February 8, 2010 by Robert Kozinets.

I can’t disclose the time, place, or people involved, and I’ve changed around the numbers, but I was recently at gathering where the social talk turned to business and the business was social media. The conversation went something like this:

“Joe”: Rob, my company is investing in social media like crazy now.

Me: Sounds good. What are you doing?

“Joe”: Well, aside from the Facebook fan-page and the PR firm we’ve hired to Tweet for us, we’re investing big in building online communities and forums from our web-sites. We’re building technical forums so people can help each other solve technical problems. It turns out that a call to our help lines costs us about ten dollars. When they solve it online themselves, that saves us the cost of a call. We’ve calculated our breakeven at saving a thousand calls a month.

“Anthony”: Do they really do that? Do they really just help each other out?

Me and Joe: You bet.

“Anthony”: Who are these people? Some technie geek guys who tinker around with stuff and still live in their mother’s basements [laughs]?

Joe [laughing]: Yeah, isn’t that amazing?

At that point, I get all reflective and brooding. I have heard variants of this particular conversation before. Many times, in fact.

What was that old definition of Web 2.0? “You do all the work, we keep all them money.” This is not the way social media was supposed to work.

Yes, we have known for a long time that people give freely and help each other in online and other types of communities. My research on on “virtual communities of consumption” may have been the first to note that online consumption communities function as a type of gift economy.

But it should be a far stretch from noticing that these networks offer assistance and help, to banking on that fact. Doing so is, in effect, using up or free-riding on a free resource and, even moreso, attempting to undermine the social logics of online communities by turning them into an economic resource. Yes, it’s very capitalist. But, like clear-cutting a thriving forest, it isn’t smart long-term management.

These notions, popular among consultants and business people alike, are going to come back and bite them.

Here is one way it will play out. There will be certain kinds of people, and certain kinds of advice, that may seep into those online communities. People will complain. Some of them will do the math. Some of these will get it right. The chatter will at some points be less about giving and more about taking.

Eventually, if the marketing or PR management-consumer relations are acrimonious enough and the offenses grevious and plentiful enough in scope, I believe, there will be organizing, activism, and perhaps regulation among community members. Consumers will request and perhaps be legally required to be paid for their labor, just like everyone else. The party will be over. It will have been crashed, corporate style. (Look familiar anyone?)

Or else they will just collectively agree to call your help lines. Get their friends and families to call. And call them a lot.

The other thing that sticks in my craw–and it is not unrelated to the first point- is the way these consumer community members are referred to in casual conversation by managers, consultants, and marketers. Online community members and technical contributors are referred to as lonely geeks who have nothing better to do with their time.

This phrasing reminds me so much of the way fans are regarded and refered to by many managers and marketers. The same alarming disrespect. The same infantilization. The same insulting, dismissive tone. The same sense that these people are okay to use and exploit because they are lower that us, not as good or as smart as us.

In my experience, those consumer often know the manager’s business better than the managers do. In fact, that’s why they make such excellent members of technical communities.

Those are the two dirty little secrets of online community. First, that it is being justified as a straight ROI play based on cheap labor power, where the company gets consumers to do something in the community for it for free or on the cheap. It can be tech support or other customer support. It could be innovation and coming up with or rating new ideas. It could be offering marketing or other feedback. The second secret is that some managers often refer to these consumers as socially backwards suckers, dupes, clever peons, and rubes.

A little later in our conversation, “Joe” said he was a bit surprised that very few consumers were joining up on his brand’s Facebook fan page, that almost none of the company’s many customers wanted to be known as fans of his company.

Well, go figure.

Posted in Economy and General Business Management, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Technology, Marketing Research, Marketing News & Insights, Communities and Tribes, Marketing Science | 2 Comments »

February 4, 2010 by Robert Kozinets.

