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 the right idea, at the right time, with the right push or set of potential customers, and you need to take off with such velocity that you leave the competition in the dust.

Once a startup like this does take off, there's that other pesky little problem -- monetizing the success. Google transformed the online world by first generating huge traffic, then finding a business model. But Google's success was based on a fantastically clever advertising mechanism that was automated, attracted new advertisers, and served searchers nearly as well as it served advertisers. Facebook hasn't yet unlocked that advertising gold mine, and flubbed up its most prominent try with Beacon. Twitter has no business model yet. Ning has hundreds of thousands of visitors, but still runs Google AdSense ads. And these are the successes. No wonder people are skeptical.

A few of these companies may (and likely will) unlock that genie as Google did and take off. But for any given startup, the odds are astronomical.

The amazing thing is that there are a class of startup companies making good money right now from Web 2.0. They're not flashy and they don't grow like mushrooms. But they've got all the business they can handle and they are growing. I am talking about companies that serve corporate social application needs. This isn't the typical Web 2.0 business paradigm, since serving corporate customers means lots of client service, which is people-intensive -- it doesn't lift off miraculously like a pure technology startup. In fact, in many of these companies, the technology itself is positively mundane. But the startups grow because they deliver value for which they can charge a premium and get customer loyalty. The customers of these companies don't defect when something shiny and new comes along, because they like the service they're getting.

Here are some examples, listed by the objectives they help companies accomplish (for more on these objectives see Chapters 4 through 9 of Groundswell).

Listening. Communispace now has hundreds of private communities that its client companies are using to learn about their customers. It succeeds because it's unlocked the key to running and moderating these communities effectively, and grows despite charging $150K or more per year per community. The other class of listening companies are the brand monitoring companies, and the track record here is great. Research giant Nielsen bought BuzzMetrics. Another research giant, TNS, bought Cymfony. J.D. Power & Associates bought Umbria. MotiveQuest, which is still independent, has typical clients happily paying $30K and up to work with it.

Talking. Talking with the Groundswell is tricky, but there are plenty of agencies ready to help you with it. After building dozens of campaigns and sites, Blast Radius was bought by mega-agency Wunderman. Brains on Fire ignited the spectacular success of Fiskateers. The digital divisions of companies like Edelman also compete in this space, as do the big Web service companies like Avenue A/Razorfish (now part of Microsoft).

Energizing. Ratings and reviews are the easiest way to energize customers to sell others, and the companies that provide them are taking off. Bazaarvoice's clients have generated over 10 billion customer reviews. PowerReviews works with over 200 retailers. And ExpoTV has built a business around consumers creating reviews on video.

Supporting. Support forums work -- they please customers and they reduce costs. Lithium has an impressive client list including Dell, AT&T, Comcast, and Sprint. The community space is crowded, but other companies with growing client lists include Jive Software, Awareness, and Mzinga/Prospero.

Embracing. Startups that enable clients to source ideas from their customers have a bright future, because customer-generated innovation is hot right now. Salesforce.com bought Crispy News and turned it into Salesforce Ideas, which powers idea sites for Dell and  Starbucks. And Innocentive is growing rapidly, with 50 companies including Procter & Gamble offering prizes of $10,000 or more to innovators that can solve their problems.

While many were distracted by sparkly consumer-facing startups, these companies were building and growing solid businesses. Look how many of them were acquired! This is no bubble, because companies that deliver business value to clients have durable growth potential. Could this be the Web 2.0 business model everyone is looking for?

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 least monthly?" or "how frequently do you visit a social networking site?" with examples from their own country. We count only those who visit at least monthly.

That said, this variation is fascinating, to me at least.

Does Korea have the highest participation because of CyWorld, or because Koreans love to connect?

Why are Germany, and especially France, so low? Is it something about the way French people behave online, or is there an opening for a great French social network (or the French version of an existing one, like Facebook)?

Charlene says that in the future, social networks will be like air, surrounding everything. If she's right, the very nature of this question will change.

I challenge you -- will the US become like Korea, and will France become like either one? What do you think?

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 identity, I'll be able to port over my profile, my content, my reviews. Also, I'll be able to see if any my Facebook friends are also members of Yelp -- and be able to automatically have our friendships authenticated and visible on Yelp.

This is the beginning of the future I laid out earlier this spring, where social networks will be like air -- everywhere you need and want them to be. Facebook has a distinct advantage in this space, given its vibrant member base AND its relationships with developers who are already creating these social apps. Ben gave me some startling numbers: 24,000 Facebook applications, 350,000 developers on Facebook Platform, and 70 million Facebook users who have installed an app.

