Jeremiah Owyang posts on the things that make a good technology evangelist and community manager.

        1) Community First

Puts the community or the customers as a priority over the company.
This person is an advocate for the customers, and will often go ‘join’
the community, rather than try to build it. (I learned this from Tara)

2) An Educator, two-ways
Teaches the community about the company and it’s products, often in a non-invasive manner.

3) Uses the tools and communication style of the community
In 2007, this is primarily blogs, online pictures. I see this moving to Video, Twitter, and a vast array of emerging tools.

4) Puts a Human Face on the company
This person actually shows their real face, both online and at events.
Forget those stock images of the pretty Asian woman at the computer,
and use a real person, who can relate to the community.

5) Not just a Marketing Role
This is not just a PR or marketing role, this role actually extends to:
Customer Support
Product Marketing and Engineering

6) Knows when to get out of the way
Sometimes this role is to connect the right people in the
company (who know more about the product details) with the right
customers. Also this role will connect prospects with customers, in a
new form of “customer references”.

7) Pushes the “Membrane”
Scoble told me about this in 2005, he pushed the corporate membrane at
Microsoft, which is a pliable movable invisible wall. Once he felt he
pushed it, and was just about to poke through, he would back off. If
Corporate Comms and Management gets uncomfortable with the community
manager, then you’re doing the job right.”

Some other things I have seen from other good community managers:

1. Understands and communicates back to the company (that sponsored the community) the value of the community.

2. Facilitates discussions among community members / participants so
they can feel free to discuss issues outside of the community.

Customer of ours wanted to get to 112,000 community users and adopted many techniques to get there including buying lists of competitor developer networks, getting on competitor community to learn who the key influencers are, “spamming some of these lists”. They made the number with about 1 month to spare.

Nate had a good question on Future of communities.
“Take Facebook for example. They spammed the students at their
university over and over again to get a userbase. What you do with that
userbase once it’s there is related to the question above. But how you
get them there in the first place? Now that’s a question I’d like to
see an ethical answer to (that works).”

Do you think they did whatever it took to get to the goal? They did not do anything illegal, but then again.

<img src="/images/64360-56413/iwLogo2_2006.gif”>

The blogging world is abuzz about San Francisco Chronicle and InfoWorld troubles.

InfoWorld is apparently shutting down their print magazine to focus on events and online.

Now if I were the head of InfoWorld I would prefer to have a “spin” on this entire “episode” instead of being defined by the blogging community. Some EVIL ideas (I admit these are evil but they would work is my sense).

1. I would have partnered with Go Green Initiative and said – “We are trying to use less paper, so we can do our bit to help the world use less of our natural resources”. Then make sure that for a whole week my entire staff only used mass transit to make a point. Trust me it’ll get a lot of press, especially from the tree hugging crowd.

2. Make a big deal about the online IT Exec Connect at InfoWorld section highlighting the social network and social media as TAKING over the IT news business. Showcase 3-4 key participants who can blog about how they prefer the online services offered by InfoWorld to the print (which they never read anyway).

3. Work with Nick Carr and come up with a changing trends of the IT industry that favors niche providers like themselves and others rather than generalists like Information Week.

So, why did they not do any of this, but rather let Rafat Ali and few other very influential bloggers “spread the news” before the news?

McKinsey surveyed 2800 executives on their adoption of Web 2.0. You have to register to get access to the report (Its free).

What is web2.0 according to McKinsey?

A) blogs, crowdsourcing, social networking, podcasts, RSS, peer to peer networking, web services (mashups) and wikis.

Here are some highlights:

1. More than half of the executives surveyed say they are pleased with the
results of their investments in Internet technologies over the past
five years, and nearly three-quarters say that their companies plan to
maintain or increase investments in Web 2.0 technologies in coming
years.

2. Most popular web 2.0 investments are: 1. Web services 2. Collective Intelligence (crowdsourcing) and 3) Social Networks

3. Investments interest in web 2.0 is highest in India, followed by Asia-Pacific in general, Europe, China and #5 is North America.

4. Retail and High Technology are the sectors with the highest interest.

Interesting Question: Why are India and China higher than US in interest an adoption of Web 2.0?