It’s been a long time since I wrote this blog. Been a long time, been a long time, been a long….lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. Actually, not all that lonely, but unbelievably busy, with teaching starting up, teaching social media finishing (finishing well, too), articles to review, articles written and submitted, book chapters done, serving on the JCR Policy Board, travel, and so on and so forth.

But once you get Led Zeppelin into your mindstream, it’s like a chronic thing. You can ask my Wyoming colleague Kent Drummond or the brilliant writer Erik Davis all about it. Erik’s book about Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3), is one of the most inspired and inspiring pieces of music scholarship I’ve ever read.

Okay. Last post, written almost a century ago by Internet standards, promised you free online access to my new Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online
book.

As those of your outside of Europe may have noticed, that didn’t happen. Surprisingly—and somewhat disappointingly, I might add—there was no angry revolt on this blog. No pushback at all. You were all very well behaved, like polite Canadians who will stand in the cold for 3 hours, in the middle of a blinding blizzard, just so they can pay their ridiculously high parking tickets on time. I was hoping more for angry, ravenous, outraged complaints.

“Kozinets, you promised me a damn book. Google books doesn’t even offer me a limited preview. Just a stinking cover and table of contents. Now you deliver that book unto me immed-ee-ate-ly or I swear, I am gonna…”

Okay. I’m starting to scare myself. You get the picture.

But despite your lack of expressed outrage, I was more than a little annoyed. My esteemed academic publisher, Sage, had promised Google Books access for January. Indeed, when I checked with them, they thought it was being delivered—because it was in Europe (as some of you already know).

But not in many other parts of the world, like the USA and Canada. This was a problem, apparently, widespread, with Google Books. Google Books has a checkered history of showing a lot of books that the authors didn’t want seen. Oops. Now, its gone the other way around. It won’t show the books that the authors do want people to see. Go figure.

Harriet Baulcombe at Sage, on of their finest marketing managers, has actually been scrambling for me to find a solution, and at last, we have it.

The book is available free online now as an ebook for you to read and review in its entirety. You can just click here.

If you want it all spelled out the link is at http://dc.eb20.com?v=A7Y1YlJaCVIQhKLFZCIP1wFxjb487z8M.

You do need to register, but you then can access the ebook for up to 30 days, but the link only works for the month of February.

If you are the type of person who likes to invest in the future beyond February, or who enjoys the feel of a dead tree-based book in their hands (and who doesn’t), then you have options.

The book is also for sale as an ebook via ebooks.com at http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=480095 or simply click here. But, apparently, not yet for the Kindle (or iSanitaryPad, I presume).

Or you can invest your money in a bright and shiny netnographic future by buying it from Amazon here: Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online. Maybe you can ask your library to buy it, then you can keep renewing it and borrowing it and reading it for free forever. Wow: think about that.

Sage has also been working with Google HQ to try to find solutions, so they may also have it up at some point on Google Books, too.

Either way, I am happy now because I have been able to keep my promise to you, oh faithful, undemanding, and perhaps-a-bit-too-well-mannered-and-complacent Gentle blog readers.

So if you are interested in how to do netnography (online ethnography), and what netnographers have found, and what some of the latest and most exciting and inspiring theories about online communities and social media area, and where that field is going, go get the book for free right now, read the book, and let me and the world know what you think. Your life will then be complete and perfect in every way. I can most sincerely promise you that (my fingers are crossed behind my back, though, but don’t worry about that).

That’s all I’d really like is for you to read it and review it and thus be completely and utterly perfect and complete. Lots of you. Lots of comments. PLEASE review it on Amazon, or on the ebooks site (preferably Amazon…), write about it here, in your own blogs, post it on Facebook, on Twitter, on your social media sites. Tell us all (especially me) what you think. Don’t be so shy.

Be complacent and book-free, no longer, for the book is free and the time for complacency is nigh, oh ye of little MySpace.

Read the book. Spread the words. Review for the world. Read and Spread, oh ye who gather in the netnoverse of bloggy pals, Read and Spread.

