Jaiku is better ‘loaded’ but I feel I lose the real flow in conversation there as the updates are all jumbled up with updates from blogs, flickr accounts, bookmarks and newsreaders. I feel comfort with Twitter that I don’t with Jaiku. Difficult to express why - just that there is comfort in its simplicity. A cappella versus symphony. Sandwich and coffee versus a full-course meal (how often do we have the latter!). Dal-chawal versus biryani.

What metaphors would you use for comparing your Twitter and Jaiku experiences?

Here’s an excerpt from an article I did for Tehelka’s special on youth and the internet, on much urging from Shivam, who put an apt title to it - The Mirror of Change - This is Who We are Becoming.

“For those completely
immersed in virtual worlds such as Second Life, the seduction of intimacy
combined with anonymity does not mean they do not share the joys and
sorrows of their real worlds. My bet is that they do. “Pet”,
a very close friend and a colleague who worked with a team of online
volunteers when the tsunami struck in December 2004, got me looking
at Second Life with new eyes. He had been feeling trapped in his body
for a long time, and when he got onto Second Life, it helped him become
more comfortable with his feelings that he was a woman trapped in a
man’s body. The beauty is that Second Life was a tool for “Pet”
to figure out who she really is and how to work it out for real. Today,
she has friends not only in Second Life, but also in her physical world
with whom she can be herself. “Pet” has shared so much of
her period of transition and angst with me, that I feel I know her intimately.
Being a geek, she also helps me with my websites. I trust her as she
trusts me. I know she is very real — there is nothing ‘virtual’
about her, even though I have never met her.

While I may never
have seen or met “Pet”, there is depth in our friendship,
and solidity. I know, for some people, that is hard to accept. I’m
often asked questions like, how can you feel connected to someone you’ve
never met? How can you trust someone you’ve never seen? These
concerns are understandable given the newness of this medium and the
flow that determines these sorts of relationships. Oh there are dangers
too — the pretence borne out of anonymity, the addictions, the
spam and scams, the paedophiles, the pornography. And still, when I
meet up with blog buddies all over the world, how can I explain the
amazing level of comfort I feel!

I single out blogs
here as throwing up a whole different social system than do virtual
worlds and social networking sites. Detractors say, online you can be
whoever you want to be and nobody cares. That may be correct, yet, if
you try and fake things too hard, you most always are found out, and
can be verbally beaten. My belief is that people tend to act more like
themselves online than they like to admit. It is much more difficult
to hide away who you are when you are blogging. I’ve found myself
revealing things on my blog about myself that I would find difficult
to talk about face-to-face. Ugly things too.

And yet, I found
myself trusting myself as I began trusting people I met through this
medium. There is a fine line between the public, private and secret
self, and the boundaries blur sometimes. At others there is a conscious
effort to keep them apart. In a physical world, our lives are compartmentalized,
you have different sets of friends for different needs, and meet in
different physical spaces as a result. My blog is one space where
I connect with friends, potential clients, strangers, acquaintances,
even spammers and trolls. It is entirely up to me what I want to share
of me and when, at my blog. And, I have found, the more I share,
the more others do. It’s just an extension of basic human needs
for connection and community.”

This issue is carrying a special on youth and the internet.  I see some bloggers I know like Dilip, Rashmi, Neha, Patrix and Shivam of course, who have made some neat contributions there - and as I glanced through the articles, I felt Shivam’s done a good job of getting a mix that does not perpetuate stereotypes the media usually portrays netizens to be.

MapMyName is a project started by a couple of students, who are aiming to assess how many people use the internet all over the world. They hope to achieve this within a month by spreading the mapmyname meme.

Currently, I’m the only user from Mumbai listed on there - and I think the only one from India too.

Sachi and Lee LeFever are doing a series of “paperworks” educational videos. From Lee’s email:

“In my opinion,
RSS has been too geeky for too long. I have friends who use the web as much as I do and have no clue about RSS. It’s a minor travesty. To help remedy this situation, Sachi and I created a video called “RSS in Plain English” that is
aimed at turning-on the non-geeks of the world. It’s in a format we
call “paperwork” - I think you’ll see what that means. We’re just
getting started and hoping that you can help spread the word (it just
went live couple of hours ago). Obviously, there is room for
improvement - any feedback is welcome. We’re planning to do more
paperwork videos as part of The Common Craft Show.”

And it is! Even my mum would get it. Watch it here.

I’d love to see
something similar on ROI of blogging - its a concept I find most
difficult to communicate to organizations and I do believe a Paperworks
demo will be great!

According to a report by Accenture, the media and entertainment industry feels user-generated content is the top threat to their businesses:

“NEW YORK; April 16, 2007 -Media and
entertainment executives see the growing ability and eagerness of
individuals to create their own content as one of the biggest threats
to their business, according to results of a survey released today by
Accenture (NYSE: ACN).

In
its annual survey of senior executives in the media and entertainment
industry, Accenture examined the growth strategies of companies across
the landscape of advertising, film, music, publishing, radio, the
Internet, videogames and television.

More
than half (57 percent) of the respondents identified the rapid growth
of user-generated content - which includes amateur digital videos,
podcasts, mobile phone photography, wikis and social-media blogs — as
one of the top three challenges they face today. In addition, more
than two-thirds (70 percent) of respondents said they believe that
social media, one of the largest segments of user-generated content,
will continue to grow, compared with only 3 percent of respondents who
said they view social media as a fad.