So in a few weeks, we can expect to see Facebook leaving the confines of its server, allowing users to take their Facebook experience anywhere they want. Instead of damaging itself and eroding the value proposition, Facebook is extending the reach of its social network through the Web.

With Yahoo! Open announcing and MySpace in the data portability game, it's now a battle not for just users, but a race to see who can open faster -- and more importantly, play well with other sites. Remember Facebook Beacon? That was an innovative program with partner details not very well thought out or implemented. I don't expect Facebook to make the same mistakes and if anything, they are ahead of the game having learned from that painful experience.

I did ask Ben about the timing of the announcement, coming as it does on the heels of MySpace announcing that it was joining the Data Portability Project. He said, "Openness is part of our DNA, We want to be transparent about our intentions, about the type of functionality we will offer to developers. There is a lot of mistaken perception that we are a close community."

So welcome to the race -- and look for a lot of interesting things to happen as the giants in this space - MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft -- all try to outdo each other in connecting with other sites. I for one am very much looking forward to it -- good bye social silos!

What "dream applications" would like to see developers build in this brave new world of social networks being extended into other sites? And what concerns do you have, especially if you work on a site that could be linked to these social networks? Let me know in the comments below or email them to me at cli at forrester dot com.

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 to make these new standards more accessible to Web site owners who don't have legions of developers at the ready.

Dan Farber at CNET has an excellent review of how Friend Connect works (and what it isn't).

One question I'm hearing is why Friend Connect is being announced now, especially on the heels of MySpace and Facebook announcements last week. Google is tapping into the "all things social" heat of the moment, but it's adding a different perspective -- not as a data source and social network "owner" but as an enabler. It's played this role well in the past with search and mapping APIs but make no mistake -- Google wants to spread its tentacles into the social Web.

The biggest buzz right now about social networks is not about them becoming more open, but about how they can't make money. I expect that at some point in the future, participating sites will have the option of enabling monetization engines via AdSense that tap into the deep profile and user data flowing through Friend Connect -- all done, presumably, with clear user approval and transparency.

For the readers of this blog, how interested are you in adding social features to your site? And if you are interested in doing this, what features would you want to add first? For myself, I would love to add links to identities/profiles for the people who add their comments to posts (again, assuming that they provide permission to do this). That would provide greater context for the comments and potentially stir even more discussion.

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 think people influence each other more through opinions or through behavior (herding)? How does this impact your online media strategy?

Both. Your media has to influence important individuals a lot, and masses of people as well.

Does your POST methodology enable/secure an organization's ability to develop a 'living' and sustainable strategy that identifies, understands and applies the appropriate technologies in an environment of rapidly emerging social media tools?

That's a tall order. The POST method positions you correctly to not be sway with the breezes of rapidly developing technology. The hard part is positioning your company and its thinking. Once you do that, judging new technology opportunities is easier.

In the POST framework, why are people put before objectives? Shouldn't objectives come first?

Either way works well (but OPST is harder to remember than POST). I'd argue that if your customers aren't ready for social technologies, then your objectives will be hard to accomplish with social applications, which is why we start with People. But starting with Objectives can work just as well. It's starting with Technology that will confuse you.

How do you identify what technologies are best when you're trying to launch a new product where there is no previous audience?

We wrote a report on How To Choose The Right Social Technologies. Which ones you choose depends on your objectives.

I missed the T in the Post acronym, please explain. Do you think that by encouraging on line communications you are missing out a large proportion of customers who are not computer literate?

T is for Technology -- choose only after you have decided on People, Objectives, and Strategy. The P will help you with the question you asked -- if your customers are mostly over 65, then don't spend all your money on MySpace, for example. The Social Technographics Profile tells you how much of your audience you can reach with social technologies of various types.

The main idea behind social media is the unintended use of the platform and the unanticipated benefits, locking our vision on a certain set of objectives might limit our openness towards those, I think building social media platforms and empowering community whatever their objectives are is the most important thing, what's your take?

This is an example of what I call Purist thinking. If you don't know your objectives, you may have a community that is vibrant and active but not accomplishing anything for your company. Better to know your objectives, even as you acknowledge that the groundswell itself is in charge of where it will go.

Communities, Social Networks, and Online Video

How do you find out if there is already a community to join related to my industry versus starting a new one?

