About our book -- Groundswell -- and how you can be a part of it

by Josh Bernoff

We thought it was time to give you an update on Groundswell and how you can be a part of it.

As you'll recall, Groundswell is not just this blog, but a book we are working on. Groundswell is about winning strategies in a world transformed by social technologies.

How do we find these winning strategies? Despite what you may have heard or imagined, we don't just make them up. We research them. This research is based in part on the extensive, global consumer surveys Forrester does, a program we call Technographics. But there's a more important, essential ingredient.

You.

The book will be crammed full of case studies from organizations that succeeded through embracing consumer technologies. While we bump into quite a few of these in our interactions with clients and our research, with this post I'd like to reach out and ask you tell us about what you're doing.

We're especially interested in projects that have:

• A good story about how you got started and kept going.
• Real business results you can speak about. (Successes are great, but we'd also like to hear about projects that flopped or haven't succeeded yet, too.)
• Real people involved in the project that we can speak with.

And in case you are worried about the public nature of sharing with us, we can keep these examples confidential until the book is published some time next year.

So send us an email. Click here for Josh, here for Charlene. And be a part of the Groundswell.

USA Today gets a rough introduction for its social makeover

by Josh Bernoff

USA Today introduced a redesigned Web site today chock full of community and social features. Here are Steve Rubel's and Michael Arrington's mostly positive take on the new site.

At Forrester we've advocated making online articles like blogs so users can comment on them. USA Today does this one better. Once you sign onto the site you can add comments, recommend articles, even set up your own blog. USA Today is trying to create a USA Today "community." Here is a list of all the new features.

So, what's USA Today's reward for all this activity? If you read the comments, the readers hate it! The two most commented-on stories (easy to find by clicking on the appropriate tab in the news section) are the letter to readers and the list of new features. The letter to readers has 186 comments from readers as of this writing and nearly all of them talk about how much worse the design is than the old design.

Now newspapers always get negative feedback from readers in a redesign -- people like their old familiar look. (It's like when your lover gets a new haircut.) But now it's gut-check time for Gannett, who have got to be wondering if letting readers talk is a good idea. Herewith my advice for the media company and its competitors.

• Don't look back. USA Today cannot go back to its old design and ditch what must have been a huge redesign effort. The ability for readers to comment is crucial and will be a big differentiator. Plus it will help the newspaper to better understand what people really want and like. So ride it out.
• But don't stand pat. Clearly people loved some elements of the newspaper's old online design, specifically the ability to see a bunch of news stories and stock quotes in an easy to navigate format. So bring this back, maybe in a "quicknav" button or feature. Your readers are talking to you -- can you listen? This is true test of whether USA Today has made the social transformation, or is it just lip service?
• Bring the readers into the print paper. The true sign of whether this change is working will be when Gannett changes coverage in its print paper "because you asked for it." For example, top comments on yesterday's stories, or a list of the week's top recommended stories.
• Why can't the Journal and the Times do this? The Wall St. Journal and the New York Times "know" that people read their papers for the authority of their editorial voice. The tempation will be to look at USA Today and say "this is the desperate move of a second-tier player," plus to feel some schadenfreude at the negative feedback for their competitor. But community comments and feedback would add to the Journal and the Times' relevance. The Journal used to have links to the stories most blogged about, but they seem to be gone now. The Times lets you create a permalink to their story in your blog. In essence they are saying "You can blog about our authoritative coverage," but not "We will listen to you." This will prove shortsighted, but it's always the top dogs that move last. When they do move, they should learn from USA Today and make sure they don't lose what attracted readers to them in the first place -- not just editorial authority, but site design features.

Tags: USA Today, newspapers, social media, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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Can social networking sell more beer?

by Josh Bernoff

We got briefed yesterday by Anheuser Busch and BlueLithium, the creator of the minglenow social network, on their new alliance.

Here's the deal:

Minglenow is a social network dedicated to nightlife -- partying, bars, and restaurants. It  has 300,000 members and is aiming to get well into the millions. While I don't drink (and some people would say I'm no fun at all), I can understand the appeal -- people form friendships and networks around nightlife, and this is a way to extend the connection, especially around photos of the people you were hanging out with having a good time. And hey, if you drank so much you didn't remember much, those photos could help remind you who it was you had your arm around last night and why his red, monogrammed hankie was left in the backseat of your car.

Now, imagine you are Anheuser Busch. You own the beer market -- your market share is around 45%. The real competition is wine and cocktails -- hence the "Here's To Beer" campaign which celebrates beer and doesn't mention any brands at all. You've already committed $30 million to create bud.tv, an extensive online video site about your brands. Why not spend (and we're guessing here) another million or so to try out social networking?

So "Here's To Beer" is sponsoring the "Clink" portion of minglenow, where people post photos of themselves clinking glasses. The branding on the site is subtle -- as Tom Shipley of Anheuser-Busch told us, "Beer doesn't have a name recognition problem." More interesting is this: A-B has tapped its 600 distributors and 300 other non A-B beer distributors to get kits out bars and other locations to generate interest in this activity.

OK, so let's assume after all this effort that minglenow takes off. Let's assume that people in bars all across America want to take pictures of themselves and upload them and become part of a "nightlife community." This might get people to go out more. It might get them to drink more beer, but I don't see how. I agree that an Anehuser-Busch "Budweiser" community probably doesn't make sense -- what do Budweiser drinkers have to talk to each other about? But what's the point of all this activity?

On the other hand, maybe I am thinking to much like a media analyst. Once you have a few million partyers in a social network, what would you do with them? Maybe this will all pay off down the line somewhere. Given Anheuser-Busch's market share and ad spend, why shouldn't they find out?

Tags: beer, minglenow.com, Anheuser-Busch, social marketing, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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