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Chapter 3

Word-of-Mouth on Steroids

“Now, the Web is enabling the market to converse again, as people

tell one another the truth about products and companies and their

own desires.”
—The Cluetrain Manifesto

Our friends are more influential than any advertising or marketing

campaign—always have been and always will be. They influence what

we watch, read and wear; where we live and travel. Ask a good

sales pro and she will probably tell you she’s in the

relationships business. Relationships require direct interactive

word of mouth conversations. Ask a marketing officer and he’ll

probably agree, but point out one serious flaw: conversations have

limited range. In this era of superstores, chains and global

corporations, business need to reach mass audiences, oftentimes

global in scope.

So for about 50 years, marketing departments, have put

conversational marketing in the back seat and have let broadcast

marketing drive. But the car is beginning to backfire. Broadcast,

or mass marketing campaigns may get you the customers, but they

shoot wide to hit just a few. If a TV ad or direct mail campaign

generates a mere two percent response, it’s economically to the

advertiser’s advantage. It doesn’t matter if 98 percent of the

viewers don’t like the ads, nor does it matter that so many other

companies are shooting at the same targets. It only matters if you

are part of that 98 percent.

In the middle 90s, for a brief, unfortunate time, co-author Shel

Israel consulted MCI, who at the time were running a massive

television—telemarketing campaign called “Friends and Family,” in

which millions of people were called at home during dinner hours.

After a few months, Israel advised and executive against the

program. “People really hate the intrusion,” Israel counseled. “We

don’t care,” the executive retorted. “We are getting a response of

at least two percent in all places, and as high as five percent in

some pockets. We don’t care if the other people don’t like the

calls.”

Author-speaker Seth Godin (http://www.sethgodin.com) author (Free

Prize Inside, The Purple Cow, Permission Marketing et al) calls

such tactics, “Interruption Marketing, the unanticipated,

impersonal and irrelevant ads” constantly hurled at involuntary

audiences.

The result is that people have not just become annoyed with these

tactics we’ve become resistant. We’ve installed mental and

technology filters to avoid exposure to marketing noise. Our

senses have become deaf and blind to marketing intrusions. We use

spamguard and TiVo to block messages to further block them out.

The result is that traditional marketing has become less effective

at about the same rate it has become more expensive. And that

trend seems to have accelerated since the Internet came in. With

the Web, ironically new tools—Instant Messaging (IM), SMS, Online

forums, e-newsletters and chat rooms and more recently blogs have

extended the conversation’s range.

As Terry Catchpole, CEO of Catchpole Corp. (www.catchpole.com), a

former journalist and PR strategist, observed, “Communications has

gone full circle. It started with conversations, evolved into ads

and PR. Now it’s conversations again.”

25 million customers virtually for free (sbhd)

In December 1996, Arik Vardi, sat with three close friends,

telling his father Yossi, a long-time angel investor, about the

“buddy system,” he and his friends developed to chat with friends

online. Two months earlier, they told 40 friends. Now, 65,000

additional people had downloaded it, all hearing about it by word

of mouth. They called it, “ICQ” (for ‘I Seek You’). With a small

investment from Yossi, they thought the project had some

potential. Yossi gave them encouragement and $10,000.

“I didn’t tell them, but I was totally blown away. I told my wife

this is the biggest thing I’d ever seen. I told her it’s going to

change the world and these kids don’t even know it yet.” He was

right. Two years later, AOL purchased Mirabilis, the company

formed with Vardi’s $10,000—f or $287 million. By the end of 1998,

and now called AOL Instant Messenger, the service had experienced

25 million downloads, less than 26 months since it had all begun.

The total marketing expenditure, amortized over time: near zero.

ICQ had printed a brochure, but never used it. They sponsored a

tech conference speaker but only because Yossi liked the guy.

ICQ’s founders never hired or contracted a marketing employee,

never launched a PR program, never even sent out a press release.

Instead, they used a series of creative, low-cost tactics to

ignite enthusiastic conversations. For example, whenever a new IM

software version was ready, they’d contact 1000 randomly selected

users, giving them each the same “secret password,” and urging

each to reveal it only to their two best friends. As the company

suspected, users ignored the two-friend limit and spread the word

far and wide. By giving users a sense they were insiders, the

company sparked frenetic evangelical zeal.