Google your industry and the word “community” and you’re likely to find it if it's out there. Or search for an answer to a common question or term in your industry. Communities rank highly on search engines.

When starting a community there is only a few users at the beginning (I mean only a few users are posting to forums, blogging...). Isn't there a risk that the new users coming will think "there are only a few users so the products or services offered by the company must not be that good). How to manage this transition period between creating the community and having a large community of users?

Jeremiah Owyang did a whole report online community best practices. He blogged about it, too. Among his suggestions are to invite key influencers in your market to join, participate a lot yourself at the beginning, and use links to drive people to the community at first. Like this one, for our community. 

Where is the line drawn between when a company should create there own social network, or join an existing, successful one?

Jeremiah wrote a report called "Online Communities: Build or Join" that covers this question, and as usual, blogged it. (I swear, I'm not making this up, your questions just happen to match his reports.) His answer is that it depends on your objectives. If the existing network is vibrant and already has a lot of the features you're looking for, better to support or join it than to compete with it. If it's small, or doesn't address what you want, start your own. But you'll have to make sure you're talking about something your customers want to talk about -- a community about your product might not be that popular unless you're making Tivos or iPods.

Do you have any insight/best practice recommendations for how community sites are being tied into companies overall web strategy?

Jeremiah Owyang covered that too. If your community is central to your strategy, make sure to have a prominent link to it on your main Web page. If not, you might want to link it from one or more subsidiary pages. Our Groundswell community is important to Groundswell, but not as much to Forrester, which is why the link is in our menu above. You might also take a look at how Constant Contact does it.

As a marketing associate for an online publication company that provides marketing and sales resources and tools for the professional services industry, how would recommend that I utilize social networking sites, like LinkedIN? What tips would you give me to promote our brand and products?

Linked In's advertising model isn't completely mature yet, but it is a good way to make connections. You may want to create a page for your brand on Facebook and let your fans develop relationships with you.

How are you seeing what companies are doing to get viewers to look at their YouTube placements... and then where are they typically driving them from there?

First you need to have a great video. Then you contact some blogs that might be interested and see if they'll embed the video. It's also good to start them off on digg.com. But it has to be something really fun, like willitblend.com

Is there a typical lifecycle for a social media community or blog? How long should I plan to keep it running? Do they fade out naturally?

If they're successful, the last a long time and naturally spread to variant applications. You need to plan for this.

Specific Examples and Industries

Do you have examples of B2B sites, where companies are successful at seeking ideas/input from business/institutional decision makers?

IT Toolbox is one. Constant Contact is another. The MIKE2.0 Wiki is a third. There are other examples in Groundswell.

Re. the brides.com example: Do you think they're (users) excited about a brand, or just want a cool widget? Does it matter?

The whole point is that it doesn't matter. Brides.com is taking good feelings about weddings and linking it back to their property.

We have heard successful case studies of companies who have leverage social technologies to achieve their goals (e.g., P&G Being Girl). In your research do you have examples of worst cases where companies totally missed the mark by not following POST methodology.

We have plenty of examples of failures in Groundswell. Unsurprisingly most aren't willing to share their names. You can go wrong by targeting the wrong people, being unclear on objectives, ignoring strategic implications, or choosing the wrong technology or technology vendor. Or you can get all those right and go wrong somewhere else.

Is there a similar site [to beinggirl.com] for boys? I have a 12 yr step-son. He would benefit from that.

Don't know of one . . . maybe you should create it! (beingboy.com isn't in use, but somebody has registered it).

Are the Dell blogs and idea storm part of Dell.com, or are they separate sites? Do you recommend linking to blogs from your main site, or making them a separate site? How do consumers find the blogs if they are separate sites?

The Dell sites are on separate domains, but linked in many cases. It depends on how you want to mvoe traffic around, and how closely allied you want your blog to appear to your company. For example, the blog you are reading is a central part of the Groundswell microsite. Forrester.com has links to it (and we have links to forrester.com) but it's not central to Forrester's purpose so those links are not prominent on forrester.com.

Jericho was picked up already by UHD and they're now showing reruns. 

No cable network has picked up the show for new episodes yet, but one of them is likely to do so.

Has Del Monte put the new product into the marketplace? How's it working?

It's out there -- I bought one in a Pet Store recently. Don't know if it's doing just ok or great.

Other than the Dell Share example do we have any examples of any FS player that has implemented programmes e.g. blog resolution programme?

There's is plenty of online activity in financial services. Wells Fargo is very active and Chase did a program with Facebook, for example.