Posted in Netnography, Qualitative Research Methods, Social Media, Technology, Marketing Research, Marketing News & Insights, Word of Mouth Marketing, Marketing Science | 1 Comment »

December 2, 2009 by Robert Kozinets.

Hey everyone. The long-awaited (for me at least) Netnography book is actually, really, being printed by Sage this week, in New Delhi, I think. The presses are rolling, the drums of ink are being loaded, the dead trees are being slapped to produce pages, and out will emerge…the book. The first book, ever, in the history of the world, on netnography. Yeah. I’m kind of excited-can you tell?

Although the book has been available for pre-order from Amazon for a while now (Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online), this week, Sage put up the information about the book, and some nice bonus materials.

Here is the link to that page, but read on, cuz I’ve got a pretty nice surprise for you at the end of this post.

Here comes the official “blurb” of the book which I wrote, along with some of my own commentary and filling-in-the-blanks kinda stuff (you already know that I like to do that on this blog, don’t you?).

So I start the thing with the cheap persuasion trick of telling people just how darn important this phenomenon of online communities really is (like, is there anyone out there who still thinks the Internet is “just a fad”? believe me, I heard this much more than you might think when I started out).

“With as many as 1 billion people now using online communities such as newsgroups [that’s where it all began], blogs [remember when they were the latest thing?], forums [what’s the difference between a forum and a newsgroup? don’t know? Buy the Book!], social networking sites[i.e., Facebook and Orkut and a few others, since MySpace appears to be on life support], podcasting, videocasting [YouTubing], photosharing communities [we can’t forget Flickr], and virtual worlds [is Second Life making a comeback? and, hey, are all these parenthetical comments starting to drive you crazy yet?], the internet is now an important site for research.”

Yes, that’s the big idea. If the Internet is changing our life, then being able to use new tools to study that change is going to be very important to research and researchers. Not just marketer researchers or consumer researchers. ALL social science researchers who treat topics that are affected by these technologies.

”This exciting [at least, exciting for me] new text is the first to explore the discipline of ‘Netnography’ - the conduct of ethnography over the internet [now how’s that for a concise definition]- a method specifically designed to study cultures and communities online. For the first time [you read it here first folk, for the very first time], full procedural guidelines for the accurate and ethical conduct of ethnographic research online are set out, with detailed, step-by-step guidance to thoroughly introduce, explain, and illustrate the method to students and researchers [and, no, I didn’t think of titleing it “Netnography for Dummies”, but I did try to keep it straightforward, easy to follow, and simple, for the most part].

The author [that’s me!] also surveys the latest research on online cultures and communities [think of that as bonus material, and you can have it for free…see below], focusing on the methods used to study them, with examples focusing on the new elements and contingencies of the blogosphere (blogging), microblogging [Tweet, Tweet], videocasting, podcasting, social networking sites [there’s that Facebook stuff again], virtual worlds, and more. [So a key differentiator for this book is that it is totally up to date with all the changes on the Internet. In the past, netnography told a lot about how to do research on newsgroups, but it wasn’t very explicit about how to use it to research Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, and so on. Although I could write a book about each of those topics, this version at least mentions and includes netnography that uses all the latest tools and social media techniques that people are using to connect. It’s current. At least, for the next ten minutes it is ;-) ]

This book will be essential reading [that’s what I’m hoping, anyways] for researchers [scholars, market researchers, even bloggers who love to do research] and students in social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, marketing and consumer research [well, in my classes, for sure], organization and management studies, and cultural and media studies.”

So, that’s the blurb, with my blah-blah inserted into the blurb so that it’s now a blah-blah blurb. Try saying that ten times fast with your mouth full of crackers.

Okay, if you’ve made it this far, you deserve a reward and here it is.

Sage is also giving away the first two chapters of the book, to try and whet your appetite for more. The first chapter is a good solid introduction to the topic that answers some basic questions about what netnography is and why we need it. It defines some key but sticky terms like online community and cyberculture. It also tells you, in summary fashion, what is in the rest of the book so that you can get an idea about how the book is put together.