Another successful touch was inserting slightly sexual “Uh-AH”

sound, whenever a user received an instant message. A teenager

would be talking on the phone, and as a new message came in, the

grunt-sigh sound would be heard. It sparked conversations and the

conversation generated more downloads.

ICQ also pioneered the tactic of using other websites as a

distribution channel. They offered ICQ “communications panels” to

webmasters. Visitors downloaded ICQ so that they could chat with

web hosts, as well as other ICQ users. This resulted in a quick

new 100,000 downloads.

Observers estimated in April 2005, the instant messenger service

had over 400 million customers with tens of thousands of daily

downloads. Still spending next to nothing on marketing, the IM

service is supported now by contextual advertising, which produces

high-margin returns.

While AOL declines to discuss margins, downloads or any other

numbers, we would assume 50,000-a-day is a conservative guess.

What would that cost with a traditional marketing campaign, say

direct mail (DM)? DM pros claim efficiency when the spend 80 cents

per mail piece and their still happy with a two-percent response.

On that math, they need to send out four million pieces a day. The

company would have to spend about $3 million daily. Free vs. $3

million a day? You choose.

Until blogging came along, Instant Messenger was considered the

last great killer application. Although its current owner,

TimeWarner is enjoying huge margins by inserting inoffensive

contextual advertising, the adoption rate was of course helped by

the fact its publishers were offering the product for free. But

there was something else going on, something that Vardi marveled

at. End users sent love letters to the service — not the people,

but the service. Vardi called this phenomenon, “tool lust.” In

his view, people develop emotional attachments to things that

empower new, faster, easier, better or cheaper activity. He sees

blogging’s magic as the next incarnation of tool lust. “What ICQ

did for one-to-one conversations, blogging does for one-to-many.

“Blogging’s a tool that let’s you stay in touch with the whole

world,” he observed. “That invokes passion.”

Talk is Cheap [sbhd]

Back in 1996, ICQ had the capability to let people talk to each

other over the Internet by voice, but because users were still on

dialup, connection was slow, costly and rare. That was probably a

good thing for Skype (www.skype.com) (rhymes with ‘Ripe’), today’s

most popular Internet telephone service. Downloads reached 25

million just 19 months after starting up, breaking ICQ’s benchmark

record. But then, Skype used instant messaging and blogs to

market, which didn’t exist for ICQ in 1996.

Like ICQ, Skype primarily used word-of mouth to invigorate

adoption, although they made a few minor investments into

traditional marketing programs such as conference sponsorships.

Skype, like other companies emulated ICQ tactics, to convert its

user base to a global unpaid sales force. Skype uses tell-a-friend

programs and distinctive sounds as well. The low-cost marketing

strategy has been lethal against other Internet telephone players,

such as Vonage who advertises on TV.

But Skype has bigger plans. It hopes to unseat formidable

traditional phone carrier incumbents. The challenger is adding

low-price, paid services—such as inbound and outbound calling to

and from conventional phones. In that light, the upstart start-up

faces a steep climb against entrenched bigger companies with far

greater money, customers and brand recognition, not to mention

friends in regulatory agencies.

Skype believes it has two competitive advantages. First, most

customers love the service. Few people seem to express love for

Verizon, SBC or WorldCom. Second, tool lust . It has unleashed

word-of-mouth efficiencies that give Skype a huge

price-performance advantage in acquiring new customers. With a

gaunt marketing budget Skype is acquiring each new customer for

fractions of a penny. Analysts estimate a new customer costs a

wireless carrier about $125.

This may all change. Skype recently announced it will begin brand

recognition advertising and promotional campaigns. How big an

investment this will become, and whether it is a wise strategy

remains to be seen.

Skype estimates about one in five free users will use the paid

additional services. Their costs are so low, they maintain, that

this will enable them to build a next-generation dynasty.

Blazing Foxes

Skype’s record of 25 million customers in 19 months was

short-lived. Firefox an Internet browser, considered simpler and

more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) reached 25

million downloads less than four months after launching

exclusively from a blog.