My company works in investments, an industry selling highly intangible products in an extensively (some might say overly) regulated environment. We want to engage our clients in a social context, but it would have to be vigorously moderated/filtered. In your opinion, can this be done? What's an example of success in such an environment.

 

Both Pharma (myalli.com) and financial services companies have participated. It's all a matter of getting legal and regulatory people on your team from the beginning, and setting up guard rails so you don't need them looking in to every single post.

Hello, Do you think the use of social media for product development works for all markets. For example, do you think people would freely talk about their financial needs and desires or should this medium be used only for industries where people have a close relationship with the product? Thank you.

Not all markets, but I certainly think it work in financial services. Schwab got lots of insights from a Communispace community about Gen Xers and their financial services. They used this to create new products like a free checking account.

Within the travel industry, there are more & more social media sites being introduced. Do you foresee differentiation becoming increasingly more difficult in terms of drawing customers to one site over another?

Sure, it's hard to differentiate when everybody's doing it. But there are so many different strategies possible, so we don't expect everyone to end up the same. ;

What sites that focus on delivering branded journalistic content (e.g. NY Times, WSJ, USA Today, TIME, PEOPLE, Sports Illustrated, etc) do you think are doing a great job of using social media tools to help their visitors participate in creating content for their sites?

Check out ESPN.com, where they let readers comment on every story. And USA Today is basically a news site mixed with a social network now.

ROI/Metrics

How do you establish dollar values in the value column in the roi construct

Same as in any other business project. What is your goal, and how much would it cost to accomplish that goal by other means? Alternatively, what is the value to your business in increased sales, profit, margin, or some other financial metric? This is where metrics like cost per lead and equivalent spending on PR would come in.

Does Forrester provide help with metrics and valuation for objectives and social technologies?

Yes. I'm working on a report on that very topic right now.

Hello Josh and Charlene, Please elaborate on the best social media measurement tools, from the most simple to the more complex.

This question itself is complex. I'll be able to tell you more in a month or two -- for now we are still working on a detailed explanation of such metrics. Many of them are listed in Brian Haven's engagement report.

How did you come to determine the $ amount of the value of each of the blog categories. I.E. - Word of mouth - what did you base the value of this on.

Equivalent value of the goal accomplished by other means, for example, paying a PR firm to persuade reporters to write news stories. The details are in our report called "The ROI of Blogging," which we also blogged about.

Can you give some more info on the blog you are describing? How many writers, posts/day, engagement activities?

It's based on the GM Fastlane blog. For details you'll need to see the case study.

Do you have any numbers on how many people come to sites like the site for Dog lovers on the tampons one?

The "I Love My Dog" community was a private community set up for research purposes with only about 300 people in it. Beinggirl.com gets more than 2 million visitors a month.

Organization and Agency Relationships

Is it necessary to re-organize inside the enterprise if the company has a top down (hierarchical) approach in order to create a successful online strategy?

Quite the contrary. These applications work better as small projects out of single department. When you have a bunch of them going you may want to think about reorganizing -- that's what Dell did. ;

What do you think of as the ideal social media agency structure? Is it a consulting model with a project-based scope? Is it an agency model that helps manage a brand over a longer course of time?

Short-term thinking has driven many agencies to look like the former, but an agency that manages brands over the long term is better positioned for the valuable assets that social applications create. My colleague Peter Kim wrote a report about how Agencies Must Build Digital Skills To Survive.

To what extent are these community sites and initiatives created and developed by advertising/marketing agencies, or are they primarily developed in-house?

We've seen both. If they're built by an agency, long-term they may still end up managed by the company. 

Social Technographics

The total percentage on that slide was over 100%. Can you please explain how the percentages were generated?

That's not a mistake. People can be in more than one group -- it's not a segmentation. You could both read some blogs (Spectator), comment on others (Critic), and read others (Spectator), for example. See our explanation of Social Technographics.

How can a company persuade customers to step up the level of social engagement? Is it possible to move customers up the ladder?

That can be very difficult. They will move up, but social pressure from friends is a more likely cause than company activity. Counting on this kind of movement decreases the chances your strategy will succeed.

Competitors and Detractors

In any social network sponsored by a brand, their competitors will take note and become involved - either overtly or covertly. How do you manage them?

Their participation is inevitable in any open community. If they're not being disruptive, you have to live with that. If they start promoting themselves or disparaging you, you can kick them out, although that's easier to do if you've set a policy about it ahead of time.

