iFeed is an information discovery and analysis device that goes well beyond existing internet search tools in enabling structured access to non-traditional media. It was conceived in response to the burgeoning growth in consumer-generated media (CGM), which is acting as a growing counterpole of influence and information dissemination on corporate activity, brand awareness and consumer sentiment. iFeed’s mission is to provide filtered access to vital online information through the vertical search of social media; a body of web content that is inefficiently distributed and difficult to access methodically. Our product page describes iFeed, its functionality and applications in more detail.

Netemic see two primary end-markets for iFeed: (1) enterprise users, initially in the media/PR industry; and (2) financial market users. For the enterprise user, iFeed offers real-time access to the shifting perceptions of customers and competitors as reflected in blogs, consumer forums and message boards. For the financial user, iFeed offers money managers, analysts and traders the ability to regain a tangible information advantage versus competitors through access to market intelligence before it is disseminated via traditional media.

We think that this represents an interesting development: while blogs have attracted most attention as the poster-child of the new wave ‘interactive web’ (aka ‘Web 2.0′), relatively few people are blogging regularly in the UK compared to the US market. Those that are tend to either be pretty efficient and are giving considered opinions on matters or products of importance to them or are individuals commenting on purchase, product and support experiences as part of their ongoing personal weblog entries that are not generally focused on such matters.

We think that both are of relevance and importance to corporations. However, alongside this, we are seeing more and more individuals who perhaps are not ready or do not wish to post on blogs but who are prepared for the first time to give their opinions of purchasing and owning products and services that matter to them. Consumer forums and message boards provide a platform for web users who do not wish to set up a blog, but who do want to voice an opinion online, particularly where motivated by issues with a specific product or service. The growing number of sites that allow users to contribute content is helping to foster a general online atmosphere where non-specialist users are willing or even expect to be able to articulate their opinions to an audience of their peers.

A recent in depth study from the US carried out on behalf of Yahoo and OMD, “Yahoo! and OMD Study Reveals Online Research Plays Critical Role in Consumers’ Offline Purchases; Online Price Comparisons and ”Communal Shopping” Create Trust and Drive Decision Making” provides strong evidence for the growing influence of customer forums in the US market and we believe we are seeing the same trend in the UK. This study points out that a majority of consumers now turn to the internet to research making purchases whether they intend to buy online or not. Increasingly, as well as researching the sites of the selling organization, they are also turning to the comments of other consumers to seek advice with customer forums highly prevalent.

We are increasingly including customer forums in our tracking of consumer comment as well as monitoring blogs — both specialist and the long tail.

Swivel allows users to upload data, which can then be viewed and analysed in various ways — it’s frequently described in marketing-speak as ‘YouTube for data’.

However, it’s not so much the core functionality that is interesting (you can do far more extensive analysis with the open source package ‘”R”:http://www.r-project.org/’, or commercial tools like Matlab and Mathematica), as what it represents in terms of the relationship between where data originates and where it ends up. Swivel represents a kind of ‘freedom of data movement’ where data generated and perhaps pre-processed in one location is able to migrate to another part of the world drawn by the pull of a specialised service offering that is not available elsewhere.

In a sense this is ‘Service Orientated Architecture’ (SOA) writ-large, in the spirit of Amazon’s recent grid computing and storage offerings. The concept itself isn’t new, but this application of it has a certain eye-catching X-factor about it akin to concepts from the world of ubiquitous computing whereby information and functionality are able to freely coalesce and co-locate for greatest utility.

An obvious question on everyone’s lips is “so, will Google buy them or blow them away?” Personally I would fear the latter, as Google is already vastly endowed with number crunching ability, and services like Google analytics and Google trends show considerable charting capabilities. Time will tell; it probably makes sense for Google and others to wait and see what direction Swivel goes and grows in based on the demands both of its user-base and commercial necessity.

The recent link up between PR giant Edelman and Technorati seems to be a significant step forward in the process of the blogosphere entering the mainstream. Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, seems to be taking a consistently radical view that his industry needs to go through a major upheaval and that responding to the opportunities that the blogosphere presents is a big part of this. For Edelman’s own views on the link-up read his own posting on this.