The Firefox story is worthy of a book in itself. Its development

team was never paid to work fulltime on the project as it bounced

around through four parent organizations. It emerged as a

lightening rod for anti-Microsoft sentiment, and Open Source

technology—software built to allow tinkering by end users and

third-parties for whatever reasons. The combination created a

worldwide grassroots army of supporters-in-waiting.

Blake Ross, now 19, dropped out of high school to join the Firefox

development team. He started to blog as an outlet for his

frustrations with the turnstile ownership tenures of Netscape, AOL

and TimeWarner. Eventually named, “SpreadFirefox,”

(www.spreadfirefox.com), the blog became a hub for a series of

no-cost marketing activities and would become one of 2005’s 10

most popular blogsites. Each week on the site, Ross would

announce a new “community marketing campaign.” For example, one

week they’d announce an effort to attract college students. All

they had to do was announce the campaign, then readers would do

the rest, resulting in thousands, and eventually millions, of new

downloads. “Most campaigns were wildly successful,” Ross, who is

now attending Stanford University, recalled, “SpreadFirefox

ignited a groundswell of support,” that erupted organically.”

Firefox reached the 25 million mark six times faster than ICQ,

using similar tactics enhanced by new tools, broadband and access

to many millions more people who had come online in the decade

between the two. For example, early on, they offered download

buttons to other blog and websites. Within a few months, more

websites were linking to the Firefox page via these buttons—than

were linking to the IE site. Today, if you go to Google and type

in “Internet Browser,” Firefox comes up before IE.

Firefox users were so evangelical that they took a collection to

post the first ad — a full-pager in The Sunday New York Times.

According to Hewitt, the ad produced “a nice little blip,” but was

insignificant to the solid, steadily rising rates SpreadFirefox

was generating. By April 2005, the blog was the fountainhead for a

word of mouth system generating 200,000 daily downloads. With each

Firefox download, you also get a free blog. “Our members use these

blogs to invent, discuss, coordinate and execute enormous

marketing campaigns,” said Ross.

Press coverage has been astounding. If you laid all the clips and

cover stories end-to-end, they might extend from Firefox’s Silicon

Valley home, to the doorstep of Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters.

The team is convinced word of mouth did more to accomplish this

than did the solitary press release they’ve put out.

Firefox exemplifies what the blogging denizens call, “the passion

chamber.” It’s a recurring theme in conversational marketing.

People, motivated more by sharing something with friends than the

promise of revenue, start something new. Friends try it, like it

and pass it on. Ross told us, “Firefox was born because it had to

be born, because this product took residence in our minds and

gnawed at us during work, at dinner and on the weekends.” Added

Hewitt, there was no thought of unseating incumbents or the

resulting blazing fame. “We just wanted to build a good browser

that we could use ourselves and share with our friends.”

Word of mouth is at its most viral when the words credibly relay

such passion. The danger of the Passion Chamber, however, may be

the Echo Chamber, as was evidenced in the abrupt rise and fall

of the Howard Dean presidential campaign, ignited by word of

mouth, followed by passionate ubiquitous blogging that raised

millions of dollars and generated media speculation of a victory

that never even came close. In fact, Dean’s passionate supporters

never managed to cross the traditional chasm between early

enthusiasts and mainstream voters who generally had not yet turned

to blogs for information and conversation.

While Firefox has taken the tech community by storm — grabbing 8.5

percent of the total browser market in less than its first six

months, IE still held 87.28 percent, according to OneStat,

(www.onestat.com) a web-analytics company. Webside

Story(www.websidestory.com), another analytics firm, observed

shortly after that the rate may be starting to taper off. By

contrast, InfoWorld, a trade publication reported that BoingBoing,

( http://www.boingboing.net/stats/#browsers) one of the most

popular blogs, estimated that 38 percent of its site visitors were

already using Firefox, a five point margin over Explorer, and a

revealing a sharp contrast to the general market.

When the Passion Chamber gets too passionate, it can turn into an

Echo Chamber where the same people are talking to each other at an

accelerated rate, while thinking the owrd is continuing to go out.

