Why our analysts blog at forrester.com

by Josh Bernoff

I'm not a corporate spokesperson for Forrester. But as a prominent social media analyst here, I wanted to comment on the recent discussion regarding our policy on analysts and blogs.

Forrester is and has always been a leader with analyst blogging. Charlene Li started this blog you’re reading in 2004. We love blogging. And many of our colleagues that came from Jupiter, the company we acquired in 2008 are also avid bloggers.

The Forrester management team needed to make a decision about analysts and blogging -- on our site or off. I didn't make that decision, but I did advise the management, and I agree with the decision we made. What people need to understand is that Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product. Blogging is an extension of the other work we do -- doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example. As Sting said, "Poets, priests and politicians/Have words to thank for their positions." Analysts, too.

Think about other companies that employ writers and creators of opinion and analysis, like newspapers and magazines. Where do you find David Pogue's posts about gadgets? On the New York Times site, since that's who employs him to do those reviews. You won't find Katie Couric's posts outside of CBS , either. Why not? Because of the confusion that would arise. You know when David and Katie talk, their opinions are part of the content they create for their employers, who are in the content business.

Companies in the information and analysis business are not the same as other companies from this perspective. There are many good blogs by executives and other workers in all sorts of companies, and we certainly believe such companies should allow their employees to blog, subject to the usual rules about not disclosing confidential information, etc.

But for Forrester, it serves our clients better to be able to get to all our blogs from one place, and to know the opinions of analysts that they see are part of the other opinions they read in our reports, in press quotes, and in everywhere else we talk.

Forrester does not yet have individual analyst blogs on our site, but that's coming quite soon. This is why it's so ironic to read comments that "We don't let analysts have individual blogs" or "Forrester should read Groundswell." I cowrote Groundswell, and I believe our policy is the right one. Groundswell says that your employees will be blogging -- it doesn't say that content companies should have their content creators blog anywhere they want. If you're creating content for a content company, that company ought to host your blog.

We’re not stopping analysts from blogging about stuff unrelated to our analytical work. And they can Twitter all they want. And they can blog all they want, about anything relevant to their jobs, right here on blogs.forrester.com. I count 23 blogs there. Some of them are pretty good.

Our analysts will still be blogging here at forrester.com. We're improving the platform to make it easier for analysts to have their own space, and we expect more analysts to be blogging here more often than ever before. You're welcome to take issue with our opinions. But rest assured, you will be able to read those opinions, and we can be just as analytical, provocative, and interesting here at forrester.com as anywhere else on the Web.

2/8/10: For more detail, see guest post from Cliff Condon, in charge of social media policy at Forrester.

Seth Godin, Blogger: An Interview

Let’s face it. Seth Godin’s blog is a wondrous thing. It’s consistently No. 1 or No. 2 on the Ad Age Power 150. More importantly, it’s pure insight. At least once a day, every day, there’s a little homily on marketing, or brands, or quality, or on something else that makes you say “hmmm” or “that’s right” or even “that’s wrong” – but something that’s worth your time.

Do you have any idea how hard this is? Nobody else does this.

When I contacted Seth to interview him about his blog, he was bemused. “I don’t know how to bottle what I do,” he wrote. “I just do it.” OK, let’s admit you cannot imitate Seth – you don’t have what he’s got under that bald head of his. But I am hoping you can learn by observing some of what he does. So here goes: an email interview with Seth Godin about blogging:

The clarity of your posts tells me that you have a clear idea of your audience and what they will get out of it. On the other hand, from reading you for years now, it seems you’ll write on just about any topic. When you write a blog post, who do you imagine writing for?

There are things we do with words in mind. For example, it's easy to say, "I wonder what my cousin would like for her birthday, let's see, she's twelve..." and then go find something. There are other things we do without vocalizing. Tying your shoes, say, or picking out a bouquet of flowers. 

I don’t sit down and say, “I wonder what Josh needs?” Instead, I’ve carefully curated a voice in my head that blogs in a way that appears to resonate with people. I’m guessing (though I have no talent) it’s a lot like curating a sound on the saxophone. Training helps, listening to records helps, but mostly you blow a lot until you resonate and then repeat, prune, experiment, prune, repeat, prune until a groove occurs.

One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice. You won’t get it for a while, but you’ll get it. To one person who wrote in and said he didn’t think he had anything interesting to say, I asked him whether he was boring in person too? Boring at breakfast? Boring on a date? That boring?! Probably not.