Two things stand out for me. First, his comment on the power of consumer generated content and of the need to persuade companies of the benefit of ceding control to the crowd. Second, his belief in the need for analytic tools to understand and work with bloggers. My suspicion is that creating the tools will be easier than persuading the coporate role to cede control. It’s going to be interesting to see!

In a recent posting, Glacial progress is Fortune 100 recognition of corporate blogging, Shel Holz highlights a recent report by US PR firm Makovsky & Company on US companies which suggests business executives remain highly sceptical of the role of blogging as a communications medium with only 5% of top decision makers seeing it as an important medium.

Contrast this with a posting by Maxim Kelly, on Electronic News, Bloggers a potential PR menace, where Ms Kelly summarises a recent report issued by Jupiter research titled “Consumer Created Content:Assessing the Influence of Content-Contributing Online Consumers” based on research carried out in Europe. The main message that Jupiter put forward is that while most Europeans are “passive” surfers who don’t publish their thoughts online (although a figure quoted that 24 percent of respondents to the survey are unprompted contributors that maintain web logs, websites or post in online forums seems pretty high to me), those who do participate online - mainly young, male heavy internet users - have a disproportionately wide influence and may seriously impact on brand communications, as strong brand opinions and feedback posted by these influential contributors will quickly spread among interconnected consumers.

Ms Kelly points out that the report author Julian Smith argues that marketers need to monitor key contributors in order to target them over a mass audience monologue approach and to avoid the risk of small scale disgruntlement by a few being exposed to a mass audience. This is certainly a view we share at Netemic.

If you consider that there are estimated to be about a billion Web users and Technorati estimates that there are currently about 35 million Blogs, this (very roughly) puts a ceiling on future growth. If the rate of new Blogs were to continue unabated, the entire Web population would have a Blog in about 2.5 years. By which time we’ll all be publishing our Blogs off Webservers running on our mobile phones …

Even taking a realistic and well salt-seasoned step back, that’s an awful lot of Blogs. Which would be good news for Technorati, Google, and everyone else in the Blog business.

Another noteworthy point in David’s postings in how spikes in posting traffic correlate to events considered ‘newsworthy’ in the Blogosphere — ranging from acts of terrorism to Apple product lauches. This is an interesting example of how one channel of information (Blog activity) can ‘leak’ information about others, a phenomenon which we’re doing some interesting research on here at Netemic.

In his article, Chris Vallance outlines the reaction of police officer Bloggers to a tightening of the Metropolitan Police’s rules and guidelines on the use of Blogs. The Met seems to have done this out of concern about what they see as controversial statements being made by Bloggers, along with the worry that not all purported police Bloggers are authentic. This seems to have gone down badly with a number of police Bloggers, such as ‘worldwearydetective’, who see Blogging as a way of getting closer to their community.

This highlights a number of issues around how Blogging relates to organisational culture and raises a critical question that all organisations should ask before venturing down the route of employee Blogging: is the culture of the organisation set up for the free flow of information that Blogging allows?

Clearly, police matters are highly sensitive and create particular issues and concerns. More generally, though, all organisations need to ask if they are ready for the criticism and highly opinionated views that Blogging brings with it. For example, organisations that are relatively hierarchical might struggle to have a coherent Blogging policy, in that by definition Blogging is very anti-hierarchical. Once the genie is out of the lamp, so to speak, it is difficult to put it back in. Retrospective tightening of Blogging policies will likely be demotivating to Bloggers and their new-found freedom.

Conversely, hierarchical organisations that are trying to create a flatter structure with better information flows will find Blogging to be a powerful tool to help achieve their organisational goals.

Of course, most organisations do want to be flatter, have better communication flows both internally and externally, and to be closer to their customers. Blogging is a powerful tool to help achieve all of these things. However, as the article by Chris Vallance illustrates, any decision to allow employee Blogging should be taken in the context of an organisation’s wider corporate identity and culture and to what extent there is both a desire and a will to change this.

