Harvard Business Publishing

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 be revealed as fantasists. The fact is, it's incredibly hard to make money as a Web 2.0 startup aimed at consumers. There are hundreds of these companies, and they all clamor to brief us at Forrester. Each has its own twist on blogs, social networks, ratings, user generated video, or whatever. It's hard to get people to pay attention to a new tool, and the value of the tool depends on lots of participation -- the classic chicken-and-egg problem. Your competitor is always one twist ahead of you. Some of these startups will succeed but the odds are one in a thousand -- you need just... Keep Reading »

There's a lot of speculation about social networks, and predictions usually go in one of two directions: This is growing and soon everybody will be on one (or more than one) This is a fad and even the college students will tire of it eventually. (You could also call these the "Facebook is worth $20 Billion" and "Facebook is worth nothing" factions.) To add fuel to the debate, this week's data chart, from Chapter 2 of Groundswell looks at participation in social networks around the world. Important caveats on this data -- while these surveys were all taken with 6 months of each other 2007, the methodologies are not the same: US is an online survey, Europe is a mail survey, and Asia is a telephone survey. In each case, the base is all online consumers, and people were asked the question "do you visit a social networking site at... Keep Reading »

Facebook 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 Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to "connect" their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook."Overall, this means that all of the fun stuff that developers are building into apps on Facebook Platform will now be available for third-party developers to build into applications OFF of Facebook.com. I spoke with Ben Ling at Facebook, and the hypothetical example he used was yelp.com. If I link my Facebook identity to my Yelp... Keep Reading »

Google announced Google Friend Connect. The idea behind Friend Connect is to give Web masters the tools to easily add social features to their sites. This is what Google announced: "With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening's Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming -- picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community."What Google is essentially doing is making it easy to tap into new, emerging standards around social features. These standards specifically deal with identity (OpenID), data access rights(OAuth), and social applications (OpenSocial). These are all standards that have emerged in the past six months and are laying the foundation for open social networks. Friend Connect is Google's way... Keep Reading »

by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li Our Webinar was a big party -- over 700 people joined us! Of course, that made it difficult to answer all of your questions, but they were so interesting we've answered them all right here. Every question here came from someone who attended the Webinar. We learned an awful lot from your questions. In these answers, where we refer to a Forrester report, the executive summary is available to everyone, but the full report is available on to Forrester clients (or you can buy it). In the comments, let us know if you'd like to see us do another one, and on what topic. Strategy and the POST Method How do YOU define social computing? Applications in which people connect with and draw strength from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. Similar to the way we define the groundswell. Do you... Keep Reading »

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 through the frameworks and strategies needed to approach and thrive in the groundswell. We hope you can join us -- and invite your colleagues if you think they would benefit! Agenda: What process should companies use to create social strategies? What business objectives can be achieved with Web 2.0 technologies? How should you get started?  Click here to be registered for the Groundswell webinar... Keep Reading »

Today we look at some attitudinal data that's highlighted in Groundswell. Today's question is: whom do you trust? As you can see, 83% trust the word of a friend. But perhaps one of the more interesting points is that the number who trust consumer reviews by people they never met on a retailer's site (like eBags, the example in Groundswell) is 60%, only slightly lower than "a review by a known expert." Why do people trust strangers? They don't, not as individuals. But they do in groups. Strangers are assumed not to have an axe to grind. If 100 people on eBags say a laptop bag is great, then it is great. If they say it's inferior, then it is inferior. Regardless of what a so-called "expert" might say. What does this mean for your brand?It means that a focus on "influencers" is not enough. You never know who may... Keep Reading »

There’s a fundamental contradiction at the heart of groundswell strategy. We’ve told you that it’s a big error to treat everyone in the groundswell as if they were the same. That’s why we find the beehive metaphor inappropriate. People’s contributions are as different as they are. On the other hand, corporate development for the last 50 years, at least, has been an ongoing search for efficiency. Mass production means cranking out the same product a hundred thousand times at a high degree of quality. Advertising succeeds by giving the same message to everybody. Customer support representatives read from the same script, because the company can’t treat employees as interchangeable unless they treat customers the same way. As a result, to many of our corporate clients, groundswell strategy seems like a step backwards. “You want us to deal with people as individuals?” they say. “We spent the last 30 years computerizing... Keep Reading »

We wanted to show how some clients are using the Social Technographics Profile in our book Groundswell to make decisions about their social applications using our data. We’re looking at Alpha Moms, a group that includes mothers with above-average incomes and a favorable attitudes towards technology. Their profile is shown below. (For an explanation of the categories, see Chapter 3 of Groundswell or this slide show.) The notable thing about the profile of Alpha Moms is that they’re more likely to be Critics than Creators – a fact that turned out to be important for the media company that was planning a community for them. See the video below (or the book) for details on how the media company changed its strategy based on this information. (This is Charlene explaining this example from our consumer event last October.) Note for sticklers: the definition of Alpha Moms we used in Charlene's... Keep Reading »

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 as I can. But this is just a start -- participation is as varied as the people who participate. Keeping up friendships. Facebook is about connecting with people you know, to find out what's going on with them. Making new friends. We’ve all heard stories of people hooking up on social networks. According to Forrester's consumer surveys, one in five online singles has viewed or participated in online dating in the past year. Succumbing to social pressure from existing friends. People in the groundswell want their friends there, too. Your friends, your daughter, or your golf buddies are emailing you right now, asking... Keep Reading »