The Future Place Blog

What is your favourite blog search engine?

I have been reviewing a few of them recently for the book, including Google's blog search, Technorati, IceRocket, and BlogPulse, but may favourite at the moment is BlogScope.

I like the advanced search options and I like the extras.

For example, when I searched "Climate Change" it generated 403K results with at least some influence. It also suggested the following ten words were the most associated terms

• Science
• Copenhagen
• Sustainable
• Environment
• Including
• Energy
• Year
• 2010
• Scientists
• New

This search can be seen here although, your results will be a newer than mine of course.

I also really like the popularity curve, see image below.

 

Click here to see the popularity curve live on the site.

So, what is your favourite blog search tool?

Easy to use Web Scraper

This is a really good video showing how to use OutWit a simple to use Web Scraper that sits as an extension to Firefox.

Remember, there are ethical considerations about using Web Scrapers. In particular

1. Some services have Terms and Conditions that prohibit automation, for example Google does.
2. When deciding whether something is truly in the public domain it is important to keep in mind the author's intent. If somebody posts a comment in on online discussion they might have the expectation that it would only be read by human, not scraped and searched.

However, if the web scraper is simply being used to change 20 minutes of cut and paste into 1 minute of scrape and post, then there is probably not a major difference.

The book continues to make progress

Despite spending some wonderful time with my family over Christmas, I have been able to make a bit more progress on the book, Handbook of Online and Social Media Research.

Over the last few weeks a number of people have been kind enough to help in lots of different ways. Some by contributing via this blog, some directly sending me thoughts and case studies, some Tweeting advice or just encouragement.

One key group have been kind enough to join a LinkedIn group and have reviewed pages and in some cases whole chapters of the book. There are so many people helping that all I will be able to do is to thank them, and when I next see them buy them a drink, but their help has been invaluable. Because the publisher for the book is Wiley, all the copyrights and such for the book and the contributions end up being owned by them, but there will be space in the book to list and thank the many helpers.

If you would like to join the group, sign-up in LinkedIn and you will be greatly welcomed.

What techniques work in OLFGs?

As part of the book I am pullnig together a table that indicates which offline focus group tasks work well online. The table below was inspired by an article by Casey Sweet, but has moved on a bit since then.

I would love to hear the views of more people, in terms of agreement and disagreement.

For example, there seems to be some disagreement about how well brainstorming works in an OLFG. My feeling is that brainstorming does not work that well online because I find that participants do not pay enough attention to what others are saying (I find that most of the dialogue is between me and the participants, people are often typing when other people are 'speaking').

Opinion	Description
Better online	Factual lists, e.g. what is in your refrigerator, what products do you use
Same online	Word associations Lists of ideas
Needs changes online	Brainstorming Annotating images
Less good online	Picture or product sorts. Paired tasks

The North America / Europe Divide on Qualitative Research

As part of the book on online and social media research I have been exploring the differences between countires, to help my understand what lies behnd the differential take up of online qual in North America.

I have come up with a set of observations that I would love to share with people and to see if they make sense, so here goes.

This section is based on generalisations, that is to say, there is enough truth in them to make them of value and enough exceptions to make them dangerous.

Most of these observations relate to traditional qualitative as much as they do to online, but they tend to be more important online as there may not be a local partner ‘educating’ the international researcher. The context of this section relates to what an online researcher needs to be aware of, especially as the iInternet creates the illusion that research can be conducted internationally without the involvement of local researchers.

Issues that are tackled in this section include:
•    Europe versus US.
•    Recruiting participants.
•    Online versus offline honesty.
•    Size of groups.
•    Counting and voting in groups.

Europe Versus North America
Although concentrating on Europe and North America is a simplification, it can be justified in terms of the proportion of market research currently conducted there. The data collected by ESOMAR in the 2009 Global Market Research report indicated that 49% of the global research total (in terms of value) is conducted in Europe, with a further 30% being conducted in North America. The next highest total is Asia Pacific with 14%. Not only is the total in Asia Pacific much smaller, but the countries and cultures are much more differentiated in Asia Pacific than they are in Europe or North America.

Therefore the notes below focus on differences in conducting online qualitative between Europe and North America, with references to other markets where available.

Recruiting Participants
The big demarcation in the recruitment of participants (online respondents in qualitative projects) is whether or not they tend to be recruited from panels (either online access panels or specialist qualitative panels). The alternative is to recruit participants via recruiters (assuming the participants are not coming from a client list).
As a generalisation, North America is more willing to accept recruitment from panels and Europe is less willing.
The willingness to recruit qualitative participants from panels has a direct impact on the attractiveness of online qualitative research. Online qualitative, when combined with recruitment from online panels, is more likely to generate speed and cost advantages. Online qualitative when combined with traditional recruiters, free finding sample, tends not to show significant cost and speed advantages.

