Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
UGCX Feb. 9

One way of looking at the Internet: inclusion, informs everything we’re doing

At Charles Schwab in 1994: the Internet is how all brokers should be using, usergroups, showing people the well, early virtual community.

Saw a lot of people helping others, 1995 started cclist, talking about cool events

Engaged in email discussion, talking and listening: in 1995 ppl said maybe jobs could be added to the list, then something to sell, apartment shortage in SF, ask ppl to let him know apts they saw in neighborhoods. Ppl sent feedback, try to do something that made sense and then ask for more feedback. Try to do something with the feedback

Now a customer service rep, part-time,

With 240 emails on cclist, wasn’t working, so looking for message board

Didn’t know what brands were, calling it craigslist forced continual re-engagement.

Turned email folders into html

1997 million-page views per month

microsoft asked to run banner ads

1999 became a real company, did customer svs and programming

end of 1999 rewrote code and created a real database. Hasn’t done coding in 10 years “kinda sad as a nerd.”

1999-2000 “ppl helped me realize my limitations as a manager” so hired now-CEO

a lot of companies talk about customer service, but the hard part is doing it and doing it more

lead, follow, or get out of the way: ppl who started companies would continue running them and run them into the ground.

Hurricane Katrina survivors started repurposing the site to do survivor relocation, then ppl started offering housing and jobs. Stayed out of the way, didn’t care that ppl were using the site for other purposes, were doing a lot to help ppl.

Ppl are overwhelmingly good and polite. Finding that the community is overwhelming trustworthy and the community does an excellent job of policing it.

Many ppl out there who want to get attn and don’t care how they get it: ppl posting ugly stuff usually to get attention. Racism, bickering. But these ppl may not be as racist as they seem, just trying to get attn. Love the sinner, hate the sin. After 14 years, can make for a really bad day.

Sometimes ppl cross the line into criminal behavior. Be prepared to do with police. Operator of site isn’t necessarily responsible for content.

Blog: cnewmark.com

Craigslist isn’t altruistic or noble, but business model is to do well as a business by doing well for the greater good.

Ppl ask: why does craigslist work? We treat ppl the way we want to be treated, this is an international truism. The hard part is saying it and then doing it. It’s the core value of most world religions.

Nothing noble, just universal shard values

For any user-generated content site to succeed, have to build a community that shares a sense of values

There’s a balance between the people who use the site, sometimes we get involved, but only when there’s problems. Balance between authority and community.

Harkens to founding principles of the country: balance between the power holders and the citizens

People elect you by choosing to visit your site

With the Internet, social associations are scaled

Community organizing: KIVA.org, donorschoose.org

People organizing for greater good

User-generated content in government: design and build discussion boards where ppl discuss how gov’t should work. How get best stuff voted to the top and get the politicians to listen

UGCX 09

UGC = user-generated content

Social Content for Big Business   2/9/09
“Opportunities continue to arise for big businesses to leverage social content to create valuable conversations with their customers (and among customers), as well as to benefit company bottom lines. In this session, experts on the front lines of those Social Content will define the benefits and risks of having customer-driven conversations occurring about your brand or products, as well as the costs of not engaging in direct customer interaction.”                 –http://www.ugcxevent.com/socialtrack.html#s1

Moderator: Laurel Touby Founder & Senior VP, mediabistro.com

Speakers
Lane Becker Co-Founder & President, Get Satisfaction, “a web startup dedicated to fostering new methods of communication and collaboration between companies and their customers. Previously, Lane was co-founder of Adaptive Path, a user experience strategy, research, and design consultancy, known for, among other things, coining the technology terms ‘blog’ and ‘ajax.’ ”

Joe Cothrel Chief Community Officer, Lithium Technologies, Inc. “Widely recognized for his pioneering work in online communities in business, Joe serves as Lithium Technologies’ Chief Community Officer. In this role, Joe is responsible for thought leadership, research, and innovations that will drive the next generation of successful enterprise customer communities.

His prior experience included work with AT&T, Cisco Systems, IBM, Microsoft, and many other leading companies. Joe’s work with online communities began in 1996, when he conducted the first comprehensive research study into successful practices for managing online communities.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe has devoted significant time to advancing the understanding of online communities in business. With partners in academia, he studied the impact of online communities on marketing (Texas A&M University), social and organizational dynamics (University of Toronto), and social networks (University of Virginia). His work has been cited in more than 50 books on the subject of online community, collaboration, commerce, and knowledge management.

Joe divides his time between San Francisco, CA and his home in Ann Arbor, MI. He holds an M.A. from the University of Michigan and an B.A. from the University of Toledo.”

Marty Collins “is a Group Marketing Manager in the Windows consumer marketing group at Microsoft. As leader of the Windows Social Media Team she is responsible for building a strong community ecosystem for Windows and Windows Live customers using social networking techniques.

