A few months ago I went looking for technology vendor Facebook applications and found one from Microsoft that had just launched: Microphone. At the time there was not much activity, but I recently checked back in and was impressed with (at least parts) of what I found there. Now, I should admit that I am grading on a curve here; most of the apps I found were miserable, like this one from HP.

So what about the Microsoft app works?

First, the entire application has a gaming element to it and they award prizes to the most active users. Time and time again we see that these sorts of competitive games resonate with users and Microsoft has done a nice job of taking advantage — if you notice the leader board is monthly, so no one should feel completely frozen out.

Second, they have taken steps to incorporate other social networks and communications tools like Twitter. Microsoft has taken good advantage of a SocialEyes application to scrape Twitter and bring the conversation into Facebook (see below). I’ve actually never heard of this company but LOVE the approach; has anyone out there worked with them in the past?

Third, they have focused on tangible business functions like market research. A lot of companies have made forays into Facebook, Twitter, and other communities over the last few years and thus far few have real tangible business value to show for it. With this implementation Microsoft has done a great job of keeping their feet firmly planted on solid ground, focusing on customer care and market research. I am likely a bit biased by the fact that I am a market researcher, but this aspect of the application is especially well thought out. For example we see Microsoft measuring customer reaction to recent television ads (see below). Admittedly this is not a substitute for real quantitative market research, since anyone adding the Microsoft Microphone application is likely a bit biased in the first place, but if done right it can provide solid directional data at almost no cost. The poll question about joining a programming competition is spot on — you already have a group likely to participate and this can be a great way to get their input.

Now, I would lose my analyst card if I didn’t lob at least one stone at Microsoft and this one (at least for me) is a doozy. Look closely at the Apple and PC TV ad questions. Notice anything? Oh yes, they inverted the scale from one to the other, starting the Apple ad scale at “Hate it” and forcing people to keep reading if they don’t hate it. For the PC ad they start at “Love it” and head back the other direction. Subtle, but a MAJOR problem if you are looking for objective research! Then again, maybe the marketing guys were looking to show some success to management, in which case, carry on gentlemen.

All things considered this is one of the best vendor Facebook applications I’ve seen and it should serve as a pretty good model for others, even those selling B2B — know your audience, provide them some value, provide them an engaging experience, and keep it grounded in real business needs.

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If you have followed the social computing space at all in the last 2 years you have undoubtedly come across the Social Technographics work of my colleague Josh Bernoff, and former colleague Charlene Li. The Social Technographics Ladder is tremendously useful to anyone thinking about community dynamics and accordingly has been wildly successful. Needless to say my colleagues Peter Burris, Laura Ramos, and I got a little jealous.

So, late last year we launched a survey of our own that dives into the very deep end of business communities. We’re very excited to write up the findings and apply them to real communities over the coming year, and I will be sharing some of the early analysis with you here.

One of the first questions we wanted to tackle in the course of the research is what drives community participation (see graphic).

Quick reactions:

1. The quality of the people in the community is critically important. Its not enough to equip marketers or community managers with the right content and let them loose. Instead you must get the actual experts to participate and provide value. Their presence alone will have impact.

2. Volume of activity is not critical. Many marketers hold off with communities for fear of signing themselves up for a major commitment to content creation. Instead this survey suggests that volume is not nearly as important as quality. Excellent content infrequently may be enough.

3. Diversity is not a value in and of itself. Community members (from the sponsor side or the customer side) are not valued because they provide variety alone; the contribution itself must be up to snuff.

4. It is difficult, but not impossible, to get new communities off the ground. There is a self-reinforcing nature to communities: People join because there are quality community members. Getting off the ground with a set of community members that will attract others can be tough. However it is not the case where once a community reaches scale it can’t be displaced. Size of the community is not a virtue itself.

So, you play the analyst: what else do you see here that I’m missing? Does this data reflect your experiences either as a marketer or a community member?