“This
is just the beginning for a rapidly changing landscape where the media
content environment grows more fractious and the user gains more
control and power,” said Gavin Mann, digital media lead for Accenture’s
Media & Entertainment practice. “Traditional,
established content providers will have to adapt and develop new
business and monetization models in order to keep revenue streams
flowing. The key to success will be identifying new forms of content that can complement their traditional strengths.”

The
new landscape offers opportunities as well as challenges, according to
the study, as two-thirds (68 percent) of the respondents said they
believe that within three years their businesses will be making money
on user-generated content. Sixty-two percent said they believe their
companies will make money through advertising and sponsorships of
social media. Other sources of profits cited were subscriptions (21
percent) and pay-per-play offerings (18 percent). However, a quarter
(24 percent) of respondents said they do not yet know how their
businesses will profit from user-generated content.

The
study included interviews with industry giants like Roger Faxon, chief
executive of EMI Music Publishing; Leslie Moonves, chief executive of
CBS; Doug Neil, senior vice president of digital marketing for
Universal Studios; and Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP Group
PLC.”

Heh .. Johnnie .. I’m with you in feeling ranty! As a response to this, a comments policies and guidelines are ok if you believe you need them, but a Bloggers Code of Conduct???

It seems to me, culturally, it is a very North-American thing to think up.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love some aspects of North America and
have met some of the finest folks there - but this operating out of ‘fear’
is
one aspect I have written about earlier, that I find goes beyond
protection. Perhaps it’s the phrasing of it that gets to me - ‘Code of
Conduct’ implies rules and regulations, implicit in this is that there
is only one way ahead. I don’t like that. It will make us guard our words. It will give credence
to the power games played out in the blogworld by providing yet another
weapon to divide those who have it and those who don’t. It will foster
a culture of fear. In the worst case, it will breed litigation,
insurance, liability.

Why
formalize something we’re doing anyways - if you’re proud of your space
(your blog in this case) you’ll protect it the way you feel best.
Banning anonymous comments for instance, is a personal choice - in my
case, I have deleted comments that are vulgar, lewd and allude to
physical threats. The others, I prefer to debate with. If others do not
wish to, ignore them or take the ‘fight’ to your space, or theirs.
There is a strong self-regulating aspect to this medium, and the recent
events are proof, with different angles and facets to the story emerging.

There’s my long rant! Unlike Johnnie’s pithy post.

Bloggers code of conduct, freedom of speech

Maggie Fox has a neat post on How Social Media is Changing Everything

“If you’ve ever wished you had the budget for a focus group, now you
do. All that’s required is reaching out to a couple of key individuals
and asking them if they would be interested in testing your product or
process and letting you know what they think, or posting about it, if
they like.

Blogs in particular and social media in general can offer incredible
insight for a relatively small investment (your time is another
matter!). When I speak to clients about investigating a corporate
blogging strategy, I often refer to it as “low cost market research”,
something I’m sure we’d all like to see a little more of!”

Belonging to the qualitative research industry, this resonates big time with me. Blog Influentials, in July 2005 had called blogs the ‘market research of the future’. Again, way back in 2005 I had said:

While nothing beats face-to-face contact, blogs can be a great space to have conversations with customers - Scoble does it every day. In other cases, customers are the ones encouraging marketers to engage in conversation - SkypeJournal is a great example of heavy users of Skype
providing constructive feedback both positive and negative,
observations and ideas. They’re even writing poetry in the form of a Skypku

Are marketers listening and engaging in dialogue? Maybe.
Maybe not. Are marketing departments afraid of this? I think they are.

Blogs may be one such tool available to us - there are so
many more that can reveal and understand the motives and the process of
emergence in conversations as they manifest in conversations between
marketers and users. I met Jim McGee in Chicago last year and we had a
lovely discussion about how blogs might change the nature of market
research and how the notion of oral culture in organizations might help
explain the relatively slow take up of blogs in the firewall. From his post after our meeting :

“In the marketing research context, blogs are a disruptive
technology. Instead of having to generate data by way of surveys or
focus groups with whatever artifacts the process introduces, blogs
provide direct visibility into customers. Instead of having to connect
potentially artificial samples back to the actual market, now you have
to filter real market behavior, interpret it, and make sense of it.
That presents two challenges to market research functions. First,
market research staff have to develop new skills. Second, management of
market research needs to spend some quality thinking time what to do
with access to this new kind of market data.

The opportunity that blogs introduce into the marketing research
equation is to create the opportunity to identify and run multiple
micro-experiments in the market. Those that succeed get the resources
to scale, those that fail to generate some useful data are quickly shut
down. There are challenges, of course, especially given how quickly
ideas spread in a connected world, but that should be offset by the
speed with which experiments can be identified and run. Worth thinking
about.”

Almost a year ago, I had recruited participants for some usability testing focus groups through my blog. Am now working with some clients, where we are building news aggregators of target audience blogs. And involved currently in a project where we are evolving a sms-blog research interface as a research tool for participants, in the Twitter convention. And we even have proof of concept now .. a recent article in the Economic Times talks of how blogs are boosting sales of bikes. Keeping track of blog conversations replacing traditional market research survey methods! Giving rise to a new breed of blogo-pologists and the field of netnography!

Much better than having professional respondents in a conventional focus group or unwieldy questionnaires which are filled up so superficially isn’t it?

Tags: market research, marketing research, qualitative research, ethnography,social media,blogs,blogging,focus groups