Every blogger needs grist for the mill. In looking at your posts, they’re sometimes based on current events or other people’s blog posts (like your post on Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s book Free) but more often than not, they are just some freestanding insight. Where does this stuff come from? I can’t imagine that you sit down and it just comes pouring out. What do you read/follow/think about that stimulates this stream of insights?

How come some people can visit a place like New York and see a thousand amazing things, take hundreds of great photos (like Thomas Hawk) or even write a novel... and other people visit, eat at Applebee’s and send home a John Lennon postcard?

It's not where you go, it’s what you look for.

An insight a day is an incredible pace to keep up, but you never seem to miss. Do you write ’em in bunches and dole them out daily, or do you always have a pile that you’re working on, or do you really just write one every day?

I write at least one a day. I queue up the extras, and replace ones I don’t love with a new one. This discipline does two things... first, it treats each post as a precious opportunity (which it is) and second, it cajoles me into overcoming whatever little voice in the back of my head says, “nahhhh.”

Your blog doesn’t sell ads, and you’ve resisted becoming TechCrunch or ReadWriteWeb and turning it a sort of blog/destination with multiple writers. But the blog must reward you in some way beyond the pleasure of writing. What does your blog do for you and your business?

I have a problem with the second part of the question. Two problems, actually.

First, why is it that once business gets involved, it’s assumed it’s okay to do things that aren’t fun or rewarding or kind or generous, but only things that make money?

And second, why is it assumed that people can’t do business-like activities without getting paid?

Those guys at AIG getting the big bonuses? I don’t understand the mindset that says the millions they’ve got aren’t enough, that they shouldn’t skip a quarter or two, that the work is so horrible and grinding and deadening that they couldn’t possibly consider doing it just because they’re great at it and love it...

Sorry for the rant, but the only reason I blog is because I love it. I love being able to create something that feels like a gift, giving an idea that spreads, that may improve something for someone. I’m certain (just speaking for myself) that if I figured out a way to profit from it, I’d probably be starting down the road to wondering how to maximize that profit, and if I tried to do that, I’d fail.

For example, I don’t mention Squidoo.com (a company I started) on my blog now and then because it would make me money (the mentions have so little impact as to be less than the cost of hosting), I mention it because I genuinely want to share what I’ve got, or give people a tool they will benefit from.

I think there’s plenty of room for blogs that exist to pay the blogger, or blogs that exist to turn a profit. That’s just not the kind of blog I’m writing, and I’m not the kind of blogger that could do that.

Your blog accepts trackbacks but no comments. You respond to emails but Twitter only links to each post. I sense a carefully considered set of decisions here. Can you help us to understand why it works that way?

What works for me of course won’t work for everyone. But for me, the issues are distraction, time management, the little voice of self-doubt and the desire to push through the Dip of mattering. Comments and Twitter are like a Fresnel lens. You can use them to focus attention if you’re very disciplined and very good, or, if you’re like me, you’ll end up finding your energy and attention diffused into a maelstrom, lost to the winds of inanity, anger or trivia. It’s in my DNA. I can’t do it, just as I can’t read in the car.

For those that are succeeding (and I have to confess, the number I see isn’t as big as you’d think given all the hoopla) I say mazel tov. To those that are using it as a defense mechanism, an opportunity to stay busy while not actually doing anything, I wonder if that’s a good choice.

Like Guy Kawasaki, whose blog is also full of delightful little nuggets, you could edit and reorganize your blog into a very nice book. Ever considered it?

Where, exactly, do you think Guy got the idea, Josh?

http://www.smallis.com

If I wasn’t the first bestselling author to do this, I was close. I even won a fancy audiobook award for it. It inspired Scott Adams’ book too, which is better than mine.

I have another collection coming out along these lines, but in a different format that I hope to announce soon...

I said before that people couldn’t imitate you, because they don’t have your software between their ears. But I bet there is something you’ve learned from blogging that the rest of us might be better off if we did it, too. Which of your habits should we imitate?

Oh, I think imitating my habits is a great idea. Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.

Thanks for the questions, Josh. This was fun.

 

When & How To Pay A Blogger

by Josh Bernoff

(Also published on Advertising Age's DigitalNext blog).

In what is easily the most contentious issue I've dealt with recently, the question of whether it's ever ok to pay a blogger has reared its ungainly head. The recent stir started last holiday season when Sears/Kmart paid startup Izea to to send bloggers on shopping sprees. Ford loaned Fiestas to bloggers to get coverage. The FTC weighed in with guidelines. Andy Sernovitz, author of Word Of Mouth Marketing, is having fits. Business Week stirred the pot by labeling it "Blogola".