Online Versus Offline Honesty
Although there are plenty of researchers who have wondered aloud about whether respondents online are more inclined to fib, there is little support for their concerns from the studies that have been conducted. There are studies that suggest for some topics people may be willing to be more honest online.

A 2009 paper investigated the views of online community participants in Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan, and in both China and Japan the view from the participants was that it was easier to be honest online because they were less subject to social pressures (Poynter, Cierpicki, Cape, Lewis, and Vieira 2009).

Size of Groups
The is no agreed consensus for how big an offline or online focus group should be. The span seems to run from about four (sometimes called mini-depths) through to about fourteen.

As a generalisation, offline focus groups in North America tend to be larger than those in Europe. Wendy Gordon refers to ten to twelve participants as being common in the US, with six to eight being more common in UK (Gordon 1999). Gordon also highlights that the US model is more likely to be round a table, whereas the in the UK it is more typical to see soft chairs or sofas.

Hy Mariampolski refers to US offline groups as likely to comprise eight to ten participants, and refers to European groups as being more likely to have six to eight members (Mariampolski 2001). Mariampolski also draws attention to differences in the typical length of focus groups, with a typical offline group in the USA being two hours, whereas in Europe the groups tend to be longer, perhaps two to three hours. Gordon highlighted that the UK also had shorter (two hour groups) and that running two groups in one evening was not uncommon.

However, despite there being little agreement about the size of offline groups, there is a general view that online groups should be smaller than offline groups, both in Europe and North America.

Conformity to a Plan
Qualitative researchers differ in terms of the extent that they tend to stick to a specific plan. For some researchers the discussion guide is a short list of topic headings and perhaps some prepared stimuli. For other researchers the discussion guide can be a several page document, with a number of specific questions, potentially including the wording of specific questions.

As a generalisation, qualitative research in North America tends to stay closer to the plan than it does in Europe (but there are plenty of counter examples).

Online qualitative research, especially online focus groups, is closer in form to the practice of conforming to the plan. The words on the screen are all that the participants see, the text has to do all the work that the face-to-face moderator would aim to achieve with voice, body, intonation, and situation. Similarly, when the analysis of an online group is conducted, it is done so in terms of the specific words used by the researcher/moderator.

Counting and Voting in Groups
One phenomenon that is very rare in European face-to-face qualitative, but which not uncommon in North America, is the practice of asking a question to the group and asking them to vote (for example by raising their hands), and then recording the answers.

Fully-featured OLFG and BBG software have built in features that allow participants to vote and answer surveys, and this reflects that some researchers want to include this voting as part of their research method.

It is perhaps interesting to note that although the issue of voting inside online focus groups and bulletin board groups is still considered divisive, there is broad agreement that using polls and surveys within online research communities is a useful feature to have available.

The Medium-Term Future for MROCs?

In a comment by @prazhari to one of my recent posts, Praz asked about the future of MROCs and about the difference between MROCs and other communities. Well here is my bash at an answer.

At the moment, online research communities (or MROC if you are a fan of initials) are very useful because they are providing something which cannot be readily obtained from other sources. However, when true, large-scale brand communities appear, I suspect that some online research communities could well be subsumed into brand communities.

However, I doubt that most brands will be able to create big enough communities to be able to do without online research communities (or some yet to be invented derivative of MROCs). The reason for that is due to most customers not caring that much about the many, many brands they buy.

For example, in a typical year I fly with about ten different airlines, use about six different rail companies, buy petrol (gas) from about ten brands of retailer, shop at four brands of grocer. In addition I buy many brands of drink, food, clothes, etc. I go to various entertainment destinations, from cinemas to holiday locations, and I am a member of professional, sporting, and political organisations. If I were to join and take part in online communities for all of these brands and activities I would never be able to leave the computer!

An online research community can be configured for any product or service. Finding 500 people to take a real interest in something, anything, can be achieved. But for most brands and services large-scale active communities are not a practical reality.

My own vision, for most brands and services is that they will create large databases of their customers and they will use this to follow people in the broader world of social media. Most of these databases will have some community aspects, and they will deal people in an increasingly intuitive way.

A few organisations will have very large communities, which they will use for marketing, NPD, market research etc. However, most will probably need to have targeted communities, representing a small percentage of their customers when they need a high level of activity. For the foreseeable future, when most brands or organisations need a community to work hard with them to help explore and co-create the future they will need to create a specific community, and incentivise it in some way (i.e. some combination of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards).