1) Because of their services based economies?
2) Because they feel they missed out on web 1.0?
3) Because their N American counterparts are just jaded from previous “cool technology” efforts so they are not getting on the band wagon  yet?

What do you think?

There is no blogger that does not have their own top 10 list. In fact most cases this post of the top 10 list is the most popular (also for link baiting) and the post with the most views.

Why are they so popular? Several reasons exist, but most particularly they are easy to digest and some actually are real value.

So if you a community manager and see a host of discussion on a single topic, its almost an automatic that you can create a top 10 list, and most likely that will stir debate, commentary and be the one with the most number of page views.

If you are however reading a top 10 list on anything and want to review it to use some of the suggestions (e.g: top 10 ways to improve comments to your site or 10 steps to get more visitors to your site. Here is what I have found works:

1. Try upto 3 (not more since you want to measure the effect) of the items recommended. E.g. If the best way to get comments in your blog post recommended is to ask an open question then try that with your next post.

2. Tag or save it with a reminder to go back and read it in 2 weeks. What did you learn from the 3 items of the 10 you adopted? Is it time to try 3 more and leave 1 away? Yes, some items in the top 10 DONT work – I have personally adopted many top 10 suggestions to improve my blog and I have learned again and again that the audience matters most when implementing anything new.

3. See if you can make your own list of 10 by putting together the best things that worked so you can have your personalize list to share.

What are the best top 10 lists that you have liked so far?

Amy Gahran (Content Strategist, Info-Provocateur) blogs about an event Columbia at University Graduate School of Journalism: “How Newspapers Can Survive (and Thrive) In the 21st Century.“
Now they had a who’s who in terms of lineup for he panel discussion:

• Robert Kuttner, founding co-editor of The American Prospect and author of an 8000-word treatise on the session’s topic, The Race, published in the latest Columbia Journalism Review.
• Steven Rattner, former New York Times reporter and author of the controversial Feb. 15 Wall Street Journal op-ed Red All Over. He’s now managing principal of Quadrangle Group LLC
• Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times
• Amanda Bennett, executive editor/enterprise, Bloomberg News
• Jim Brady, executive editor, washingtonpost.com
• Nicholas Lemann, dean of the journalism school, moderated the session

Here is a question:
“I asked the panel what value, if any, they thought fostering and
engaged online community brought to news organizations’ bottom line.”

“After a bit of silence, Lemann then offered this: “This might not be
what you want to hear, but I guess getting more content from the
community could ‘help’ a newspaper’s bottom line by allowing them to
get rid of news staff.”

3. Create a true sense of community within the newspaper readership which facilitates greater ad revenues.

What am I missing?

5AP in a complaint filed in GetARealLife court countersued 0rac1e alleging creating “corporate boredom & misrepresentation on a grand scale” (editorial note: This is 9.2 on the Richter Scale not to be confused with scaling the Mt. Everest).

In a complaint filed Friday in GetARealLife in San Francisco, 5AP
alleges that 0rac1e employees have posed as 5AP virtual employees to
gain access to 5AP’s GetARealLife online community. Once logged in, 5AP
says, 0rac1e repeatedly bored 5AP virtual employees by talking about integration of their 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 different companies and used web 9.0 technology to build smaller communities within their older and more boring web 2.0 community also called InternetWeaver.
5AP also alleges that 0rac1e stole other “confidential materials” such
as  color schemes for their virtual shirts and their color mechanism
for their skins. 5AP seeks unspecified damages to the tune of US$0.02
and for stealing their white box documentation format – which 5AP had
uniquely colored  “eggshell white”. Both 5AP and 0rac1e shares were
trading up on the Spandex Exchange (GetARealLife’s official Dollar
exchange).
In late 2008, 5AP said, it noticed unusually heavy traffic on its
GetARealLife virtual community site. That was because “0rac1e sales
reps using 5AP customers virtual id’s who
expired or soon-to-be born had, in a matter of a few days or less,
accessed and copied thousands of boring software code and support
materials,” 5AP said.

“We would understand if 0rac1e would copy the virtual identity of a
cool community such as InYourFace, but to take something as boring as
our stuff is really nutty” said Jane KnowItAll, CEO of 5AP.

