Got sent a link (thanks Simon) to an interesting tool designed to bring tag clouds to brands http://www.brandtags.net/
This very closely related to one of the core problems slowing the creation of the semantic web i.e. universal, consensus tagging of all online content. The crux of it all is the difficulty in coming up with a list of words that people will agree as describing any given piece of content. And in a number of different languages
Google has created a game to help them improve the semantics behind their image search: http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/ and if you play it a bit you’ll soon see how hard it is to get absolute agreement on tags.
Add in the other requirements of a semantic network i.e. relationship and context, and it becomes clear that a truly functional web 3.0 is something that will evolve slowly from high user involvement areas (e.g. image sharing) and more tightly content controlled sectors (e.g. health/medicine) rather than turn into the mass explosion of applications that web 2.0 was
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
More commentary on the portable social data developments
This time from Joe Marchese at Online Spin
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
MySpace, Facebook and Google: Racing For Web 3.0
By Joe Marchese
MySpace, Facebook and Google have all recently made "major" announcements regarding the future of how their platforms will play with the rest of the Web. I put major in quotes because a majority of the functionality announced isn't yet available to the average Joe app/Web developer. Regardless, the trend seems to be the movement into Web 3.0 that is making the entire World Wide Web into social media.
If Web 2.0 was all about social features and community formation, Web 3.0, it seems, will be about personalizing an individual's entire Web experience -- not just through data portability, but through community portability. In Web 3.0 your personal data will follow you from destination to destination, allowing you to experience the entire Web in a far more social manner. In order for this to work you need to have a centralized place to store your data -- a "home base" of sorts -- in a Web where you (and your data) may live in a lot of places. Facebook and MySpace both want, very very badly, to be your home base for Web 3.0.
You can read about both MySpace's and Facebook's versions of data portability on TechCrunch. The long and the short of their pitch to users will be this: Store your data on MySpace (or Facebook) and never have to sign up for another social network, service, community or Web site again. For developers and Webmasters the pitch centers more on allowing them to build greater "socialness" into their Web sites and applications (sorry, couldn't think of a good word that was real, so please consider "socialness" my version of Steven Colbert's "truthiness").
Google's Friend Connect takes a slightly different approach. Conceding that not all people are going to be storing their data with Orkut, Google wants to offer the tool set that promises to turn any static Web site into a social media property. As they tie into Facebook and other social networks (it will be very interesting to see when/if MySpace follows), you will begin to experience sites that were once information sources, with limited community, as fully social experiences. You don't have to register to join another site, probably never maintaining your registration data as your life changes (Web 2.0), but that data being tied to one source of data about you that you will maintain. It's not who else likes this site (Web 2.0), but who else that I know who likes this site. These are just basic examples, but you can begin to see the difference. Great walk through of the Google Friend Connect service on YouTube.
So what does all this mean for the ordinary user? Not much yet, but the plan is that it will spark an evolution of the Web, truly changing the way an individual experiences the Internet. I for one think we might be in for a little bit of a rough ride. Because, while there is great potential for this type of openness, it requires that developers see this as not simply an opportunity to tap into people's social networks on MySpace and Facebook to drive traffic and adoptions, but instead as a way to add value to people's experiences with tools and properties. If you see this as a way to gain more users, but can't find a way to improve the lives of those users, you are missing the potential.
Second, because MySpace and Facebook still don't play nice with each other, and there is no reason to assume they ever will, one is going to have to "win" in order for this to really start changing the Web. Sure, it will change things a little on a lot of sites right away, and may even changes things a lot on a select few sites, but for a majority of people, this is simply a way to extend their current Facebook or MySpace experience -- and they are still one or the other, or they are a Bebo'er or and MyYearbooker or... ubiquity is key.
What does all this mean for marketers? Again, not a lot instantly. But most marketers are Web site publishers and application developers. Start thinking about what it would mean to have people "join" your brand's site and to experience your brand in a more social manner. Also, the above goes for all marketers: If you see this openness as a way of accessing people's friend lists, then you are missing the point, and in the end your brand will be missing the potential. What value does your brand add to a data and community portable Web 3.0?