When my colleague Sean Corcoran and I researched this topic, we realized that this practice, which we call "Sponsored Conversation," is here to stay. Some bloggers are journalists, and some others act like journalists -- those will adhere to tight ethical standards on gifts. Other bloggers will take money to write anything, and have no credibility -- you don't want to pay them, since no one believes them.

But there's a whole class of people now with a following, bloggers who just write what they believe. Mommy bloggers like Jessica Smith, for example. These bloggers are already reviewing products in exchange for loans or donations of sample products. Bloggers gotta eat, too. Should they take cash to write about products? Should you pay them?

If you don't want to lose your job -- and if you want to retain any credibility -- you should move forward very carefully here. We strongly recommend that you heed these key elements of the FTC rules:

• Advertisers must disclose “material connections” between themselves and their endorsers that might “affect the weight of credibility of the endorsement (i.e. if you compensate or pay in any way, you must disclose)
• Endorsements by bloggers must “reflect honest opinions, findings, beliefs or experience” of the endorser
• Both the marketer and the blogger can be held liable for misleading or false statements made by the blogger about the brand.

But do it right, and you can get people with a following writing about you in their own voice -- a powerful persuasive force. As Sean noted in his recent post, the key here is transparency and authenticity. Here's an excerpt of our recommendations:

Know the rules and educate everyone involved. Before you even think of dipping your toe in the water you will need to familiarize yourself with all of the necessary rules including the existing FTC guidelines, the proposed updates to those guidelines and Google’s policy on the use of no-follow links. Also take note that other countries such as the U.K. have have stringent policies on this subject as well. Get legal involved upfront and make sure anyone working on it is educated on the subject.

Mandate absolute disclosure and transparency. We have preached this from the beginning as it is by far the most important rule. The FTC’s guidelines are clearly about deterring deceptive advertising, a practice you shouldn’t be involved in anyway. Make sure any and all bloggers you work with make it VERY clear to their audience that your brand is involved in the development of the content. If you fail to do this you will put yourself at risk for not only a bad PR mess but legal trouble as well.

Ensure authenticity. You must allow bloggers to speak freely and authentically – not just because the FTC requires it but because credible reviews are better for your business. Just as consumers find product reviews on e-commerce sites more credible when negative reviews are included, consumers will find reviews about your products more credible when the reviewer is allowed to speak about it in their own voice. This is the real power of working with bloggers – to get them to talk freely about your brand with their community, not to use them as a megaphone to spin your message. If you’re not comfortable of letting go of your brand then sponsored conversations aren’t for you (and you may want to revisit your overall social media strategy).

I don't expect all you gentle readers to agree with this -- it's too controversial a topic. But paying bloggers is here to say. So if you do it, do it right.

The future of the Social Web, according to Forrester

by Josh Bernoff

Today we published our report about the future of the Social Web. Jeremiah Owyang did the research here, I was the editor (which means it was my job to make him think harder). As usual, the abstract is free, the report is available to clients. And see Jeremiah's post on the new report.

If you're preparing to participate in the Social Web, you need these ideas your mind. First, that with a common ID developing, the social experience is about to get a lot more frictionless. And second, that not just social networks, but every brand site will become social -- whether you include these features, or visitors bring them along.

So what should you do to prepare? First, get started with you social applications now, or you will be completely overmatched as social technology gets woven into the fabric of the Internet. And beyond that, focus more on finding your fans, since they and their friends and friends of friends will be your most important asset in this new world.

Additional Note: Facebook announced today it is further opening up its interface to outside developers. This reinforces the ideas in the report about how the social networks are becoming more deeply embedded into the total Web experience.

Why sponsored conversation -- aka paid blog posts -- can make sense

by Josh Bernoff

I'm ready to weigh in one a very controversial topic: is it ethical and appropriate to pay bloggers to post about your products?

A couple of months ago an uproar arose because, by working with a company called Izea, Kmart had paid some prominent bloggers including Chris Brogan to post about their stores in the run-up to the holidays. It wasn't just them; Panasonic also paid some bloggers to make videos at the January consumer electronics show.

Some thinkers including David Churbuck savaged the idea. But here at Forrester we've been thinking about it, and we're ready to tell marketers to go ahead -- if they obey some very clear rules about the right way to do it.

