The Future Place Blog

Why should you use a short term online research community?

At present I am writing a book for Wiley that will provide a guide on how to conduct online research, from panels to social media, from blog mining to e-ethnography. I expect the book to be available next year.

As I make progress I will be post occasional snippets and I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Note because it is a formal book thing, I need to point out that in posting snippets here I am retaining the copyright.

The first such snippet comes from one of the largest sections in the book, on online market research communities. These tend to come it two varieties, continuous and short term. This snippet looks at when a short term community might be appropriate.

Short  Term Communities

A short term community typically runs from three days to three months, and will have between 30 and 500 members (although there are exceptions to these parameters).

Unlike continuous communities, short term communities are likely to be conducted as an alternative solution to a traditional, specific research problem. A small community, for example 30 to 80 members, is likely to be seen as a replacement for a qualitative project, a larger community might be positioned as an alternative to either a qualitative or quantitative project.

Examples of short term communities include:

• Developing a communications programme
• Evaluating the needs of a group of users or customers
• Testing  a product or service, for example a website or financial service
• Understanding customers’ relationships with a product or service

A short term community is unlikely to develop a true sense of the community between the members and the brand, so short term communities will usually need to be incentivised. This is especially true if the time-line for the project is short and the workload for the members is relatively onerous. However, if the brand has a very close relationship with its customers, incentives might not be needed.

Short term communities are normally created and moderated by a research agency. This is because a short term project does not normally have the time and money to build an approach from scratch. There are speed and cost savings in using an agency which already has a solution and who only need to tailor it to the particular research project.

In a typical short term community, say two to three weeks in duration, the members of the community are expected to contribute to the community on a daily basis, but new tasks (e.g. discussion and polls) being set daily.

Because of the compressed time-line, a moderator plan is normally created for the whole project, at least in outline form. In many ways the moderator’s plan is like the discussion guide used in a depth or focus group. The moderator plan will be modified during the project, in responses to the inputs from the members.

Vegemite catch a cold with crowdsourcing

Australian brand Vegemite has seriously upset its fan base by a recent experiment with crowdsourcing, according to an article on the BBC. They asked users to suggest a new name for a new product and have launched it as isnack2.0. This new name has incensed users who have been protesting about the brand name.

The problem might well be that Kraft (the owners of Vegemite) only went partway down the crowdsourcing route. They asked for ideas, but selected the winner themselves.

Now they are going to re-do the exercise, getting people to vote on the new name.

Interestingly, an article on AdAge claims the original Vegemite name was chosen via a public competition in the 1920s.

Kindle disappoints Princeton students

Slashdot has an article describing how a pilot by Princeton University (in the US) to supply 50 free Kindles (eBooks) to students had left some of them disappointed after just two weeks. One student is quoted and explains the benefits of a traditional book, including writing in the margins, using stick notes, highlighting text and so on.

I found this interesting as I blogged yesterday about Chris Anderson's new book Free and commented that I had paid for a conventional book, rather than accessing a free copy online. At the time I wrote the post I wondered if that was because I was not one of the young net naturals. But I suspect that eBooks are simply not sufficiently far down the road yet. I think they will replace books one day, but it might be a while yet before that happens.

My suspicion is that we need to see two separate developments. 1) ePaper, with ePaper you could get the equivalent of a newspaper that you could read on the train or in a waiting room, but the content could be readily updated. 2) a system based on small screens (like an iPhone) with moving text, and readers who have grown up reading moving text. With a small screen the conventional way of reading, where the eye scans across and down is always going to be a problem for fast readers, too much of the time is taken using the fingers to move the text. Either the text will have to be moving most of the time, or it will need to track the eyes in some way to 'know' when to move.

TNS Video about low cost flying

Although the qualtiy needs improving, TNS are still leading the field in terms of posting videos on YouTube.

I do not want to be negative, because TNS are doing more than most to explore and exploit this technology. However, I do have two misgivings about the latest video from TNS, with Tom Costly presenting.

The first point is that somebody should have told Tom that he was rocking. The clip is only 3 minutes long, so it should have been re-shot. If the presenter was still rocking he should have been encouraged to sit down.

The second concern is about the content. The presentation makes it appear that TNS believe the answers to the questions they have asked, and that they feel people who say they would, in large numbers, prefer seat allocations would be prepared to pay more to have pre-allocated seating.