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
MySpace, Facebook and Google: Racing For Web 3.0
By Joe Marchese
MySpace, Facebook and Google have all recently made "major" announcements regarding the future of how their platforms will play with the rest of the Web. I put major in quotes because a majority of the functionality announced isn't yet available to the average Joe app/Web developer. Regardless, the trend seems to be the movement into Web 3.0 that is making the entire World Wide Web into social media.
If Web 2.0 was all about social features and community formation, Web 3.0, it seems, will be about personalizing an individual's entire Web experience -- not just through data portability, but through community portability. In Web 3.0 your personal data will follow you from destination to destination, allowing you to experience the entire Web in a far more social manner. In order for this to work you need to have a centralized place to store your data -- a "home base" of sorts -- in a Web where you (and your data) may live in a lot of places. Facebook and MySpace both want, very very badly, to be your home base for Web 3.0.
You can read about both MySpace's and Facebook's versions of data portability on TechCrunch. The long and the short of their pitch to users will be this: Store your data on MySpace (or Facebook) and never have to sign up for another social network, service, community or Web site again. For developers and Webmasters the pitch centers more on allowing them to build greater "socialness" into their Web sites and applications (sorry, couldn't think of a good word that was real, so please consider "socialness" my version of Steven Colbert's "truthiness").
Google's Friend Connect takes a slightly different approach. Conceding that not all people are going to be storing their data with Orkut, Google wants to offer the tool set that promises to turn any static Web site into a social media property. As they tie into Facebook and other social networks (it will be very interesting to see when/if MySpace follows), you will begin to experience sites that were once information sources, with limited community, as fully social experiences. You don't have to register to join another site, probably never maintaining your registration data as your life changes (Web 2.0), but that data being tied to one source of data about you that you will maintain. It's not who else likes this site (Web 2.0), but who else that I know who likes this site. These are just basic examples, but you can begin to see the difference. Great walk through of the Google Friend Connect service on YouTube.
So what does all this mean for the ordinary user? Not much yet, but the plan is that it will spark an evolution of the Web, truly changing the way an individual experiences the Internet. I for one think we might be in for a little bit of a rough ride. Because, while there is great potential for this type of openness, it requires that developers see this as not simply an opportunity to tap into people's social networks on MySpace and Facebook to drive traffic and adoptions, but instead as a way to add value to people's experiences with tools and properties. If you see this as a way to gain more users, but can't find a way to improve the lives of those users, you are missing the potential.
Second, because MySpace and Facebook still don't play nice with each other, and there is no reason to assume they ever will, one is going to have to "win" in order for this to really start changing the Web. Sure, it will change things a little on a lot of sites right away, and may even changes things a lot on a select few sites, but for a majority of people, this is simply a way to extend their current Facebook or MySpace experience -- and they are still one or the other, or they are a Bebo'er or and MyYearbooker or... ubiquity is key.
What does all this mean for marketers? Again, not a lot instantly. But most marketers are Web site publishers and application developers. Start thinking about what it would mean to have people "join" your brand's site and to experience your brand in a more social manner. Also, the above goes for all marketers: If you see this openness as a way of accessing people's friend lists, then you are missing the point, and in the end your brand will be missing the potential. What value does your brand add to a data and community portable Web 3.0?
Some nice new agency sites
Stole this exert from Adage and their belated coverage of the new Hal Riney site. I personally love Modernista's appraoch. The Hal Riney stuff is smart and new, but kinds of sucks as a working interface
San Francisco ad agency Publicis & Hal Riney has redesigned its website to enable a mouse-free experience. The effort is one of a wave of newfangled agency websites launched in recent months, which include Modernista's Web 2.0 format and Barbarian Group's bloglike revamp. "We wanted to make the website as interesting as the work that was presented on it," said Rikesh Lal, Publicis & Hal Riney's interactive creative director and an AKQA veteran.