In a piece by my new colleague Sean Corcoran, we call this practice "sponsored conversation." (Full report available to Forrester clients; others will see an abstract.) When you look at sponsored conversation in context, you can see it fits into a nice spot in the groundswell between PR and advertising. In PR, you try to get a blogger to talk about you, but your chances of success are hit or miss. In advertising, you can be sure to get a placement, but it's not in the blogger's voice. Sponsored conversation -- paying a blogger to write about your product -- fits in the middle -- it guarantees a post, and it's in the blogger's voice.

The challenge, of course, is can bloggers do this and retain any credibility?

We believe they can, if -- and only if -- they obey two rules.

1. They must disclose that they are being paid.
2. They must be able to write whatever they want, positive or negative.

These are requirements, since any blogger or marketer who violates them will not be credible. But for marketers to succeed, we have two other suggestions:

1. Pick blogs that match your products. This is why it makes sense for Ford to work with Jessica Smith, a mommy blogger, to talk about its new minivan.
2. Build a relationship with these bloggers, so you can extend this connection.

The conversation up to this point in the blogosphere has ranged from rational to polemical (words like sluts and whores are being slung about) but you know, bloggers gotta eat, and marketers gotta market. The forces leading to this spot were inevitable. The highest value in the groundswell was supposed to be authenticity, and acknowledging who paid you and then telling the truth is sufficiently authentic, in my opinion. If you are a blogger in the journalistic mode, it's fine for you to take the pledge and not take this money. But there are lots of ways to blog, and many of them will allows for this type of paid but authentic posting. Bloggers who do this too much, or sound too much like company shills, will lose their credibility, but there is room to accept payment and retain your soul.

People don’t trust company blogs. What you should do about it.

by Josh Bernoff

Consumers trust company blogs less than any other channel.

This result comes from a survey we did in Q2 of 2008. Have a look at the data yourself. Not only do blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company email, and message board posts. Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them. If you’re a corporate blogger or somebody who advises companies, you need to take this into account.

For our clients, the full report is here. If you're a marketer who would be interested in this report, you can download it after you register here.

Now I suspect this report is going to generate a lot of discussion in the blogosphere, and it’s easy to misinterpret. So please, humor me and read the rest of this post before you write your own take on this. If you’re interested in the way we collect data, that’s at the end.

We examined these results further. Among people who regularly read blogs (at least once a month), 24% trust company blogs. Among people who blog themselves, 39% trust them. These are low numbers any way you slice it.

In fact, those who trust company blogs are the most trusting of all consumers. Not only do they trust blogs more than average consumers, they trust everything more. Your blog isn’t winning over many skeptics, folks.

In retrospect this result is not that surprising. People don’t trust companies in general. Why should they trust a company blog any more than a press release or an advertisement?

So, what should you do about this?

Make no mistake. This is not a plea to give up on blogging.

It is a plea to be thoughtful in how and why you blog.

This means that if you blog, your goal should be to create a blog about which people say “I like that – I don’t think of it as a company blog.” For the most part, that’s a hurdle you need to jump to gain their trust. I don’t mean to hide who is writing the blog. I mean it has to be more about your customers than it is about you.

Blogs exclusively about companies and products are what I think generate these low trust ratings. So don’t do a blog like that.

Instead, adjust your strategy based on your objectives. (Sound familiar?)

If you want to be a thought leader and helper for your customers, and you blog frequently about those customers’ problems and solutions, then you can generate trust. This takes time and effort, but it will enhance your company’s reputation and it’s worth it. Want an example. Check out Rubbermaid’s blog.

If you have created a community for your customers, your company needs a voice in that community. A blog is a natural way to meet this need.

If you have hordes of fans, blog for them. This is great if you are Harley Davidson or Apple (which, ironically, have has no company blogs). For the other 99% of brands it doesn’t apply.

You can also blog, or Twitter, just to be on the record about your company. This is fine; Motrin could have benefited from this strategy. But if you do this, just recognize that you’ll be playing defense, and that people in general will not trust you.

So, right at the moment when companies are getting ready to join the groundswell, I’m telling them to stop and think. Always a good idea before taking a step into the melee, wouldn’t you agree?