Definition of Blogging

First, what exactly is a Blog? A Blog or Weblog is in essence a personal Website that can be easily updated by its owner. The significance of Blogs, and the reason we have seen extraordinary exponential growth in their number, is that a Blog can be set up by anyone, at no cost, in a few minutes. The term Weblog was first used by Internet writer Jorn Barger in 1997, and the first true Blogs started to appear in the late 1990s. Many consider one of the father of Blogs to be Dave Winer. As well as being easy to set up and use and therefore offering a voice to millions of users, Blogs have real significance in that they exist as part of a highly inter-connected network of Blogs — the ‘Blogosphere’. This inter-connectivity means that ideas and opinions can spread faster in the Blogosphere than via other existing Web mechanisms.

The numbers

With new Blogs appearing literally every second, it is impossible to know how many Blogs now exist, but figures of 20 — 30 million and upward are regularly quoted. Blogging is considered to be one of the fastest growing technologies we have seen although a cautionary note should perhaps be made that the drop-out rate of Blogs is high.  In their book Naked Conversations Robert Scoble and Shel Israel state it is estimated that up to one third of all Blogs are abandoned in the first year. Having started as very much a US phenomenon, Blogging is now beginning to take off in the UK, France, Japan and other countries. It is presently estimated that there are close to one million Bloggers in the United Kingdom.

History to date

In their book, blog!, authors David Kline and Dan Burstein document how the first real high-prominence explosion in the use of Blogs came with the US presidential election of 2004 when Blogs were considered to be highly influential on a US electorate that seemed to be at least in part disillusioned with the mainstream media. They go on to document how the events of 9/11 (2001) and the Iraq war saw a further explosion in the use of Blogs as carriers of uncensored political opinion. Interestingly the Middle East is one of the fastest growing areas for Blogs.

Outside politics, between about 2000 and 2004, Blogging was taking off with techies, and was beginning to be used by disgruntled customers as a means of attacking corporations they were unhappy with.

One celebrated case was the infamous Kryptonite incident, which took place in September 2004. Bloggers posted information revealing Kryptonite bike locks could be picked with disposable pen cases; Kryptonite, apparently unaware, did not respond until the story hit the mainstream press days later. At the time this was perceived to have damaged the company — see the White Paper Trust MEdia by PR firm Edelman and information management company Intelliseek.) However, during this period, most companies were either not considering the Blogosphere, or dismissing it as a fad. Interestingly, one company that did start Blogging was Microsoft — a process started by Joshua Allan in 2000 and picked up by numerous others, not least Robert Scoble, who has been attributed with the title ‘Chief Humanizing Officer’ for the work he has done in his Blogging in giving Microsoft a more human face.

By the end of 2004, Blogging was at last coming to the attention of mainstream corporate America. In December 2004 Fortune magazine published an article on Blogging in which the authors stated “Freewheeling Bloggers can boost your product or destroy it” and on May 2nd 2005 Business Week ran a lead article entitled “Blogs will change your business…your customers and rivals are figuring Blogs out. Our advice. Catch up…or catch you later”. In the last twelve-eighteen months PR and communications consultancies in particular have begun to build their expertise in this area and advise clients on Blogging strategies. One of the leaders in this field is the PR giant Edelman, where the CEO, Richard Edelman is himself a Blogger and where one of the US gurus of Blogging, Steve Rubel has been recently recruited. Edelman have recently been in the news for their high profile advice to Walmart on Blogging.

h1<. Corporate Fad limited to the few or Force for radical change?

One of the key aspects of Blogging seems to be that those who Blog feel passionate about it. It is no surprise therefore that the Blogging literature is full of evangelists who see Blogging as a tool that will lead to nothing less than a revolution in marketing as we know it, a transformation of our corporate cultures, a fundamental upheaval in traditional media and for some, a tool for radical social change through the building of new networks and communities.

Two well-known and in my view considered evangelists for Blogging are Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. In their book Naked Conversations, Scoble and Israel point out that their argument that Blogging is bringing about a revolution in marketing is not new and that much of their philosophy is based on a book written in 2000, The Cluetrain Manifesto, which puts forward the idea that markets are and will become increasingly based on two-way conversations with customers. Scoble and Israel suggest that most people have a negative view of controlled marketing. They claim that collectively Blogging provides compelling evidence that a communications revolution is underway, moving from a controlled one-way model into a decentralised interactive one.