San Francisco ad agency Publicis & Hal Riney has redesigned its website to enable a mouse-free experience. The effort is one of a wave of newfangled agency websites launched in recent months, which include Modernista's Web 2.0 format and Barbarian Group's bloglike revamp. "We wanted to make the website as interesting as the work that was presented on it," said Rikesh Lal, Publicis & Hal Riney's interactive creative director and an AKQA veteran.
THE big news - the web as a common platform for all social activity
Many articles out about it today, but thanks to AdAge for this comprehensive look at the emerging situation:
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Moves by Google, Facebook and MySpace Point to Crumbling Walls in the Social-Media Space
By Abbey Klaassen Published: May 12, 2008 NEW YORK (AdAge.com)
Three announcements, all within a week of each other, were indicative of the same trend: that the future of online social networking doesn't live within a single entity's walls but instead permeates the web.
MySpace, Facebook and Google each announced similar-sounding moves over the past week that will be worth paying attention to as marketers watch to see how the social web evolves. MySpace on May 7 said it would open up its profile data to third-party sites. Two days later Facebook said it would let users to connect their Facebook accounts to third-party applications and websites, and that it would also allow developers to incorporate Facebook friend data into other sites and applications. And today Google is announcing FriendConnect, a service that lets website owners add social applications to their sites.
Sites are blending
The moves are unrelated, according to the companies involved, but they all suggest what many web watchers and pundits have been expecting: that social-media tools and services would spread throughout the wider web, rather than stay contained within a single service.
Forrester's Charlene Li is one of those believers. She has described how social networks will be "like air." She writes on her blog: "I thought about my grade-school kids, who in 10 years will be in the midst of social network engagement. I believe they (and we) will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to 'be social.'
"Instead, I believe that in the future, social networks will be like air," she continued. "They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be."
The moves announced hardly make those services "like air." But they do signify that sites such as MySpace and Facebook are open to the idea of moving their user data and social connections to the broader web.
MySpace's moves will make user profile data more portable, and allow users to link their MySpace profiles to their profiles on other services, such as Twitter. Updates to a MySpace profile would then be automatically reflected on linked profiles elsewhere on the web.
Facebook gets friendlier
Facebook Connect, meanwhile, appears to be a developer-friendly move that harkens back to when it allowed third-party developers to create applications that took advantage of Facebook's so-called social graph and allowed users to communicate and play games with others on Facebook through those applications. With the new service, a Facebook user, for example, can easily see on Digg.com which stories his or her Facebook friends voted up.
Google's FriendConnect is more of a strategy to add social-media-enabling widgets to sites. Site owners can add a "snippet of code," according to Google, and immediately add tools such as reviews, members' galleries and message boards to their sites. They will also be able to add applications built using the OpenSocial platform that Google spearheaded. Users can import friends and interact via those applications with friends from other social networks, such as Facebook, Hi5 and Plaxo. The idea, said Google, is that any site can become an open social container.
"When the web is healthy and when more people have more ways to be more engaged online, our business is healthy," David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google, said on a conference call announcing the service.
Even traditional media companies such as CBS understand the importance of spreading their social tools among third-party sites. CBS's hyper-syndication web-video strategy also includes technology that lets CBS viewers chat with each other while watching content, even if they're watching that content off CBS.com.
Listen up, marketers
So what does this mean for marketers? It means more consumers talking to each other across the web, and it means discussions around brands are no longer siloed to a single platform or network but are spreading to a wider swath of sites. If a marketer didn't have a social-media "listening" plan, these kinds of developments could make tracking conversations consumers are having about a brand more difficult, but also make it more important that marketers do so.
Imagine if you could easily take the conversation about brands that's occurring on Twitter and embed that into other sites via one of these services, said Rodney Rumford, CEO of Gravitational Media, an agency that has helped brands such as Vivendi and Mountain Dew have a presence in social networks, and editor of FaceReviews.com. Additionally, branded websites and widgets will be able to use the technologies to become "more social."