A note about how we collect data. The data comes from an online survey we conducted in Q2 of this year. Our online panel is as representative as we can make if of the US online adult population (18 and older). Companies use our data all the time, and I believe it’s the best available survey of its kind; we’ve been conducting surveying consumers since 1997. In this case, we surveyed over 5000 people. We asked them to rate how much they trust information sources on a five-point scale, from 1 (don’t trust at all) to 5 (trust completely). Respondents could also answer that they didn’t use a particular information source. In this case about 80% of those we polled said they did use corporate blogs. Of those who used them, only 16% rated them 4 or 5 on the five-point trust scale.

Why Wal-Mart Will Succeed In Social Applications

by Josh Bernoff

I just got back from a trip to Bentonville, Arkansas, home of America’s largest and perhaps most controversial retailer. While there, I met with the company’s top management, IT staff, and a couple of social media folks.  

You may believe that this company will never “get it” – and that in any cases, it has so many enemies that entering the social world would be suicidal. Let’s see if I can convince you that Wal-Mart will become social media’s biggest success story.

Wal-Mart’s social saga starts with a couple of missteps, including a blog that was revealed to be funded by Wal-Mart’s PR agency, Edelman, and a Facebook application for college students that attracted lots of negative comments from Wal-Mart haters. But when 138 million Americans go into your stores every week, you shouldn’t ignore social media, and you can’t hide from it. Wal-Mart didn’t give up after these setbacks, they got up off the mat and tried harder.

Exhibit A: ratings and reviews. Walmart.com is one of the biggest Bazaarvoice installations in the world, powering a site that sells over a billion dollars worth of stuff every year. Wal-Mart is not afraid of negative reviews from customers – for example, the top rated bicycle on the site had 139 reviews including “7th gear skips fairly frequently. . . but at $150, you can’t expect not to find problems.” Wal-Mart is famous for driving hard bargains with its suppliers; we met their PR folks in one of the very windowless, grey rooms where those prices get beaten down. Reviews on walmart.com have most likely extended that power, as the company now has concrete evidence about which products consumers consider to have acceptable quality, and which not.

Exhibit B: the checkout blog. Wal-Mart’s buyer blog is still growing in popularity, but has enabled the company to join the conversation about products. It’s a genuine voice for Wal-Mart’s product folks, enabling them to explain decisions like choosing Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, (a choice that basically put the final nail in the coffin of the HD-DVD format). A post on Wal-Mart buying only milk from cows that don’t receive growth hormone generated a lively and in some cases uncomfortable discussion with 256 comments. Wal-Mart has learned to join the conversation, even in a world full of critics, and is not smothering those that disagree.

Exhibit C: elevenmoms.com. Emboldened by its experience, Wal-Mart tapped a colony of mommy bloggers who write about topics like how to feed your family frugally and how to get ready for Halloween. Don’t sell moms short – these are some pretty sophisticated blogs and Wal-Mart hasn’t changed them at all, they just link to them, and are now bringing the bloggers to Wal-Mart HQ for updates and suggesting products for them to review. Learning from past experience, Wal-Mart and the moms have both made it clear that these bloggers aren’t paid and are under no obligation to slant things Wal-Mart’s way.

Exhibit D: management attitudes. This may be the most powerful of all. Some members of Wal-Mart’s senior HR staff had read Groundswell and asked me to present on the social media topic to 75 senior VP and C-level executives from around the world, including CEO H. Lee Scott. We followed this up with a workshop similar to the ones I run around the country, in which people use the POST method to generate social application ideas. Could a group of C-level executives break into groups and successfully devise social applications? I started to get worried when I saw they’d put all the lawyers together as one of the groups.

What happened next amazed me. When I kicked off the workshop, I mentioned that they might be feeling a little hesitant about these new ideas, since they involve a loss of control. Lee Scott actually interrupted me to say “You’re wrong, we’re not hesitant, we’re ready to embrace this stuff.” And they were. What followed was some of the most rapid ideation I’ve ever seen. I can’t tell you in detail the strategies they came up with – they deserve the chance to develop and announce them when they’re ready – but every single one was a viable, customer-centered idea around concepts like customers saving money or sustainability (that is, green) ideas for Wal-Mart. Even the lawyers came up with a decent application. 

(For cynics who might want to believe this was done just to fool me, trust me, the world’s largest public company has better things to do than bring its top management together from around the world to fake out a business book author.)

Having done lots of these workshops, I’m aware there’s no way to know when these plans will see the light of day, but what I saw was a company open and receptive to embracing and empowering its customers and employees online, regardless of what they end up saying. In short, advanced groundswell thinking. 