Continuing to spread the message is key to the Firefox strategy to

have technologists seed the mainstream. “I don’t get excited when

I hear a developer is using Firefox,” says Hewitt. “I get excited

when I hear he went home and installed it in mom’s computer.”

Firefox is counting on third-party developers to help them down

the technologist’s creek into the mainstream. Twenty percent of

the world’s web developers adopted Firefox in its first 100 days.

The Firefox team is hoping they’ll produce all sorts of add-on

products making it irresistible to more and more non-technical end

users.

The tactics, initiated by ICQ, adapted and refined by Firefox, are

starting to be emulated by other start-ups hoping to be replicated

by an increasingly large pack of hopefuls including: including

SpreadOpera.com, SpreadNetscape.com, SpreadIE.com,

SpreadSeamonkey.com, SpreadMozilla.com, SpreadOpenSource.com,

SpreadOpenOffice.org, SpreadLinux.com, SpreadFreeBSD.com,

SpreadMambo.com and SpreadUbuntu.com. While these hopefuls may

experience some success, observers express doubts that any will be

catapulted from oblivion to the top tier, as did ICQ, Skype and

Firefox.

So that means you may not get 25 million customers in under 120

days like Firefox, but there other lessons to learn here. You need

to offer something so unique, valuable or compelling that people

will just have to tell others about it. While “tell-a-friend

campaigns” may gain some traction with rewards and incentives,

they aren’t the primary motivator. What turbo charges

word-of-mouth is loyalty to friends—not companies. People come

across something and they just have to tell colleagues about it.

They like to be first and have influence. But none of this matters

unless the product or service is really remarkable.

Remarkable or Invincible [sb hd]

“The new reality of the marketplace is that consumers have a

choice,” author Godin, told us. “They can ignore you. They can

ignore your ads, your letters, your web banners and your

salespeople. As a result, you and every other marketer face a

choice: you can make something worth talking about or you can

become invisible.

”There are now millions of blogs, and each one is edited by a real

person. If you create something remarkable, something worth

remarking about, then they may choose to remark about it. And if

they do, the word spreads.”
The new phenomenon of the remarkable, which author and blogger

Seth Godin calls a Purple Cow, is based on two fundamental truths:

1. Ideas that spread and win. Because it's so difficult for a

marketer to directly contact the people who can actually purchase

something from them, he or she must now rely on people telling

people. The single best way to accomplish this is not with a

clever website or tell-a-friend software or cash rewards. No, the

best way to do this is by making something worth talking about.

Marketing is now about product development, not product hype.

2. Remarkability is in the eye of the consumer. If the marketplace

doesn't think your product is remarkable, then it's not. It

doesn't matter how hard you worked on it or how important it is to

you.

”Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the

people who read blogs,” said Godin, “This is the most curious

segment of the population, the people who are seeking out the new

and the useful. This is the audience that doesn't need to be

interrupted because they are already listening. They are alert, on

the lookout for the next big thing. No need to yell. If you've

invested the time and the energy and the guts to make something

remarkable, this audience can't wait to hear about it.

From Free to Billions [sbhd]

There is one other factor about our three examples that

traditional marketers will be quick to note: freeware. Each is at

a different point in the process to monetization but they all

began with services that were free to the end users who

evangelized it. So did Google. eBay and Amazon.com did not, but

they used the internet to give users amazing efficiencies.

Not every company can offer free products at the outset in the

hopes of monetization later. Many companies successfully try

limited time or quantity free trial offers, but starting free then

asking for money later has been a short route to the cemetery for

many companies.

Companies like Google, eBay and Amazon.com. learned early the

incredible power of word-of-mouth marketing and still use them now

that they are publicly traded multi-billion dollar entities.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently declared his company will eschew TV

advertising because Amazon considers it ineffectual compared with

word-of-mouth campaigns. Amazon also has found an inoffensive way

to financially reward bloggers for sending business their way.

Bloggers can join the affiliate program, and split profits on any

book sales their site generates.