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Well here is a novel solution to the problem of too many “friends” on Facebook that you don’t really like or want to stay in contact with: sacrifice. This week Burger King launched a new ad campaign called Whopper Sacrifice where you sacrifice 10 Facebook friends and get a free Whopper. And they aren’t kidding, you really have to sacrifice them — the application brings up the actual “defriend” function in Facebook.

Naturally I had to sacrifice at least someone. Here are the screenshots:

I’ll sacrifice a few more and let you know it goes when I get my Whopper. Also, no hard feelings if you get defriended, it’s all in the name of research!

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Updated: Dennis Howlett writes in to correct the list. ESME is no longer associated with SAP. See here for the gritty details.

I’ve been spending time with the SAP/Business Objects team and was recently sent a long list of SAP communities and innovation projects. Its easy to write off SAP as inactive in the Web 2.0 space since it frankly has not done a great job of messaging to its initiatives. This list below should help change that percecption, even if some of the projects — ESME comes to top of mind — are ill-conceived. (Full discolsure: I needed a place to keep the list. Hopefully you’ll find it useful as well!)

Main communities:

· SAP Community Network (SCN) – http://scn.sap.com

· SAP Developer Network (SDN) – http://sdn.sap.com

· Business Process Expert Community (BPX) – http://bpx.sap.com

· Business Objects Community (BOC) – http://boc.sap.com

· SAP Ecosystem Hub – http://ecohub.sap.com

· Enterprise Services Community – http://esc.sap.com

· CW (Collaboration Workspace for private community discussions) – http://cw.sap.com

Key functionality/capabilities:

· Blogs - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs

· Forums – https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/forums

· Wiki – https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/wiki

· Article Library (sort-able by various criteria such as: topic, date, author, industry…) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/articles-topic

· Events (especially SAP TechEd and SAP Tech Tour) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/events

Specific topics and programs that may be of interest:

· InnoCentive (innovation) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/innocentive

· Emerging or fast-growth regions / languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean…) – see language selector in header area at top of page / browser and also https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/category?categoryID=49&start=0 (China) or https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/category?categoryID=50&start=0 (Japanese) or https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/category?categoryID=51&start=0 (Korean) … Brazil (Portuguese) and others to be added in early ’09

· Social Media (Web 2.0) resources - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/social-media

· Reputation management program (points for knowledge sharing) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/crphelp and https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/contributors-corner with sortable results by individual, company, date, subject area, etc. at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/topcontributors

· Our work with the United Nations World Food Program to recognize the aggregate community contributions and give back to the global community described at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/9999

· SAP Mentors (top contributors ++) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/sapmentors

· YouTube channel - http://youtube.com/user/SAPCommunities

· Docupedia (innovation example) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/u/44402

· ESME project (innovation example) – https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/10758 (Dennis Howlett ZDnet blogger) and https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/10080 (Dick Hirsch of Siemens)

· SAPlink (innovation example) – https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/4476

· DemoJam (innovation example) – http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=YIx_tsJ6IBQ

· SAP Developer Challenge (innovation example) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/wiki?path=/display/devchallenge/About

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There has been a lot of interest in social networking for the enterprise over the past 12 months. Many vendors are now bringing a people-centric view of content and data to previously document-centric apps and the smaller Enterprise 2.0 vendors like Jive, MindTouch, NewsGator, Telligent, and a host of others are making employee social networks their bread and butter. Forrester is bullish on the idea, and cited social networking as one of two Enterprise 2.0 feature that will have a significant impact on the enterprise (wikis were the other — see ZDNet for a thorough writeup).

At the same time though there is reason for caution, and there is no better example why than the “Add to My Colleagues” feature in SharePoint (see screenshot at left). I think I can guess what Microsoft had in mind — allowing employees to declare who they work with and thus keep better track of them through the MOSS 2007 MySites functionality — but the execution is exactly what is wrong with social networking in the enterprise. Look, this is not Facebook or LinkedIn where I need to tell the network who of the millions of users I know. This is a group of employees within in company and, despite the fact that I haven’t hit the link, everyone is my colleague. We already have a damn good reason to talk to each other: we are working for the same company and towards the same goals! I don’t need to gently approach you by “colleaging” you first, I can just pick up the phone or send an IM or email. Declaring this affiliation over and over again just wastes time and hurts the credibility of social networking in general. Facebook is about collecting friends. LinkedIn is about building a professional network. Social networking in the enterprise is about getting work done and features like this give both users and execs the impression that these apps are ab0ut wasting time.