Mobiles, the developing world, and GDP

The Economist has a great short video, showing the impact of the mobile phone of the developing economuies' economic growth, and then goes on to look at Internet and mobile broadband.

Note the clip starts with an ad, but that's life.

Free – a new business paradigm

Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail was a hit, back in 2004, causing us to re-evaluate the way the Internet was changing the nature of business. Anderson’s main proposition was that the age of the blockbuster was over, that a growing share of business is coming from niche products, which Anderson calls the tail (as opposed to the big hits which Anderson refers to as the head).

Free is an extension of the case put forward in The Long Tail, although the style of the book is somewhat different. The Long Tail was written in a very journalistic style, but Free is more of a light scholarly work, looking to research and establish Anderson's case more thoroughly.

The main thrust of Free is that in many areas the cost of producing a product or service is close to zero, particular where that service is delivered in what Anderson describes bits (e.g. an online copy of a song or movie). When the marginal cost of a product is zero, or close to zero,  the traditional form of economics, which are the economics of scarcity, do not apply.

Anderson uses Google as a great example of where 'free' is going. Google made USD$4 billion profit last year, from just two of its many services, from AdWords and AdSense. Most of Google’s products and services are given away free, for example maps, docs, search, Earth, streetview, Android etc. Google are even paying to put satellites into space in order improve the service they are giving away for free. The business sense for Google is to encourage more people to use the Internet, as this helps their commercial business.

In conducting his analysis Anderson draws a distinction between things made of atoms (e.g. coffee, chairs, and coal) and those made of bits (e.g. computer games, online services, and recorded music). His proposition is that young people, the net naturals, understand that the marginal cost of 'one more' use of a ‘bits’ product is zero or close to zero, so they do not expect to pay to use it.

I found the book really useful and interesting. As an economics graduate, I found the re-working of traditional models very interesting. However, I am not sure this is a book for everybody. The basic proposition is very straightforward.  Only people who want to follow the whole argument, and to ‘collect’ the case studies and examples will probably feel the need to read the whole book.

The book has been available free, as an online download, (and may still be available free). However, I chose to buy a copy at £18.99. My reasons for choosing to buy the book were:

1. I did not want to read it on the screen, too tiring and I wanted to read it at times when I could not be sure that I would have access to my screen.
2. I did not want to print it out as that would be very non-green, and actually quite expensive.
3. I work well with the traditional book format, I carry it around and read bits when I have a chance, I read in bed and can simply put the book to one side when I want to go to sleep, and for the purposes of review or research I have developed the habit of writing in the book, which has the great advantage of keeping my notes with the book.

For me, one of the interesting experiments currently being conducted in the area of free is the recent decision by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to start charging for all online content. The logic of Anderson’s book is that this decision by Murdoch is doomed to fail. There has to be scarcity and demand before charging for access can work, there is demand, but there is no scarcity for most of the material News Corp are offering.

BIG Conference call for Synopses

One of the nicest conferences, IMHO, is the BIG Conference in the UK.

BIG is a B2B conference which means the attendees all have a common area of interest and the agenda is focused. At BIG there tends to be a large number of repeat attendees, which has resulted in an evolving programme.

The conference is held in a remote location (near Cheptsow in Wales), and the number of people is controlled to be about 125 (I think). This combination of remote location and small number means that everybody gets a chance to meet everybody, which is really refreshing these days.

I have just received an email alerting me to the call for synopses for BIG. The conference will be held in May next year, but if you want to submit a synopsis you have until November to submit something.

If companies don't cede control, users may just take it!

Jeremiah Owyang has a great post about Google's SideWiki, SideWiki allow visitors to a website to add comments, which others than can then learn from. Owyang then goes on to discuss how the balance of power is shifting from brands to customers.

If you are using FireFox or IE you can see an example here.

If companies don't cede control, users may just take it!

Jeremiah Owyang has a great post about Google's SideWiki, SideWiki allow visitors to a website to add comments, which others than can then learn from. Owyang then goes on to discuss how the balance of power is shifting from brands to customers.

If you are using FireFox or IE you can see an example here.

Great branding programme about WD40

I have just listened to this broadcast on the BBC and it is great. Listen to the passion and knowledge that the people who run WD40 have about their brand. It was broadcast on 22nd September 2009, so you should be able to listen to it for at least a week, maybe more.