If you want Chapter 1 all to yourself, you can download a pdf of it by just clicking here.

But, wait, there’s more.

In their generosity (and, perhaps, their estimation of its worth), Sage has decided to share not just the blurb, not just the book title, not just Chapter One, oh no, but also Chapter Two with all of you.

And Chapter Two is really something. Chapter Two has a lot of good, useful stuff about theories that talk about Online Communities and Cultures. Oh, Chapter Two took me a lot of time. I worked, I sweated. People, I slaved over Chapter Two. I cannot believe that they are giving it away (have I been studying Stephen Brown’s rhetorical style a little bit too closely, do you think?). Chapter Two overviews many existing theories that help us to understand what is happening with online cultures and communities. It gives facts, figures, statistics, and it has a wealth of definition and theory. Giving it away? With all due respect to Chris Anderson, that’s an outrage. Chapter Two will boost your knowledge of this important, growing area. It will allow you to beat out your friends and colleagues in social media knowledge. It will give you not only classic theories but totally new and updated theories.

Yes, you read that right. Do you remember the old tourist, mingler, devotee insider classic of Kozinets (1999)? You must remember it? No? You don’t? Well, it’s pretty well known, sort of. Well, that theory is completely, totally updated. Revamped. Overhauled. Freshened. Brightened. Some of the terms (I won’t tell you which one—tourist—oops) are completely terminated. Executed without mercy. And there are new terms, new moving parts, innovative and world-broadening extensions to the theory that are included. And new theories on top of that. Exciting, thrilling new theories, yes indeed.

And they’re all yours, right now, absolutely free.

Can you imagine that?

All you need to do ladies and gentlemen is to click on this link right here and the gem that is Chapter Two will be yours to read, to enjoy, to cherish, and of course to CITE LIKE CRAZY in your own research forever.

And now, the Grand Finale. The moment you’ve been waiting for.

Can you believe there is anything else? No? You can’t? You must have a serious trust problem, then.

Because there is.

I just got the email today from Harriet Baulcombe at Sage. And I’ll paraphrase here what she just wrote to me (when you read this, please try to read it in an upper crust British accent, as that’s how I always read my letters from Sage, as they all come from London):

“I am writing to let you know about a new type of promotion that we will be running for your book in January. In the last couple of months we have incorporated Google books into our website, so from just before publication onwards, visitors to the site have the option to search inside the book in addition to downloading a pdf of a selected sample chapter. You can already see an example on our website. Usually, we restrict the view of the book in Google books so that visitors to the site (or to the Google books site) can view no more than 20% of the book. However, what we are planning for your book, for January only, is to make 100% of the book free to view via Google books. As soon as the book is released, at the end of January, we will switch the restriction back on.”

Yes, you read that right, it sounds like they are planning on GIVING AWAY MY BOOK FOR FREE. That’s a pretty big promotion, and a pretty big leap for an established book publisher to make.

Yep, lucky, lucky you.

You will get a chance to read Netnography: The Book online before it is released. Probably about the 7th of January (I’ll let you know—but of course, you knew that already). On Google Books. What could be cooler (uh, probably a lot of things…)?

The book is due to be released at the end of January, and at the point, the free Google Books access to the book will end. Oh, sad, sad day.

But by then, you will be hopelessly addicted to it. Wildly dependent on it. You simply won’t be able to live without it. Right? (Why not order your copy of Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online now, in advance, so you won’t have to bear the agonizing line up, all dejected and withdrawal-shaken, putting yourself through that Harry Potter-like queue on that January release date?). Blog this, Facebook and Tweet it. Tell the world, people, tell the world!

Okay, enough incredible news. You’ve got two book chapters to read. Get busy.

Posted in Qualitative Research Methods, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Virtual Worlds, Netnography, Marketing News & Insights, Word of Mouth Marketing, Marketing Research, Marketing Science | 4 Comments »