I like the steep part of the adoption curve, when the early adopters are using a new technology and the mainstream is just starting to discover it. It was fun to be in broadband Internet when even the providers didn't fully get it, and it's fun to be working with social media now. The mainstream is just starting to tune in to these new media and tools, and I plan to help them figure it out.
So, where are we today?
Attensa CEO Craig Barnes is bursting with the anticipation of announcing their first major customers, but at this point, enterprise RSS is so new that the three competitors are in the position of co-promoters. When was the last time that you linked to your major competitors on your blog, anyway?
Cymfony conducted a quick poll before a webinar on the ROI of blogging. The audience was serious about blogging—30% had corporate blogs, and most of the rest were in the planning process. Blog monitoring hasn't fully reached this crowd, though:
Even with a blog savvy crowd, they are amazingly unsophisticated in their blog monitoring practices. The largest group, 23%, relies on the most basic method of monitoring—manual searches on traditional search engines like Google. 16% search manually on a blog search engine like Technorati, 20% keep a list of specific blogs to follow and only 20% track with an RSS aggregator. A smaller group are using automated services like Cymfony.
Remember, the survey was given to a blogging webinar audience, so it's a safe guess that a broader corporate audience is even less aware of blog monitoring. Good news for those of us looking to help clients up the learning curve.
Bonus points to Cymfony for offering Forrester's 2006 Brand Monitoring Wave on their web site. I know what I'll be reading tonight. Thanks, guys.
Update: Nielsen BuzzMetrics also posted the Forrester report, available without registration (pdf). However, Cymfony's download also includes the vendor summary on Cymfony.