My own view is that the phenomenon of Blogging is here to stay and is a force that I believe will bring beneficial change in how companies relate to their external audiences and how they humanise their internal corporate cultures. However, as someone who has lived in the bastions of marketing departments of large corporates I don’t believe UK plc will adapt to this change readily or at any great speed — not least because Blogging is in its infancy and must operate within existing structures and attitudes before they adapt and change. I believe Blogging will affect companies’ relations with their external stakeholders but also that Blogging will affect their internal cultures too.

To help decide where you stand on the “revolution vs. fad that will be confined to the few” continuum, I believe there is one major key question to ask:

“Do you believe that traditional mass marketing techniques are essentially flawed and will at least to some extent be overtaken by a more personalised, conversational style of marketing in the future which Blogging and the Internet more broadly will help promote?”

The Blogging evangelists believe the answer to this question is ‘yes’ and so do I, although I think I am pragmatic enough to believe it will take a very long time for personalised marketing to take over from mass media marketing.

In their excellent White Paper, entitled “Talking from the inside out — the rise of employee Bloggers” the co-authors Edelman PR firm and information management company Intelliseek point out two key points. The first is that people are more likely to trust “average people like me” over CEOs. The second is that in a 2003 study McKinsey found that 67% of consumer goods sales are based on word-of-mouth. It seems to me that these two points are the key to understanding why Blogging has the potential to be so powerful as both an internal communications tool and for external marketing, in that Blogging combines a word-of-mouth approach with the authentic voice of “average people”.

In my next article, I look in more detail at how Blogging is affecting external marketing and internal communications and share my own perspective on this.

References

Recommended Books

blog! By David Kline and Dan Burstein

I found David Kline and Dan Burstein’s book a great introduction to the subject. Divided into three parts covering Politics and Policy, Business & Economics and Media & Culture, the book is broad in scope and stimulating in thought. Each section has a wide-sweeping introductory essay by Kline or Burstein followed by a series of interviews with luminaries of the Blogging fraternity. Albeit written very much from a US perspective, I particularly liked the broad context that the authors adopt in trying to explain the Blogging phenomenon. A number of the interviews are available at www.BlogRevolt.com.

Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel

Robert Scoble of Microsoft and consultant Shel Israel are self-proclaimed champions of Blogging who believe Blogging is causing nothing short of a revolution in business practises in general and marketing in particular. They combine in their writing a passionate vision of what marketing and communications could be like with a practical exploration of what is happening in the marketplace by drawing on a number of case studies from a wide area. I particularly liked the questions they pose about Blogging and culture.

Recommended Blogs and online sources

See our glossary entry on Blogging, and Tom’s article on Web 2.0 and decentralised content production, which discusses some emerging business issues arising from the phenomenon of Blogging.

In addition to the Blogs listed above, two that I have found particularly helpful for exploring the field of corporate communications and technology: Shel Holz and Neville Hobson. Hobson and Holz also team up on a regular basis to issue a podcast together, The Hobson and Holz Report.

A number of consulting / PR firms have sites which contain a wealth of information including white papers on Blogging and related topics. I have found the series of white papers produced by the PR firm Edelman and information management company, Intelliseek very helpful.

There is a case study in this occurring right now. Marvel are attempting to establish a trademark on the term ‘Super-Hero’. Blogging super-power Boing Boing launched a campaign on March 18th via a posting titled: ‘Marvel Comics: stealing our language’:

Here’s a proposal: from now on, let’s never use the term “super-hero” to describe a Marvel character. Let’s call them “underwear perverts” — as Warren Ellis is wont to — or vigilantes, or mutants. Let’s reserve the term “super-hero” exclusively to describe the heroes of comics published by companies that aren’t crooked word-thieves.

The impact of this is immediate. A Google search for ‘Marvel Comics’ returns a link to the Boing Boing article on the first page of results.

The story is already spreading rapidly in the Blogosphere:

• Google Blogoscoped

• Comixpedia

• Technorati search for ‘Marvel underwear perverts’

This story may not have the impact of the Sony DRM debacle, but it will be interesting to see how far it goes, and at what point, if at all, it emerges into more traditional media.

P.S. Fans of South Park may also be interested in the emerging Scientology / Tom Cruise / Chefgate ’scandal’