Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 The Business of Blogging: the Good, Bad and the Wonderful Pranam Kolari Ph.D. Candidate, UMBC CAS Ph.D. Fellow, IBM Toronto Tim Finin, Yelena Yesha, UMBC Kelly Lyons, Stephen Perelgut, Jen Hawkins, IBM Toronto

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Blogs have shown astounding growth 50,000,000 Weblogs (July 2006) Doubling in size every 6 months for the past 3 years Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere Report (

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Blogs are a global phenomenon Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere Report (

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Blogs continue to capture user interest

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Enterprises – the Good Unlike other forms of communication blog posts are public – and now constitute the ‘influential’ social media So what’s in it for business? Lets take the case of IBM the Good –Buzz Monitoring –Marketing Feedback –Public Relations Monitoring –Competitive Intelligence

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Buzz Monitoring – Word Of Mouth IBM Chip Clocks 500 GHz PC celebrates 25 years IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad goes in flames PHP Integration Kit for J2EE WAS “Name” mentions guide branding strategies Product mentions guide product and feature releases

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Opinion Mining

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Marketing Feedback BPM/BAM SOA Videos “Launch” movie IBM launched their SOA campaign in September/October Effectiveness of marketing campaigns through blogs

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Marketing Feedback WallstreetTech – “Check out this ‘trailer’ for the launch of SOA from IBM - advertising may never be the same again.”‘trailer’ eBizQ – “Check out this fun "movie preview" from IBM about their new SOA product launch next week.” … Monitor blogs that mention IBM and SOA Follow pulse, and tune strategies

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Public Relations Management Monitor “direct to consumer” products – like (Lenovo/IBM)ThinkPad, Lotus etc. “ … passersby stared aghast or fled crying terrorist, the ThinkPad (which was quoted to be an IBM, not a Lenovo) apparently had a number of death throes as the fire went through various phases, until eventually ” “ I love my ThinkPad, which I got inexpensively off of IBM's refurb site. ” “ Does Lotus Notes Mean Career Suicide?. ” Monitor initiatives – e.g. IBM academic/university relations “ found some famous companies such as IBM, Intel and Micron in the fair … Good, this means opportunities … this university is really small so not many students in the gathering; I never saw a line except … (for) IBM ”

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Competitive Intelligence Analyze what (good, bad) makes your competitor buzzy

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Players in this space

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Enterprises – the Bad What’s in it for us? the Bad –Public Relation Problems –Competitive Intelligence –Compulsion to Blog –Updating Blogs –Computational Issues

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 The Dell PR Episode Jeff Jarvis with Dell – Summer of 2005 June 21, 2005 – “Dell lies. Dell sucks.” Almost all entries went with – “Is someone at Dell listening…”. Everyone except Dell were listening! Ended with escalation to Chief Marketing Officer, Dell’s PR department now monitors Blogs Listen to your customers.

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Competitive Intelligence Your competitors know why you are good, and bad Be proactive, mine for intelligence

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Blogger Limitations Blogs do not cover all demographics Mining blogs work best in “direct to consumer” products/services Blogger attrition is high Don’t post on compulsion

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Computational Limitations Tools are not yet mature Visualizations still locked into the inertia of traditional web search engines Sentiment Analysis for automatic opinion extraction still in early research stages Spam Blogs skew blog analytics –E.g. navigate through blog search results for “IBM laser printer” on a popular blog search engine

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Enterprises – the Wonderful What’s in it for us? the Wonderful –Business reaches out to consumer Engage In Conversations Influence Discussions –Use Blogs among employees (internally) Identify Thought Leaders

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Engage In Conversations People blog to be heard Be the first to address consumer issues –Comment and clarify on consumer blog –Request personal communication Be the first to acknowledge consumer raves –WOMM marketing –“Acknowledgement” is important

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Engage In Conversations My post wasn’t negative, but all subsequent references from me were positive

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Employee Blogs Generate Buzz Employee Blogs hosted (and endorsed) by the enterprise –Product Information and Updates –Feature Feedback –Typically authored by CEO/CFO, Dept Head, Architects Employee Blogs acknowledged by the enterprise –bridge enterprise with the blogosphere

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Influence Discussions – Generate Buzz Employee blogs generate interest in IBM’s SOA Launch Video, then picked up by the blogosphere

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Use Internal Blogs Blogs hosted internally by an enterprise –Fosters collaboration –Identify experts –Community dynamics –Bottom-up initiatives –Project Blogs At IBM –“HackDay” an IBM wide event, developed through initiation on a blog

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Internal Blogs – Collaboration IBM has around 2000 active internal blogs Conversations extend across geographies Dialogue leads to collaboration uscajpuknl us ca jp uk nl POST COMMENT

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Internal Blogs – Buzz/Experts Rank blog postings by employees Employee concerns Internal Product Feedback Mine tag usage Who are the experts? Screen-shots deleted in this version Screen-shots deleted in this version

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Internal Blogs - Elsewhere Google, Yahoo, Ask –Product releases Microsoft Sun –Employee blogs, not well structured Adobe –Feature feedback

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Trends for the future Blogs within the Enterprise will only grow –New tools for internal blogging –Ways of connecting blogs with other collaboration tools External Blogs –Bridge blogs will grow in popularity –Competitive Intelligence will find mainstream use and be open

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006 Thanks!