Google, the last dotcom company began at the apex of buzz

marketing in 1998. When startups were spending tens of millions

on marketing and advertising, they spent very little. At a time

when home sites were starting to use gimmicks that popped up, made

noises and wiggled, they introduced a uniquely sparse home page

containing less than 30 words. People gave it a try. When they

did, they discovered remarkable search capabilities when compared

with incumbent offerings of the time. More recently, they

introduced Gmail, Internet email with gargantuan storage

capabilities. But they used ICQ tactics to jumpstart. They allowed

selected applicants a few beta copies and created a

pseudo-scarcity by asking each to invite just a few friends. These

select invitations somehow became sufficiently abundant to be

auctioned off on eBay.

Apple Computer most certainly incorporates traditional advertising

and observers would say it is one of the few computer companies to

ever produce remarkable ads. But its iPod, a portable music

listening device, was sufficiently exciting and different to get

the blogosphere to sing its praise in choir-level harmony. They

also had the vision to create details that provoked conversations.

For example, white headphones. The color added no real user

benefit except that it provoked conversation. On a recent jet

flight, two strangers sat side-by-side listening to music on their

own devices. One asked the other about the white headphones. It

got a conversation going. Other people in the row joined in.

People asked to try and listen on them to see if they sounded any

better. In fact, portable audio devices are rapidly becoming a

commodity category. But touches like these keep people talking and

builds the perception of “remarkability.” Apple also, spends in

non-traditional ways that generate word-of-mouth. If all you knew

about computers was what you saw in movies and television—you’d be

convinced that Apple Macintosh held about 97 percent market share

instead of less than three percent. This is because of its

aggressive product placement program with the entertainment

industry.

The ‘Awesome-Sucks’ factor

If anyone knows how to spend big bucks for promotion, it’s

Hollywood. They’ve been known to invest up to $500 million in

support of big budget movie premiers. Now small clusters of

teenagers, armed with cellphones, are disrupting—and even

destroying—these expensive efforts. Small groups get in to the

first daytime showings of a new movies in neighborhood theaters.

After the first few minutes, they start transmitting SMS messages

to a few friends outside the theaters. These messages are brief

and to the point, such as “awesome,” or “sucks.” Friends receive

the message on their phones and start blogging about the movie.

Before credits roll, these bands of youthful influencers, loyal to

their peers, and out of Hollywood’s control enormously impact the

movie’s fate before the first Saturday night showing.

Why do people go through such efforts to help others who are

mostly people they’ve never met? Why do people loan headphones to

strangers on planes, or tell their life stories to cab drivers?

Vardi told us the world’s second favorite entertainment is story

telling, but the top is conversations. Even if we don’t have TiVo,

we let a phone call interrupt our program watching or we lay down

our books. It seems it is human nature to collaborate and at least

one research experiment would indicate it’s because collaboration

turns us on.

Dr. Gregory S. Berns, an Emory University professor of psychiatry

and behavioral sciences uses functional MRI and other

computer-based technologies to study how the human brain responds

to various stimuli. In short, his team wires the brain to see how

the brain is wired. A few years back, they studied the interaction

of biology and altruism. Berns used a functional MRI to scan the

brains of 36 women playing the behaviorist’s game of “Prisoner’s

Dilemma,” in which participants are rewarded according to the

choices they make. Berns found these women displayed cooperative

behavior even when they knew they’d receive greater rewards for

not cooperating. The technology revealed that the striatum, a

primitive brain sector, grew active during collaboration. In fact,

it secreted five times the normal level of dopamine, the chemical

that activates during such stimulating activities as sex and

gambling. In short, humans are wired to collaborate. Altruism

turns people on even more than making money.

That makes blogging the sex god of the Information Age. While

word of mouth has always been the most effective way to expand

awareness and adoption, blogging fits into all this as the most

powerful word of mouth delivery mechanism to date. As Vardi, and

others say, “Blogging is word of mouth on steroids.

To give us historic perspective, he observed the three strongest

brands to come out of his native country, Israel are The Bible,

Christianity and ICQ, according to a Google search. Each depended

upon passionate people spreading the word about them. To reach

their current levels of recognition and strength, the Bible

(including the Old Testament) took 2700 years; Christianity did it

in 2000 and ICQ reached global acceptance in less than 10. He

pointed out that ICQ claimed no greater relevance. It just came

into being at a time when the tools had further evolved.