Now maybe I’m being too harsh on Microsoft; other social networking vendors have similar features, and the next rev of SharePoint should (I hope) have this sort of stupidity taken out of the product. But Microsoft, for all its deficiencies in this space, is looked to as a leader by most businesses. The precedent and impression that Microsoft sets is a tough thing to break. And in the meantime “Add to My Colleagues” keeps the focus for social networking in all the wrong places and hurts the credibility of both SharePoint and the enterprise social networking category at large. Frankly if I were an exec presented with the great idea that my employees could create networks of colleagues I would kick both the sponsor and the vendor out of my office, never to return.

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Yesterday the New York Times published an article detailing a recent study from the MacArthur Foundation that examined the role of the Internet in the lives of teenagers. According to the Times:

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

On the surface this looks like good news; the behavior that has become so ingrained in our high schools and middle schools is building actual skills. The open question however is the ultimate impact of this behavior. How this sort of socializing and identity creation impacts long-term development is poorly understood. The researchers themselves acknowledge the deficiency: “Ethnographic studies like this are good at describing how young people fit social media into their lives. What they can’t do is document effects. This highlights the need for larger, nationally representative studies.”

For our part, Forrester’s own research on teen behavior shows tremendous usage of social networking sites. In fact, we found in 2007 that nearly two-thirds of US online teens – those ages 15-17 – visit social networking sites at least monthly. A full 20% of online youth – ages 12-17 – visit social networking sites daily, and most update their profiles while there. We recently updated much of this survey work for 2008 and while I have yet to dig into the specifics for the youth market I would be shocked if it did not mirror the overall trend of greater participation and levels of engagement.

But is this participation and engagement a positive development? The MacArthur Foundation researchers suggest it is. Personally, I have some doubts. Granted, learning how to create a home page may be of some value, and I will be the first to admit that I never really learned to touch type until I got going with AOL instant messenger in high school. But these skills seem pretty superfluous.

Where the researchers start to talk real value is in the notion of getting along with others, and creating a personal identity. But any sociologist or psychologist in the world will tell you that the teenage years are when everyone learns to be social and create an identity, internet or not. So now the questions becomes not “are the kids creating an identity” but “are the kids creating an identity that is healthier than they would have created otherwise?”

At the risk of coming off as a Luddite I’m going to suggest that the answer is no. Ever since it was released nearly three years ago a study in the American Sociological Review by researchers at Duke University has been stuck in the back of my head (those of you who have spent much time with me are likely sick of hearing about it). At the time the researchers reported that:

“The evidence shows that Americans have fewer confidants and those ties are also more family-based than they used to be,” said Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology at Duke University.

“This change indicates something that’s not good for our society,” Smith-Lovin said. “Ties with a close network of people create a safety net. These ties also lead to civic engagement and local political action.”

Let me repeat that, just so we don’t miss it: this change indicates something that’s not good for our society. Despite the hordes of new technology – email, IM, social networking –at our disposal we are actually distancing ourselves from other people. And this is among adults who learned these behaviors over time. The kids are defining themselves in terms of this technology from day one.

Of course there is the chance that growing up with these tools will better equip you to manage your relationships through them. However if we look again to Forrester’s Consumer Technographics data the story is a lot more complex. We find that the kids are lying (only 53% even claim to tell the truth on their profiles), creating multiple identities (49% report creating multiple online identities), and hiding parts of their lives from others (58% of multi-identity teens have social networking profiles they only give to certain people). If we couple this with the notion that the kids are becoming self-obsessed, voyeuristic, and abusive to each other online I think there is reason for real concern.