"This is huge, the combination of the MySpace, Facebook and Google all saying basically the same thing, which is say that websites can become more interesting and engaging when you add a social layer to them," Mr. Rumford said.
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I thought it would be also worthwhile tacking on an article from Mashable about the google friend connect offering:
Following announcements last week from Facebook and MySpace about initiatives to make your social networking data portable, Google has announced “Friend Connect,” a similar service that will officially launch this evening at Google’s Campfire One event.
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Moves by Google, Facebook and MySpace Point to Crumbling Walls in the Social-Media Space
By Abbey Klaassen Published: May 12, 2008 NEW YORK (AdAge.com)
Three announcements, all within a week of each other, were indicative of the same trend: that the future of online social networking doesn't live within a single entity's walls but instead permeates the web.
 |
| Illustration: Google |
| Google uses three social standards -- OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial -- to power its FriendConnect. |
MySpace, Facebook and Google each announced similar-sounding moves over the past week that will be worth paying attention to as marketers watch to see how the social web evolves. MySpace on May 7 said it would open up its profile data to third-party sites. Two days later Facebook said it would let users to connect their Facebook accounts to third-party applications and websites, and that it would also allow developers to incorporate Facebook friend data into other sites and applications. And today Google is announcing FriendConnect, a service that lets website owners add social applications to their sites.
Sites are blending
The moves are unrelated, according to the companies involved, but they all suggest what many web watchers and pundits have been expecting: that social-media tools and services would spread throughout the wider web, rather than stay contained within a single service.
Forrester's Charlene Li is one of those believers. She has described how social networks will be "like air." She writes on her blog: "I thought about my grade-school kids, who in 10 years will be in the midst of social network engagement. I believe they (and we) will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to 'be social.'
"Instead, I believe that in the future, social networks will be like air," she continued. "They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be."
The moves announced hardly make those services "like air." But they do signify that sites such as MySpace and Facebook are open to the idea of moving their user data and social connections to the broader web.
MySpace's moves will make user profile data more portable, and allow users to link their MySpace profiles to their profiles on other services, such as Twitter. Updates to a MySpace profile would then be automatically reflected on linked profiles elsewhere on the web.
Facebook gets friendlier
Facebook Connect, meanwhile, appears to be a developer-friendly move that harkens back to when it allowed third-party developers to create applications that took advantage of Facebook's so-called social graph and allowed users to communicate and play games with others on Facebook through those applications. With the new service, a Facebook user, for example, can easily see on Digg.com which stories his or her Facebook friends voted up.
Google's FriendConnect is more of a strategy to add social-media-enabling widgets to sites. Site owners can add a "snippet of code," according to Google, and immediately add tools such as reviews, members' galleries and message boards to their sites. They will also be able to add applications built using the OpenSocial platform that Google spearheaded. Users can import friends and interact via those applications with friends from other social networks, such as Facebook, Hi5 and Plaxo. The idea, said Google, is that any site can become an open social container.
"When the web is healthy and when more people have more ways to be more engaged online, our business is healthy," David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google, said on a conference call announcing the service.
Even traditional media companies such as CBS understand the importance of spreading their social tools among third-party sites. CBS's hyper-syndication web-video strategy also includes technology that lets CBS viewers chat with each other while watching content, even if they're watching that content off CBS.com.
Listen up, marketers
So what does this mean for marketers? It means more consumers talking to each other across the web, and it means discussions around brands are no longer siloed to a single platform or network but are spreading to a wider swath of sites. If a marketer didn't have a social-media "listening" plan, these kinds of developments could make tracking conversations consumers are having about a brand more difficult, but also make it more important that marketers do so.
Imagine if you could easily take the conversation about brands that's occurring on Twitter and embed that into other sites via one of these services, said Rodney Rumford, CEO of Gravitational Media, an agency that has helped brands such as Vivendi and Mountain Dew have a presence in social networks, and editor of FaceReviews.com. Additionally, branded websites and widgets will be able to use the technologies to become "more social."