The point: blogging is faster and more effective than walking from

village to village and knocking on doors.

Blogging’s Key Advantages [sbhd]

Blogging is one huge word of mouth engine. Instead of being

relegated to the back seat it now is efficient, powerful and fast

enough to drive the whole car. Actually, two cars would probably

be more accurate, because it drives in two directions—outbound and

inbound.

It lets you listen to what people are saying about your product,

company, or category and respond. At little cost, you can “feed”

conversations. The end result is that your business becomes

connected to a new kind of smarter, more efficient word-of-mouth

network. It lets you:

1. Find and Join the Conversation. Nearly in realtime, blogging

lets you extract comments relevant to your business through search

engines like Technorati, Feedster and PubSub, each of whom track

millions of blogsites in a similar way that Google tracks billions

of websites. Except these search engines are faster and usually

deliver results in hours or even minutes. These search resources

let you see what people are saying pro or con, about your market,

product and company. The fact is tat people are talking about

these things already and you will be wise to join the

conversation. As Microsoft’s Mike Torres told us, people are much

more respectful when they know you’re listening.

Picture the impact of joining the conversation. Imagine you are a

car enthusiast and you see a cool new Corvette at the Detroit Auto

Show. You post a blog about it, maybe even put a photo or two up

about it. Within an hour or two, Bob Lutz, GM vice chairman and a

blogger, sees your post, passes it around to the Corvette team and

then posts a link on their blogs and perhaps a comment on yours.

Imagine the kind of brand loyalty it creates when a big company

notices your blog and links to it. Then there are the catch-all

blog that watch an entire industry categories—in this case

Autoblog (http://www.autoblog.com). They see it, post and link to

yours. Thousands of car enthusiasts are now driving directly to

your site.

You started with a single post. You’ve spent nothing and if you

had, it would have made little or no difference. But you started

an interesting or valuable conversation. You got recognized and

now you have much greater influence.

2. Feed the Network. This term once referred to provocative

advertisements such as Apple’s 1984 SuperBowl screen-smashing

commercial. They still work, although there seems to be a real

paucity of ads worth talking about these days. On the other hand,

blogs let you feed the network, at far lower cost and as a more

credible source. Let’s look at GM’s Lutz. His first blog was about

GM’s Saturn which scores highly in customer service rankings. He

posted it just before a big auto show where a spiffy new Saturn

was being introduced. The blogosphere exploded with conversation

on the fact that Lutz was blogging, on the fact that he responded

to comments on whether the attractive new car was real or

prototype—and so on. At last count, there were more than 200

comments under his posting, and almost an equal number of links to

it— mostly from average people who enjoyed joining and extending a

conversation with a prominent Fortune 50 executive. The automotive

media also picked up on it. How did this posting, which probably

required less than an hour of the executive time, feed the word of

mouth food chain compared with a Saturn ad? If Lutz were quoted in

an official press release, we doubt it would have been noted, but

his blog was news. By the way, there is a new Saturn TV ad

campaign. Do you recall seeing it? Neither do we. What fed the

network better—the blog or the expensive ad campaign.

Vardi was right. Blogging is indeed word of mouth on steroids.

Unlike Major League Sports, this is a good thing for businesses of

all sizes and people everywhere.

Comments

[Jeremy C. Wright]

Ooh, look, it's buzzwords and tech companies everywhere ;-)

Seriously though, it's good. I'm not really doing a WoM chapter, so I'm really enjoying this read. Well done guys!

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

I am very worried about divulging too much on this blog, my noble colleagues.

Why not just post the outlines of chapters?

Entire text--why buy book?

[Jozef Imrich]

Yet another gem, Shel and Robert

Many seem to wonder where the gaping void Tshirts fit into the Long Tail model of supply and demand [Worth a scan]

[shel]

Steve,

Thanks for the concern, but the chapters we are posting are each early drafts that will have none of the changes-improvements made neither by the blogosphere's collective wisdom, nor the skilled professional editing that will come after that. There's also the changes that will come down the line on late-breaking news and things that we think of.

