by Charlene Li

Josh and I will be giving a series of four teleconferences over the next few weeks, examining various topics discussed in the book. These are deeper dives into the topics, and will also feature plenty of time for questions and discussions. (Please note that these Webinars are part of Forrester's client offerings, so you will need to be a client to attend or pay a fee.)

Here are the dates and descriptions for each of the teleconferences -- click on the title links to get more information and to register. We hope you can join us!

Thursday, May 15th: Social Technographics: Building And Maintaining Your Social Strategy
8am PT/11am ET/4pm UK

This teleconference is an update to the call hosted by Charlene in Q4 2007. Social Technographics® helps to interpret how consumers adopt Social Computing technologies like blogs, social networking, podcasts, and tagging. The teleconference reviews how companies can use Social Technographics® to develop a coherent social strategy, as laid out in the book, Groundswell.

Thursday, May 22nd: Listening And Talking With Social Technologies
10am PT/1pm ET/6pm UK 

Listening and talking with your customers are two of the five business objectives that companies can achieve by using social technologies. This teleconference provides an overview of the concepts discussed in the book Groundswell and shows how technologies like private communities, brand monitoring, blogs, online video, and social networking sites can be used.

Wednesday, May 28th: Energizing Sales With Social Technologies
10am PT/1pm ET/6pm UK

Energizing a base of loyal customers is one of the five business objectives that companies can achieve by using social technologies. This teleconference provides an overview of the concepts discussed in the book Groundswell and shows how technologies like ratings and reviews, branded communities, brand advocates, social networking sites, and widgets can be used.

Thursday, June 5th: Supporting And Embracing Customers With Social Technologies
10am PT/1pm ET/6pm UK

Supporting and embracing your customers are two of the five business objectives that companies can achieve by using social technologies. This teleconference provides an overview of the concepts discussed in the book Groundswell and shows how technologies like private communities, ratings and reviews, and innovation hubs can be used.

by Charlene Li

Google announced that it would be releasing Google Friend Connect this evening (link won't work until Monday evening.) 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 they 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

This week we'll look at a group that gets less attention online, seniors. (If you're new to this weekly data chart or the Social Technographics Profile, check out the previous weekly data charts.) This chart is from Chapter 3 of Groundswell.

This chart raises an interesting question. Let's say your product is aimed at seniors -- like Flomax, or retirement communities. Obviously, your market isn't nearly as active in social applications, with less than 10% Creators and under 40% Spectators. Should you give up on the idea?

Not necessarily, but you'd better proceed with caution. Here are some situations in which approaching seniors with social technology makes sense:

• You only spend a little. Sometimes it's worth it to reach 30% of your market, especially the most active 30%. Just don't blow your whole budget on social applications.
• You tap into existing communities. Eons won't let you in until you're 49. Gather hits a more mature audience than most social networks. You can reach the social portion of your older audience more easily there, since they've done work of recruiting.
• Your audience has a strong need to connect. Cancer patients are a lot older than the average consumer. They're also strongly attracted to connecting with fellow sufferers and sharing support and information. As a result, the American Cancer Society's Cancer Survivors Network is extremely active, despite having a lot of older Americans in it.
• You make it easy. The imbalance between Spectators and Creators is especially vivid among seniors. This puts the onus on you to help them out. Seed your networks and applications with content and make it effortless to respond. Seniors are a lot more likely to participate if you make the on-ramps easy to navigate.

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

Facebook just 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."

Details on the four main feature -- Trusted Authentication, Real Identity, Friends Access, Dynamic Privacy are below in the extended post. 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.

Four key features of Facebook Connect, from their blog post:

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users' information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

These are just a few steps Facebook is taking to make the vision of data portability a reality for users worldwide. We believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data. It's about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings.

We look forward to working with other leading identity providers to develop the best policies and standards for enabling the portability and protection of users' information.

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

by Josh Bernoff

Some of you like to read. Some don't. So we arranged to bring Groundswell out as an audiobook.

You can download it to your computer or iPod from Audible.com or iTunes. Now you can master social applications in the gym, or while commuting.

The audiobook includes nearly everything that's in the text, except for some of the figures and the notes. It's about 8 hours long. If you're looking for the CD version, that will be out this fall.

Some people who know me have said they could hear my voice as they read the text of the book. You don't need to wonder any more -- that really is my voice on this audiobook. I spent 15 hours in a recording studio on this. It is an interesting experience to record what you have written -- it was like reliving the experiences of the people we interviewed. The trick is to be interesting without being too dramatic. You'll have to let me know if I succeeded.

Here are are a few samples.