"This is huge, the combination of the MySpace, Facebook and Google all saying basically the same thing, which is say that websites can become more interesting and engaging when you add a social layer to them," Mr. Rumford said.
------
I thought it would be also worthwhile tacking on an article from Mashable about the google friend connect offering:
Following announcements last week from Facebook and MySpace about initiatives to make your social networking data portable, Google has announced “Friend Connect,” a similar service that will officially launch this evening at Google’s Campfire One event.
Friend Connect is a tool which enables any website owner to add some code to their site and get a number of social features. You know, all that stuff you usually can’t be bothered to install plugins for: user registration, invites, members gallery, reviews, message posting, and - most importantly - third party OpenSocial apps.
In practice, this means that anyone will be able to log in, for example, with their OpenID on some blog, and converse with their Gtalk, Facbeook, or Plaxo friends. The web as a platform, it’s finally happening, folks.
Since the thing is not actually live yet, you will be able to see one implementation of it over at www.ingridmichaelson.com later tonight. But right now, you can’t. Damn, I love writing about upcoming stuff.
Following the link to the ingridmichaelson.com site i signed in using my google info and was able to link the site directly to facebook... pretty cool. Now which global login to use?
Thanks Techcruch for this launch announcement on the Doko (www.dokodrop.com) tween social network game. Nice tie-in between real products, online games and social network functionality... as long as the dics take off it should be an interesting environment for tweens.Short of a super charged, yellow ball project (http://www.verbnow.com/?IDX=yellowball&) that someone's hoping to make cash from...
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Today sees the launch of Doko, a social networking game aimed at the tween market which claims to be “The World’s First Global Trading Game”. The game revolves around metal discs about the size of poker chips that are emblazoned with unique identifying tags. Friends are encouraged to trade discs with each other, which accrue virtual points on the Doko website (these in turn can be exchanged for real-world prizes).
Dokodiscs will be available for purchase at retail stores including Toys R Us. Kids are encouraged to register on a family-friendly social networking site, where they are assigned overly innocuous screen-names based on their favorite number and animal (I was given musmus13, a real keeper). From there, they can enter the codes found on each coin to receive their Doko Points, which can be traded in for prizes. The more often a coin is traded with other players, the more valuable it becomes (though it expires after five trades). The site tracks each coin during its journeys across the world, offering a cartoony 3D world perspective that reminded me of TwittEarth
.
The game sounds like it could be a hit, but I’m left wondering what kind of strange effects it could have on its target audience. I can’t help but envision a bizarre, pre-pubescent mafia that will horde and distribute discs in an attempt to maximize profits. Or maybe I’ve just read Lord of the Flies too many times.
In any case, the social networking aspect of the site will likely appeal to many parents who would like to foster their child’s social interactions without letting them graduate to the “big kid” networks like Facebook and MySpace. Among Doko’s competitors for the tween market include Zwinky, Club Penguin, and Gaia. Even Facebook is making attempts to appease parents - yesterday they announced a number of new policies designed to safeguard against sexual predators.
Doko is a product of the Mammoth Brand of NSI International. Mammoth has been responsible for marketing more than $700 million worth of toys.
Cause marketing sites
Thanks Trendcentral for this report on some recent cause marketing efforts
BURMA: IT CAN'T WAIT VIDEO CAMPAIGN,
TOMS TOURS' SHOE DROP VOLUNTEER VACATION
XBOX 360 GAMES FOR CHANGE CHALLENGE
Burma: It Can't Wait: Kicking off this week to raise awareness and bring to light the turmoil and human atrocities that are facing the Southeast Asian country of Burma is a star studded campaign that will release a different video vignette every day this month, featuring Hollywood elite such as Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston, Ellen Page, Sarah Silverman and Judd Apatow, to name a few. With the hope of building a one million person movement to free imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi, and her fellow citizens of Burma, this campaign is a call to action for people all over the world to be part of a movement that could change the course of the country. While the issue is serious, the vignettes are very funny. The full campaign will live within social shopping site Fanista at BurmaItCantWait.org, where visitors also will be able to join the campaign, to watch bonus footage from the shoots, and to join Fanista, thereby allowing up to 10% of all of their entertainment purchases to be donated to the U.S. Campaign for Burma.