Think about the situation Wal-Mart is in. It has plenty of detractors, hundreds of people who feel the company’s labor practices, effects on small-town America, purchases of products from China, and general ways of doing business are a threat. These Wal-Mart haters have gathered in sites like Walmartwatch.com, tend to be socially savvy, and are ready to pounce on any Wal-Mart news or rumors and spread them using social technologies.

But on the other side of the ledger are hundreds of millions of customers. When these customers think about Wal-Mart, their most likely thought is “they sell the stuff I need at really low prices.” If you don’t believe me, see what they’re saying right now on Twitter – it’s mostly about saving money. Wal-Mart wants to turn these millions of voices to their advantage, to use them as a counterweight to their detractors. And with more and more Americans participating in social technologies, they can do it. 

Have I convinced you?

The Wal-Mart haters won’t go away (I expect plenty of them to comment on this post, for example). But this company has legions of people who think of it as a place to get good stuff cheap, and a commitment to pro-social activities like saving energy and responsible sourcing. It’s going to be a battle out there in the social sphere, and Wal-Mart will continue to take its lumps. But with so many customers on its side, I think Wal-Mart will win that battle. Just watch.

Podcast with Clark Kokich, CEO of Avenue A | Razorfish on CEO blogging

By Charlene Li

I had the opportunity to sit down with Clark Kokich, the CEO of Avenue A |Razorfish last week at AARF's Client Summit in New York City. One of the things we discussed was AARF's great use of social technologies within the organization -- in fact, it's a featured case study within the Groundswell book, in the chapter entitled "The groundswell inside your company".

One of the things Clark does is to blog regularly -- but internally to his employees. Clark uses his blog and the company's internal wiki to stay in touch with his 2,300 globally distributed employees spread across 20 offices in 8 countries. But more importantly, Clark uses it as a way to personally connect with employees and to spread the kind culture he would like to see develop.

In the interview, Clark talks about the role and importance of his blogging activities, how he carves out time to blog, and the importance of frank feedback.

Length: 5 minutes 30 seconds

Recorded on May 14, 2008 at the Avenue A | Razorfish Client Summit, New York, NY

Data chart of the week: international blog and user-generated video participation

by Josh Bernoff

In today's post we're showing off our international data capabilities with some data about participation in creating and consuming content in different geographies. This is the first table in Chapter 2 of Groundswell.

I find it amazing what a high degree of variability there is in this data. Note that this reflects percentage of online consumers only. These surveys were done between March and September of 2007.

The blog readership and commenting numbers in Japan and South Korea area astounding. I believe this is where North America is going. I'm at a loss to explain the relatively low level of participation in Germany  and the UK -- any ideas on why this is happening? In the UK, I don't know of any cultural reason why online participants should be reticent to read blogs -- I expect this to reach par with the US (or it may already have done so).

It's an interesting pattern that approximately half of those who read blogs comment on them, with somewhat fewer writing. I'd love to know why readership of blogs is higher in Japan, but writing blogs is more common in South Korea.

The US is the clear leader in both creation and viewing of user-generated video, which is at least partly due to the fact that YouTube is mostly in English. (I refuse to believe we have more idiots making idiotic video in the U.S. -- we don't have a way to survey that!) Given the very high bandwidth available in Japan and Korea I would have expected higher participation there -- is this cultural, or is it because there is more production quality video (on-line television) in these geographies?

Podcasts still haven't caught on the US after years of availability. And they're non-existent in Korea. I am skeptical that these numbers will increase significantly in the U.S. or that other parts of the world will surpass the U.S. number.

One note: we use different survey methodologies around the world (for example, what you see here came from mail surveys in Europe and online surveys in the U.S.) Also, the surveys were not taken in the same month. So direct comparisons are subject to significant variation that's not explained by geography.

If you found this data interesting, you can learn more. We have social technographic profiles from around the world available free. And clients can get access to all of our survey data.

Survey: Your feedback wanted for our Groundswell Blog

by Charlene Li

In an effort to listen to our readers and to improve this blog, we've created a survey to get feedback on this blog, as well as several other Forrester blogs (Forrester's Marketing Blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang, and Being Peter Kim).

We'd like to get your honest feedback with the survey, and it will take a few minutes of your time. We'll publish the results here, so that you can learn about your fellow readers and also connect via comments.

The feedback will be invaluable to us -- confirming what we think we're doing right and identifying areas where we need to improve.

Please take the Groundswell Blog Survey - we need your feedback!

Thanks!