With all that in mind, our hope from this exercise is not necessarily selling books directly, but by having all of you who help this process, champion it, by telling people in business that they should buy the book. Many visitors to this site, know much of this and will consider it ho hum. At best, we see this book that will help us bridge the chasm between today's blogosphere and the business community. (Thanks to Blake Ross for the borrowed imagery).

[Tim]

Another stimulating chapter - like the 'word of mouth on steroids stuff'.

The point where you note that SpreadOpera.com etc will not have the same impact could be discussed a bit further. Lutz blogging works perhaps once or twice for GM, but I expect there to be diminishing returns for others who follow in his wake.

This is old fashioned first mover advantage stuff: the innovators reap the biggest win etc. Though less sexy, examples of companies who've experienced significant though not earth-shattering benefits may be of more use to a business audience: sure someone did this once, but what about the rest? I suspect this is what you were looking for in your last post requesting more examples. Unfortunately I cannot immediately think of any.

Of course there is EnglishCut.com but again Tom's the first blogging tailor - it will be the second or third who make it work that will be really instructive.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Shel. Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

You and Robert exemplify a principle I advocate tirelessly: interactive means respond to user comments WITHIN the comment thread itself, whenever possible, within reason, and NOT just in a summary post.

I will buy and recommend basically every single book that comes out on blogs, unless it really bites.

However some I will recommend more than others.

No matter how much a visitor to this sites "knows", no one knows it all, and each of us bloggers has a unique perspective and set of experiences, contacts, interests, theoretical orientation. So I gain a lot by reading and interacting with this blog, even in my worse moments and most rabid exclamations.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

P.S. For whatever it's worth, a drop in the bucket perhaps, but I made a list of Unusual/Innovative Blogs, a list that I've never seen anyone put together, not the ultimate list of course, but a list...

http://blogthenticity.com/2005/04/08/unusual-blog-examples/

...in which I included The Red Couch.

Quite a controversy going on over there re: real blogs vs. anti-blogs.

[kathleen]

Shel answered Steve: "At best, we see this book that will help us bridge the chasm between today's blogosphere and the business community"

That is right on, you guys, because many many of those in the business community are still getting their "next big thing" information from books. Leadership at my company is barely noticing my blog -- but if I put a book in front of them, it'll be real. Even then they'll be way behind the curve. But hey, better late than never! Thanks for the great stuff here.

[shel]

Tim,

Thanks for some sharply thought out comments. Actually we may be incinsistent in saying that SpreadOpera won't do as well as Firefox because it's an imitator, while we imply that other CEOs and executives should blog.

However, Robert and I feel that lack of authentic access to top executives in large companies is one of the reasons anti-corporate sentiment is so high. We think blogging allows executives to have conversation with general audiences more easily than has previously been possible. In short, blogging is worth their time, and they will be appreciated--when done in an open spirit--by audiences who care about each company. We hope to have more about Lutz in the next chapter which focusess on Corp execs and direct access to the press.

[Tim]

Shel

Thanks for explaining that. I totally agree that executives need to find a way to engage with stakeholders and that Lutz is leading the way. No doubt you'll also be warning CEOs that if they are to blog, it has to be them, and not a flack writing in their name or else we're back to where we started!

Tim

[shel]

Tim,

Good point again. In this first section of the book, we are trying to lay out what's happening. The next few chapters will be crammed with cases that we'll examine.

The next section will deal with how to do it right. One key point is that if you try to use blogging as just another channel into which you cram the same old crappy corpspeak rhetoric--it will hurt you more than help.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Amen to that, brothers.

You are on the side of Light.

The enemy wants to pollute the blogosphere with simulated blogs, pseudo blogs, proxy blogs, quasi-team blogs, ghost blogs, and link farm blogs.

If they can get the public to start doubting the veracity, authenticity, and author identity of certain blogs, that lack of trust will taint us all.

Look what happened to direct mail, telemarketing, TV commercials, door to door salesmen, email marketing, etc.: nearly zero credibility and maximum cynicism.

This will happen to blogs, if somebody doesn't try to fight them.

Behold: the contamination flood is poised and already flowing in.