TOMS Tours: After popularizing the cause-driven, buy-one-give-one consumer product model, TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie's latest endeavor may just do the same for branded volunteer vacations. What started off as an outreach program to help educate and activate consumers (wherein volunteers were invited to help distribute free shoes to children living in some of the world's poorest neighborhoods) has evolved into a full-fledged travel company called TOMS Tours. Due to instantaneous popularity of the "shoe drops", interested parties must fill out an online application to be considered for one of the 15 volunteer positions. Once selected, participants pay $1800 (plus international airfare) for an otherwise all-inclusive trip, to locations such as Argentina, that combines the village visits (where shoes are distributed) with regional group activities such as hiking, wine tasting, and sightseeing.
Xbox 360's Games for Change Challenge: Microsoft has partnered with Games For Change (an organization that supports and promotes social change through game play) to kick off a global competition that challenges socially minded individuals within the gaming community to make the world a better place. The competition, which will kick off in August to coincide with the 5th annual GFC Festival in New York, is open to college students and will require them to create a game in which the goal is to combat global warming. The top three contenders will be considered as potential Xbox LIVE Arcade downloads and their "socially minded" creators will receive cash prizes. The overall winner will also be awarded with an opportunity to apprentice at Microsoft's Interactive Business division as an intern.
BURMA: IT CAN'T WAIT VIDEO CAMPAIGN,
TOMS TOURS' SHOE DROP VOLUNTEER VACATION
XBOX 360 GAMES FOR CHANGE CHALLENGE
Burma: It Can't Wait: Kicking off this week to raise awareness and bring to light the turmoil and human atrocities that are facing the Southeast Asian country of Burma is a star studded campaign that will release a different video vignette every day this month, featuring Hollywood elite such as Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston, Ellen Page, Sarah Silverman and Judd Apatow, to name a few. With the hope of building a one million person movement to free imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi, and her fellow citizens of Burma, this campaign is a call to action for people all over the world to be part of a movement that could change the course of the country. While the issue is serious, the vignettes are very funny. The full campaign will live within social shopping site Fanista at BurmaItCantWait.org, where visitors also will be able to join the campaign, to watch bonus footage from the shoots, and to join Fanista, thereby allowing up to 10% of all of their entertainment purchases to be donated to the U.S. Campaign for Burma.
TOMS Tours: After popularizing the cause-driven, buy-one-give-one consumer product model, TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie's latest endeavor may just do the same for branded volunteer vacations. What started off as an outreach program to help educate and activate consumers (wherein volunteers were invited to help distribute free shoes to children living in some of the world's poorest neighborhoods) has evolved into a full-fledged travel company called TOMS Tours. Due to instantaneous popularity of the "shoe drops", interested parties must fill out an online application to be considered for one of the 15 volunteer positions. Once selected, participants pay $1800 (plus international airfare) for an otherwise all-inclusive trip, to locations such as Argentina, that combines the village visits (where shoes are distributed) with regional group activities such as hiking, wine tasting, and sightseeing.
Xbox 360's Games for Change Challenge: Microsoft has partnered with Games For Change (an organization that supports and promotes social change through game play) to kick off a global competition that challenges socially minded individuals within the gaming community to make the world a better place. The competition, which will kick off in August to coincide with the 5th annual GFC Festival in New York, is open to college students and will require them to create a game in which the goal is to combat global warming. The top three contenders will be considered as potential Xbox LIVE Arcade downloads and their "socially minded" creators will receive cash prizes. The overall winner will also be awarded with an opportunity to apprentice at Microsoft's Interactive Business division as an intern.
