Web 2.0: Transformational Technology or Pretty Gradients & Hype?
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Tue, Oct 27, 2009
Steve August, the CEO of Revolution, presented a Pecha Kucha session at the ESOMAR Online Research 2009 conference. He began by defining Web 2.0 as the convergence of software and socialness. As Paul Moore put it, "Web 2.0 is made of 600 million unwanted opinions in real time." Web 2.0 is made of broadband Internet, social software, digital media and wireless devices. Web 2.0 has a transformational impact for MR. Initially, MR took traditional research methodologies online. The mission of market research is "to understand people to answer business questions" but life is 99% researcher free - moments of decision, of purchase, of consumption take place out of sight. It would be expensive and intrusive to follow people 24/7, but Web 2.0 gives us this: connection + engagement + richness + immediacy. Previously our access to people was limited, a few hours in a focus group, a few minutes in a survey, but with Web 2.0 we have unlimited and sustainable access to people and their emotions. Marry these and it unleashes changes in qualitative research. Web 2.0 MR is climbing up the slope of enlightenment of the Gartner hype cycle, capturing moments of time to be everywhere at once, transforming market research.
Tom Ewing is the Social Media Knowledge Leader of Kantar Operations who presented the next Pecha Kucha session. "When a profession has been created as a result of some scarcity, the professionals are often the last ones to see it," Clay Shirky wrote, in Here Comes Everybody. Market researchers solicit and create information, collate and validate information, ensure it is representative, analyze and deliver information, deriving the meaning from it. All of these were scarcities that people were willing to pay for, but now there are...
- More and better DIY research tools.
- Weaker barriers to sharing opinions.
- Larger and richer data trails that people leave behind. They leak more data, share more data, leaving more to be analyzed.
Why ask information when it is already out there? Why ask other to test your new ideas? Our ability to collect data has been outflanked by the Internet. "We are tics on the body of the information hippo," Ewing said. Validating user generated data is vital, and such validation is a narrow skill; data can't analyze itself, which is another scarce skill; data can't present itself, which is another scarce skill. The scarcities are more stable, less threatened by Web 2.0, but do market researchers own those scarcities? We need to become essential to participants, making research a benefit and a thrill to get the exclusive information. We need to make the case for validity and the need for representativeness. We are mastering the new data sources such as social graphs. Then we can start prioritizing the analysis and delivery. That is why we can anticipate a bright future for the market research business. We can recognize the decline of scarcities and react accordingly.
Anthony Hamelle, the vice president of opinion and market research at Linkfluence, presented next. Where Web 1.0 was static, Web 2.0 is dynamic. People get and share information on the Internet. People now get information filtered by who they know, through friends, peers, acquaintances in the social network. A revolution can mean rolling back to a previous solution: sense of community provides belonging and interdependence, which was the natural state of people before the 20th century. Communities have strong and weak links: tribes of a few thousand, communities up to 300, bands up to 50. Influence from a distance is threatening; more comforting from friends. Communities evolve and exist and die online; the flow of opinions can be seen through communities as they travel through community leaders and members. Web 2.0 is a re-empowerment of communities and individuals within communities. Not every human group is a community; it takes time and belonging; very few actual spontaneous brand-driven communities. Rethink how we view interviewees, respondents, participants co-researchers.
Web 2.0 is a return to community.