I don’t (yet) have children, certainly don’t have teenagers, and am only an armchair sociologist. I am not, however, naïve enough to believe these behaviors are new behaviors. All kids lie, hide parts of their lives from others, and experiment with multiple personalities. But in the past it was much harder to hide this from parents, friends, teachers, and others who provide the proper guardrails for kids. The internet makes it too easy, in my view, for kids to grow up by themselves.

The MacArthur Foundation researchers are trying to calm parents fears about their kids online and in one sense they are right to do so. Fears of online predators are overblown, and kids need to be allowed to socialize, regardless of medium. Banning social sites or internet access outright is counter-productive. That message makes sense and needs to be repeated. But parents need to approach the Web with a skeptic’s eye. The fears many parents have may not be well founded, but I wonder if parents are missing a bigger problem developing right beneath their noses.

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This post won’t do the topic justice, but Telligent just made another hire that caught my attention. As CEO Rob Howard writes, the company has just hired Marc Smith, another former Microsoftie, as Chief Social Scientist: “Marc will lead Telligent’s R&D efforts around analytics and business intelligence (tools to help you understand what people are doing in your communities), specifically Telligent Harvest.”

This, in my view, is a smart hire. Along with my colleague Jeremiah Owyang, I’ve been harping on the fact that it is increasingly difficult to tell the difference between white label social networking vendors such as Awareness, Jive, Lithium, Telligent, and hordes of others. So how should these vendors — as well as the incumbent web content management vendors like Interwoven and Vignette — differentiate themselves from each other? In a word: analytics.

Many firms from CPG to finance are now investing in social networking and social media and most are (rightly) focused on how to grow their community. The big question today is “are we building a viable community.” Traffic stats, comments, posts, and UGC are the metrics most community managers live and die by today. This is not, however, sustainable long term. Pretty soon the conversation is going to shift from “do we have a viable community” to “what are we learning from our community,” “is our community happy,” “what are the major concerns they are expressing,” and “how do we change our product road map as a result?” Most communities have begun as marketing initiatives but increasingly market research and customer support are getting involved and will only do more so over time.

How companies can make use of the insight from customer communities is going to be where budget, sales, and market share are won and lost, and analytics are going to be a major asset in that fight. Don’t get me wrong, analytics alone will not result in successful community implementations — incorporating community insights into the product development process will be the bigger trick — but those vendors that can provide the best analytics tooling will have a substantial advantage as the market shakes out. Telligent is making big moves to get there first.

By the way, Jeremiah is about to publish a Forrester Wave on white label social networking vendors. I worked with him early in the process developing the criteria and am very pleased to say that analytics are well covered in the report. I haven’t seen the final draft yet, but I can tell you already it will be a must read.

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Lawrence Liu has just announced he is joining Telligent, one of the small nimble competitors to SharePoint, his previous gig. Normally the comings and goings of various executives and staffers does not raise my eyebrows, but this one did. Telligent, Jive, Awareness, Central Desktop, and a whole horde of players are all gunning for SharePoint and Telligent just added a major weapon in that fight. So what does it mean for the market?

1. Pay careful attention to Telligent’s moves and marketing. If anyone knows where the warts are for SharePoint — and the upcoming refresh slated for 2009 — its Liu. Telligent should be dropping hints along the way.

2. Look for the whole market to benefit at SharePoint’s expense. While this does not change the fundamental advantages SharePoint enjoys — chiefly bundling and existing enterprise relationships — it does give all the smaller competitors another compelling argument for SharePoint’s insufficency as a true Enterprise 2.0 platform.

3. Telligent may see its relationship with Microsoft change quickly. It’s no secret that one of the best ways for a small Web 2.0 vendor to grab customers is to partner with SharePoint and so far NewsGator and Atlassian (and a few others as well, if I remember correctly) have done so to great success. I would expect Telligent to work out something simlar quickly unless the departure was messier than Liu has let on.

4. Liu and Sam Lawrence have to make up. Don’t they?

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