Bob IAmTheRealGod, CEO of 0rac1e responded “D-uh”.

PR expert Giovanni Rodriguez
said “This is a new age PR tactic that I did not expect from either
company. Hats off to their PR outfits, they should hire more of our
people.”
Editorial:

1. 5AP: not to be confused with software maker SAP

2. 0rac1e: not be confused with software maker Oracle

3. GetARealLife: not to be confused with Second Life

4. InYourFace: not to be confused with MySpace 

5. Giovanni Rodriguez: please confuse him with the real deal and my friend G

I met with Chris Heuer at our offices today to discuss ways to work with Chris and Howard Greenstein about Social Media Club.

<img src="/images/64360-56413/journalist_cartoon.jpg”>

3 people asked me this during last week: Ami C of Deloitte, Jim S of Shared Insights and Elizabeth C of Yahoo.

“Are you going to blog about this?”

Now, normally I dont think much about it, but it really got me thinking.

I was asking them all the same question – “What is your view on the market for communities? Is this another cry wolf situation or is this for real this time?”

 There are a few folks like Barry of Shared Insights and Mike of Impact Interactions that have been in the community industry for over 10+ years, so I was trying to get a consolidated view of the market potential.

Back to our question: – Is there such as thing as “off the record”? What are your options knowing that someone is a blogger?

1. You can put up a front and really say the kosher thing. This works for some people some of the time, but those of us who have been interviewed several times know that this does not work all the time.

2. You can put it all out and really say what’s on your mind and leave the rest to consequences. The problem is of course the Internet has a LONG memory. E.g. Apparently Webex Diane D said a few things off the record to Nate that he posted on his blog. She took in all in stride apparently.

3. Make sure you really know the bloggers background and profile before engaging. Not the best approach but an option neverthless. Mention to them when something is off the record and when its okay.

So what would you do? If you know someone blogs frequently and often, what would you do when you are taking with them?

I interviewed Jane KnowItAll, the CEO of Communities-R-Us in June 2012. Here is an excerpt from our discussion.

Mukund Mohan: Jane, tell us more about what happened in the community market in the last 3-5 years?

Jane:
Yes it has been a wild ride for sure. In the last 5 years we have seen
an explosion in the number of online communities to the point where
there are more communities than there are people in the world. For
example my dog has an ID chip inserted in his leg, so she can connect
with other dogs (only dobermans) in their RFID community
to discuss how to bark in a more efficient way at Postmen or strangers.
But with humans, the community aspect got its hype in 2008 time-frame,
then faded for a few years, when everyone realized this was not all
that fun, so offline communities became the vogue again, but after 2009
when a lot of privacy and universal online id issues were resolved, communities became the new black.
Mukund: So what has driven the growth?

Jane: Primarily the need for people to connect and feel connected, and the growth of the Personal Social Index, which is widely accepted number replacing your Net Worth as the true indicator of your “wealth as a person”.

Mukund: Tell us more about the Personal Social Index? I have one, but is it like my FICO credit score?

Jane: Its another measure of your self esteem with your peers.
Basically we look at multiple factors such as a) which communities you
are a part of? b) how often do you blog? c) do you say something that
is useful? d) do you snore a lot when you are online? e)  which
communities rate you as an alpha? etc. Its a 49 point online community profile (we stole this from eHarmony and their bad ads). Then we compute it all together and pick a random number between 0 and 1000 and assign it to you.

Mukund: So if my number is 150 does that mean I am a loser?

Jane: Well, 0 to 100 means you are a moron, 100 -250 means you are a
loser, 250 – 500 indicates life but no brain and 500 – 700 means you
have a lot of link love and finally >700 means you know something or
have some pictures of someone that they dont want everyone else to know
about. But now we have potential employers looking at this number as
seriously as the background check, your credit report check before they
hire you.

Mukund: What does the future hold for online communities?

Jane: Who knows, we did not know this in 2007 for example when it
was a fun time and everyone walked around like it was the gold rush for
online communities. What we do know is it will be a lot more parties,
more community news and lot more fun.

Mukund: Thank you for wasting our time.