Does the book talk about corporate responsibility/ethics? what's to stop a company from having an employee(s) from creating negative posts, videos, etc about competitors?

We talk about this in the book, but it's mostly an extension of existing policies. Most companies have policies that criticizing competitors is not appropriate except in certain limited settings, e.g. salespeople talking about features, or designated spokespeople with PR approval. You should extend these policies to the online world. If you're not allowed to stand up a conference and say it, you shouldn't be able to blog it, either.

There are companies that charge $1,000 a month to scour the Internet for your company's name, and 'suppress' the infavorable info with lots of new favorable copy. What are your thoughts on this new industry of 'profile management'?

We quote Grant Robertson in our book on this topic, even as he was quoting the TV show NewsRadio: "You can't take something off the Internet. That's like taking pee out of swimming pool." Better to spend your money on improving your reputation than paying somebody to shoot the messengers.

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

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 be reviewing your product, or where. Influencers may touch a lot of people, but so do the masses of reviewers on Yelp, or Amazon.com, or TripAdvisor. And heaven forbid you get people talking about your brand on The Consumerist.

If most of your customers like you, the lesson is this: help them to talk. Install ratings and reviews on your site. Create a blog and let them respond. Give them online tools and energize them. And embrace the fan groups they form on social networks. Fan the flames.

What if your customers don't like you? Shutting them up is not an option. My only useful case study for this is Dell, which (1) started to seek out bloggers who were complaining and solved their problems to make them happier and (2) actually improved their customer service. That's expensive. But if you're in a cutthroat market it's required.

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 everything so we can avoid just that!” 

Here’s the secret. When you start a groundswell project, you will be treating people as individuals. But very soon, you’ll be able to get economies of scale. How? By enlisting those same customers.

For example, Dell told us (the story’s in Chapter 8 of Groundswell) that when they started their most recent support forum, 1999, they knew they’d need moderators. They pulled 30 support reps off the phones and converted them into forum moderators. Those support reps answered questions online, just as they had been on the phone.

Already, Dell was getting more efficiencies, since each answer could be read by dozens or hundreds of other people searching for it on their support forum.

Now, five years later, the support forum is many times larger than it was then. And the number of moderators is no longer 30. It’s five. And that’s because the members of the community are moderating it themselves. 

It’s the same in marketing applications. You seek out influencers – bloggers or key people in discussion forums. You connect with them, treat them as important. And they spread your messages into forums that echo and react to those messages, hundreds of times.

Cymfony monitors brand chatter. But the result isn’t just a number – it’s sentiment, together with specific posts you want to pay attention to. MotiveQuest does the same along dozens of dimensions. You don’t have to deal with individuals, but you can, if you determine there are some who deserve your attention.

So as you seek corporate scale economies in groundswell applications, remember these principles.

1. As applications grow, economies appear. Seek them out. You’ll need them to deal with a huge application.

2. Use members of the community to moderate, regulate, and manage the community. It makes them feel good, and it saves you time. This is how Wikipedia became so huge. Every discussion forum and Facebook group has people like this – recruit them and empower them. (And they nearly always work for free!)

3. Use technology where possible. Visible Technologies finds the influencers in your market. Salesforce.com’s idea software lets you turn your customers into an innovation engine. Vendors are springing up all over to solve these problems – paying them is cheaper than hiring people.

4. Don’t avoid the exceptions, seek them out. You’ll learn more from them than from the “masses” – they’re the creative ones. They can make the most trouble, or generate the most positive energy, depending on how you treat them.

This is just a start, but you get the idea. Feel free to add your own scale principles in the comments.

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 speech is slightly different from what we put in the book -- but the point is the same, that Critic, not Creator activities are the best fit for this group of consumers.

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 you to join them.
• Paying it forward. Having seen that a site is useful, you may be moved to contribute.
• The altruistic impulse. This is Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake's "culture of generosity." It's what made Wikipedia possible. People just want to help.
• The prurient impulse. People are sexy, entertaining, and stupid. All that is on display in an endless parade of exhibitionism.
• The creative impulse. If you're a photographer, a writer, or a videographer, the Web is the perfect place to show your work.
• The validation impulse. People who post information on Yahoo! Answers, for example, would like to be seen as knowledgeable experts.
• The affinity impulse. If your bowling league, your PTA, or your fellow Red Sox fans have connected online, you can join and connect with people who share your interests.

Respect this diversity. Keep it in mind as you set up your social applications. Assuming everyone wants the same thing as you do -- or as each other -- is a big mistake.