[Larry Hendrick]

I love the idea of utilizing the web and more specifically a blog to work and collaborate on a book. Keep it up.

Normally, I would be unable to interact with someone of Lutz's position, but if he truly writes and interacts with "we the people" what could follow could be nothing short of fantastic. If business leaders (Lutz) will get involved and interact with consumers, it will improve the decisions in the boardroom.

Utilizing the web is quickly becoming the next marketplace for companies and I agree that it could become a bain if allowed. Popups and flashing, dancing ads are already easy to ignore on a website. This could lead to the same thing with the blog medium. How to stop it? I am not sure I know the answer to that right now, but truthfull blogging will help.

[wilson ng]

IF this is by Scoble, can we see also some Microsoft examples?

If we want to be convinced on word of mouth, and the power of informal blogging, can we see some insider info on what Microsoft has been able to do that was successful?

Why ICQ, Firefox, Ipods?

We are not startups, and thus would like to see how established companies are able to do it as well?

[shel]

Wilson,

Thanks for your comments. You may have missed it, but Chapter 2 was entirely about Microsoft and Scoble's role, but this is a book about why businesses of all sizes should blog--not just Microsoft. Each chapter is the result of a collaboration between Scoble and Israel. But Scoble does not represent Microsoft on this project. In fact, I did the Microsoft interviews. The three major cases we spotlight in Chapter 3 are indeed companies focused on start ups. We also addressed word-of-mouth's impact at eBAY, Google, GM and Apple Computer. I'm sorry that left you feeling disappointed. I hope future chapters satisfy you more.

for the three major cases. We also discuss Apple Computer and GM, who are certainly not start ups.

[Alex Bishop]

A few corrections on the Blake/Firefox stuff:

"Firefox an Internet browser, considered simpler and more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) reached 25 million downloads less than four months after launching exclusively from a blog."

Ignoring the lack of commas, that's not quite true. When Firefox first appeared as mozilla/browser in 2002, weblogs were quite important in promoting new releases etc. However, the Firefox 1.0 launch in November 2004 also included massive media coverage from tech publications, many of which were contacted by old-style PR firms and traditional press releases.

"Its development team was never paid to work fulltime on the project as it bounced around through four parent organizations."

Not sure where you get the four parent organisations from but the Mozilla Foundation has paid Firefox developers since mid-2003. Furthermore, much of the Firefox code is the same as that used in the Mozilla Application Suite and Netscape and many organisations paid full-time developers to work on that (including AOL/Netscape, Sun, IBM and Red Hat).

"Blake Ross, now 19, dropped out of high school to join the Firefox development team."

As far as I know, Blake did not drop out of high school. He first started working for Netscape aged 15 (I think) long before Firefox even existed. David Hyatt and Blake started mozilla/browser (which became Phoenix, which became Firebird, which became Firefox) later.

"He started to blog as an outlet for his frustrations with the turnstile ownership tenures of Netscape, AOL and TimeWarner. Eventually named, “SpreadFirefox,” (www.spreadfirefox.com), the blog became a hub for a series of no-cost marketing activities and would become one of 2005’s 10 most popular blogsites."

Blake's weblog still exists (at www.blakeross.com). It didn't directly evolve into Spread Firefox (the name has a space in it).

"The team is convinced word of mouth did more to accomplish this than did the solitary press release they’ve put out."

A quick check of www.mozilla.org/press will show that the Mozilla Foundation has put out more than one press release about Firefox.

"While Firefox has taken the tech community by storm — grabbing 8.5 percent of the total browser market in less than its first six months, IE still held 87.28 percent, according to OneStat, (www.onestat.com) a web-analytics company."

The latest figures from OneStat.com put Mozilla's global usage share at 8.45 percent, not 8.5 percent (I'm looking at www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox36.html with the numbers from February). Also, the statistics aren't clear but it seems that the 8.45 percent figure applies to all Mozilla browsers, not just Firefox. See www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=6145 for details.

[Sam Katz]

ICQ did not get renamed AOL Instant Messenger; ICQ still exists at www.icq.com. I think you may be right and iCQ did exist before AIM, as I believe AOL's ICQ subsidary holds the original patent for the buddy system.