From the introduction (5 minutes, with both Charlene and me, introduces the book).

From Chapter 1 (16 minutes, introduces the idea and then gets you all charged up).

From Chapter 12 (4 minutes, Stormhoek Winery living in the Groundswell, some of my best writing).

If you want to embed these on your site go here.

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.

by Charlene Li

There was an audible collective sigh of relief that the Microsoft-Yahoo! acquisition soap opera was finally at an end. For three months, the tech world has been paralyzed by the prospect of “Microhoo”, believing that the deal was inevitable. Sanity prevailed on Saturday, as the two giants couldn’t come to an agreement on price and Microsoft declined to pursue a hostile bid that could have proven ruinous to both companies. (Full text of the Microsoft announcement and the Yahoo! response are available.)

A year ago, I wrote about why such a deal wouldn't work, and also how Google would act as Yahoo!'s savior. An acquisiition may still come to pass in the future, but at a significantly lower price. But the world continues to turn and both companies will have to explain themselves to investors, employees, advertisers, and consumers.

Microsoft must define and deliver on a strategy that shows how they can “win” now without Yahoo! as a search jump start. (Frankly, we were skeptical that Microsoft could have integrated Yahoo quickly and effectively to realize the full value and vision of the acquisition). Rather than continue to chase Google’s dominant search position, Microsoft should redefine the “battle” to one where search is an integrated part of the marketing mix. Microsoft has assets and relationships that GOOG doesn’t have: 400 million users relationships through communication tools like Hotmail and Messenger, the aQuantive acquisition, strong display advertising business, and investments/relationships like Facebook. Moreover, AdCenter is well positioned to service advertisers on both the display and search sides, although actual offeringDeal is offs that tie the two together are still in the works. But the thing they don't have today is a strong search user experience, the root of the problem.

With the Microsoft acquisition threat fading, Yahoo! has been given a reprieve but it must explain and execute on a strategy that supports their belief that the company is worth $37 a share – or face another round of acquisition attempts and shareholder revolt. Yahoo!’s three-pronged strategy of being the starting point, advertising platform for the Web, and openness is sound but it has been muddled due to poor communication and tactical steps. At the core, Yahoo! has to convince advertisers that it still believes in its advertising platform, especially in light of the tests it was conducting with Google’s search marketing platform. If Yahoo! ends up trading in its Panama search platform for higher search revenues from Google, it will be giving up any potential for a workable integrated ad platform.  Yahoo!'s advantages especially in behavioral marketing could strongly tie together display and search marketing and the foundation for new marketing solutions and revenues. And it's new Yahoo! Open strategy could position it well regain the engagement of users.

And let's take a quick look at Google. From any perspective, Google was going to come out strong from this three-month soap opera. A dispirited Microsoft and floundering Yahoo mean Google can point to itself as the safe haven for both marketers and consumers.

What do you think about each company's positioning and strategy -- does each company have the right game plan and assets in place? And if not, what should they be doing?

My previous posts:

May 4, 2007: Why Microsoft + Yahoo! makes sense -- and why it won't work

Feb 1, 2008: Microsoft's bid for Yahoo!: What it means

My pick of the best analysis thus far:

Paul Kedrosky: Analysis of the Microsoft Decision, Plus Yahoo's Hari-Kari

Michael Arrington: Yahoo's Tough Week Ahead

Om Malik: Microsoft to Yahoo: Take A Hike

Kara Swisher: Yahoo's Nightmare Scenario: I'm from Google And I'm Here To Help!

Joe Wilcox: The Microsoft-Yahoo Blame Game

by Josh Bernoff

Even thought it's actually been available for a weeks, today is the "official" publication date for Groundswell. That means it's in stores all over the US and on iTunes and Audible as an audiobook.

We created this book to help people take advantage of the social computing trend. But is it actually useful? Only you can answer that question -- and we'd like to hear your answers.

We love bloggers reviewing the book, but you may not have a blog, or have time to write a few paragraphs. So why not make it easy. Twitter your review.

Start your review with "@Groundswell" and keep it to 140 characters. Why? Because it enforces some discipline on your thinking. And because it makes it easier for the rest of us to read all the reviews.

If you're not on Twitter, you can certainly write a 140 character review in the comments below.

Or you can leave it on our wall at Facebook.

Want to see what others are tweeting, use this Summize link or this Tweetscan.

(If you haven't read the book, what are you waiting for? Buy it here or here.)

Around May 15 we'll highlight the most interesting ones in a post on this blog, and we'll be retweeting them from @Groundswell on Twitter.

Looking forward to hearing your ideas!