I do think that many MROCs will become broader, and incorporate other activities, such as affinity and word of mouth marketing, but I think they will be around for the mid-term (i.e. five years).

My question to you is "How many communities do you think the average citizen will be a member of in the future?"

What are the most relevant MROC blogs?

As part of the book writing project I am looking to create a list of the blogs that anybody who wants to stay up to date should be following. The first version of the list will be included in the book, but I will then expand it and put it on the website that will accompany the book.

So far the list I have includes:

Communispace, a blog from leaders in communities, edited by a team including Diane Hessan

Forrester, Forrester host a blog specifically for ‘Consumer Market Research Professionals’ which can be filtered by the term MROC, edited by a team including Tamara Barber

FreshNetworks, a blog focused on communities and Web 2.0, edited by a team including Matt Rhodes

InSites Consulting, leading edge MR from Belgium, edited by a team including Anke Moerdyck

PluggedIn, subtitled ‘About MROC Talk’, edited by Matt Foley and Ben Werzinger

Virtual Surveys, a general online research and communities blog, edited by a team including Paul Child

Vovici, a blog about online and NewMR topics, edited by prolific blogger Jeffrey Henning,

I would love to hear your suggestions for other sites that should be included?

If you think any of the sites above should not be included, you could comment on the post, but I would probably rather hear about it in an email, it is nearly Christmas!

How many members should an MROC have?

One of the questions I get asked from time to time is how many members should an online research community have. Clearly the answer depends on what the community is there to achieve and what the budget is. But I still get pressed for an answer. After asking around recently I have come up with my best estimates, and I would love to hear other people’s views.

In order to produce an estimate I have broken my thoughts into four answers, the last of which is not what I would call an MROC.

1. A short-term community, lasting two weeks, engaged in a qualitative exploration of a service feature, conducted with regular service user. 30-90 community members.
2. A short-term community, lasting four weeks, using qual and quant techniques to explore new menu options for a fast food restaurant, with sub-groups of personal and family users, 100-250 members.
3. An ongoing community, looking at different aspects of alcohol consumption at home, using qual and quant techniques, 300- 1200 members.
4. A brand panel utilising community techniques to increase engagement and panel retention, representing users of a specific brand of personal care product, the panel to provide a source for ad hoc quantitative projects and some qualitative projects during the year, 5000 – 50,000.

What I am aiming for with my upper and lower bands? I guess am aiming, intuitively, to capture the middle 80%. Perhaps 10% will be larger than my range, and perhaps 10% will be smaller than my range.

What do you think of my estimates?

What would you change?

Networks change power structures

For a couple of years I have been pointing out to some of the larger companies that Web 2.0 and social media are changing power structures in companies. In the past, the people in the top few positions in most research companies were the most knowledgeable, and often the most skilled, a combination of experience and darwinian evolution (other people may not like this point, but I am pretty sure it was true).

However, Web 2.0 and all that has changed the picture. Facebook came into most organisations because the new graduate intake brought it with them. Social media is much easier for the so called 'net naturals' to get their heads around than it is for some of the gurus of past glory.

However, until a few minutes ago, I had not realised how much the networks I am in has changed the people I connect with and the way I learn.

Because of Twitter I am much more in touch with people such as Nigel Legg, Susan Sweet, and Mike Gray than I would otherwise be.

Because of Facebook I learn about all sorts of insight from people like Andrew Jeavons and Peter Harris.

Because of LinkedIn I get advice and suggestions from people like Pete Cape, Paul Child, and Reg Baker.

The people who I see and who communicate with me on my key networks are undoubtedly shaping my views far more than the books I read and the conferences I attend (and I attend plenty of conferences) - and more than the people I tend to work with.

It may be fanciful, but if we look back in history there were many schools of thought that grew out of a physical/social network (e.g. the Bloomsbury set in Lindon or the Vienna Circle based at Vienna University). Will the changes of the future grow out of these new social networks? And, if so, I am in the right groups???

Will MROCs replace BBGs?

To a considerable extent the difference between BBGs (Bulletin Board Groups) and online research communities (aka MROCs) is simply a generational difference. When BBGs were developed they reflected current practice in terms of how the Internet was being used to create discussions, i.e. bulletin boards. Although some bulletin boards and forums still exist, they are increasingly being replaced by online communities, a phenomenon of the world of social media.

It is likely that BBGs, as a research tool, will be replaced with online research communities (also known as MROCs) over the next few years. The BBGs have the advantage of being quicker to create, of currently having more research functions, and of being more suitable for IDIs (parallel In-Depth Interviews). By contrast online research communities are more intuitive for the participants and more attractive to clients.

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The question and text above have arisen out of the work I am doing for my book. I would be really glad to hear other people's thoughts.