Get your public involved in your business... without spending a million
Thanks once again Jeremiah for this great post a do-it-yourself consumer engagement servicve called UserVoice. Thanks and keep them coming Jeremiah------
Embrace your Customers
At Forrester, we use the term Embracing as a social strategy where customers and employees work together using social tools to build next-generation products. Quite a change for the strong headed product manager, who now has to set the roadmap, while in collaboration with customers.
Popular Examples: Dell and Starbucks
We’re all familiar with the popular Dell “Idea Storm” website that let customers vote for which features and products they wanted to be bore to the marketplace. In Dell’s case, the linux community asked for a UBUNTU box, which was created and launched and sold. I wish I was a fly on the wall when Dell’s strategic partners at Microsoft found out about this.
Recently, Starbucks has launched My Starbucks Ideas, where customers are voting for improved services or products in each of the stores. Looking at the site, the request for free wireless or ‘punchcards’ for frequent customers is under consideration or has been improved.
Both powered by SalesForce
Both of these sites are powered by Salesforce’s product, Ideas. Move on over, there’s a new player in town called UserVoice that offers the same features right on their site.
UserVoice, a new kid on the block
I’ve played around with UserVoice and even created a version for my own Web Strategy blog, the simple features made it easy to setup and let others submit ideas. I’ve not stress tested this service to see if it can withstand enterprise activity like SalesForce can, but it’s a nod to a common feature (voting) that we should start to expect to see in white label social networks. (in fact, I know of a few that are going to launch this)
Reporting, Query features, and easy to setup
Other UserVoice features to include Google Analytics, and the ability to collect demographic information and let owners know of suggestions. Owners of voting sites can also segment their customers by different purchasing sizes, in order to help prioritize. Also, polling features will help to put color around suggestions from users, and other conduits to improve the connectivity between employees and customers.
For example, I created this own Web Strategy UserVoice page where you can go and make suggestions on how I can improve this website.
Recommendations
If you’re a small company or individual blogger, or run a niche product, I encourage you to try out UserVoice, test to see how it scales, and come back and leave comments on your experience on this post. If you’re from a large company that has thousands or millions of customers, start with SalesForce and also trial UserVoice. Anyone that wants a fully custom user experience should start with SalesForce.
Update: I’ve received some tweets and comments also suggesting IdeaScale (which I think is the same as this product of the same name), I’ve not looked at it, please leave a comment if you’ve a review. Also, passionate CEO Matt from BrightIdea left a comment about his enterprise class competitor to SalesForce, I look forward to a formal Forrester briefing from him, let’s take a closer look at this growing segment.
What to Expect
UserVoice would make for a good partner for any of those white label social networks, and could even be an acquisition target for a vendor that’s not up to speed in this emerging feature set.
Expect other White Label Social Networking vendors to offer this feature, soon it will be on the ‘checklist’, of features. Customer voting? “Yup we got that.”
They aren’t the only ones to watch, Get Satisfaction, a support site for any product, anywhere, (no reason to go to that irrelvant corporate website) has launched, and customers are self-supporting each other, and some savvy companies have their employees there participating. Without surprise, I’m there representing Forrester, although there’s been no activity. Satisfaction is still very startup focused, I hope to see some Fortune 1000 companies appear on their site.
Lastly, UserVoice itself is, “eating their own dog food” so to speak, using their own service to improve their product, there’s already a small flurry of votes happening.
Social media disasters?
Thanks Jeremiah for this great list of social networking headaches
Have to ask though, where is Coke Zero's stinker thezeromovement.com?
2008
Have to ask though, where is Coke Zero's stinker thezeromovement.com?
2008
Louis Vuitton gets Brand-Jacked 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 HansenBurger 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.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.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.
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 mediaHD 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.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)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.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
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 –on YouTube
More bad news for Dell, as laptops explode in Japan, all can see online.Comcast suffers from Narcolepsy
Sleepy Techician caught on YouTube, then fired. Also see Comcast must die blog, submitted by Jeff Jarvis.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 communityThe 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 gets canceled –how to get get on my nerves
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.
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.
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
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