Before joining the Windows Live marketing team Marty worked in the Developer Platform & Evangelism group at Microsoft focused on building technical community. Prior to Microsoft Marty worked at Oracle focusing on user groups, and in New York City marketing for professional services.

Marty was born and raised in Seattle; she has a BA from the University of Washington and an MBA from Seattle University. You can find her at martycollinsblog.spaces.live.com”

Matt Warburton is the Ex Director of Community Management for Yahoo. As the Director of Community Management, Matt developed and executed the Community strategy for products such as Groups, Messenger, Profiles, and Mail. Matt’s team was responsible for community input/advisory panels, product blogs, community events, and engagement programs. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Matt spent eight years working for eBay. While at eBay, Matt managed several components of eBay’s Community Management team, including input programs, events, and forums.

State of ugc?

Marty: Seeking more content, seeking to outsource to community

Joe Cothrel: More community comments exist, more interaction generated

Lane: Quantify to companies the value more than just feel-good. Print out the good stuff, send up the chain to execs, but that’s not enough. “we’re directionally right, in terms of what we want to do, but need to quantify the value.”

How do firms feel about ugc?

Lane: Timbuktu bike messengers grew up to be parents, outcry for diaper bags for a year or 18 months. Now one of the best-sellers

Joe: worthy cost avoidance: tech support done by other users. People who participate in ugc, just reading even, remain customers 50% longer.

Marty: We’re solving business problems with actual products. Need current customers to use more products. There’s an engagement boost when people are interacting about the products.

Matt: eBay uses it to get feedback on products, marketing, development

How do you justify doing social content?

Matt: get insight: Transactions, cost avoidance (answer question), knowledge = power,

Marty: Scale: only 15% of Internet users are creating content, so we scale the content to the entire base. Paying a small number to serve a larger number of people.

New techniques?

Marty: RSS and tagging: content created on blogs, use aggregation model, tag and then Microsoft pulls that content into its site.

Joe: We want an open platform, pull content that exists elsewhere, share info

Matt: Wisdom of crowds: other users vote on ideas, drawback is setting expectations, have to be willing to take action on info, have the list of concerns evolve

Marty: YouTube lots of demos on web. Scrape YouTube and invite them to be linked to Microsoft site. Offer a showcase and Microsoft promotes it. Bring in 3d party content, make use of it for own purposes

What are users restricted from, how many conversations get banned?

Lane: It’s a question of do you build a stadium or a church? You set the tone. “I hate message boards; it’s like a stadium after the game is over.” The design and way you set the space indicate the tone. Useful to have occupants read an agreement: something that’s written for humans not lawyers.

Leads to self-policing

Matt: Terms of service, people report items, abuse cube. It’s more about what you should do, NOT what not do as a community

Joe: have procedures for what happens when people do what they shouldn’t. How should my company participate? Exec comment or get in there and interact

Ccpac.com here’s what companies agree to, here’s what customers agree to

Matt: get company out there: not defensive, internal guidelines for how to participate
If find out there’s a common problem, get out there and answer those questions

How does company value social content? What have we gotten for out efforts, metrics?

Lane: Still more work to be done, most right now praise-oriented. Product ideas, conversations oriented toward value-added. Maybe be more specific for marketing. A community dashboard for executives? Not quite there yet.

Matt: depends purpose of community. Quantify ideas generated, questions answered by 1 customer reference post?

Joe: Link customer id to id of community, you should know those community participants. Not just the users who contribute, everybody, even the ones who are just reading. If the customers buy more, then they’re better customers

Matt: Why come to community: get info. Often go out and buy

Marty: New member signups, postings, look at it each month, if not growing: why less healthy, what needs to be done to bring posts back up. Had community manager shoot content about new product in 90 minutes, not weeks and thousands of dollars spent

Is social content seen as critically important, marketing, PR, how sell to execs?

Lane: Recession-sensitive. How do I engage with the community? What does
engagement look like? Walls of business are way beyond the physical building

Matt: already laid-off, first hit often marketing. Can run the program with fewer people.

Joe: unlike ’01 downturn, this isn’t going away. It’s the nature of the medium and every company will be doing it. Less expensive than other marketing initiatives. Still seeing a lot of demand for this.

Marty: measured against other marketing initiatives, traditional media, etc.

Practical techniques to keep management bought in?

Joe: decisions are made with numbers and stories, together a powerful conversation,

Lane: balance the qualitative or quantitative

Marty: should you build your own? Should you seek out what’s already there. Monitor everyday what’s being said

How get peers to buy-in, when they have other things to do?

Lane: People love to talk about things they know. Look for committed team to share their knowledge. Do it as a team, buddy system, sit with them and coach their posts

Joe: not everyone will want to participate, but let them know what the rules are, afraid they’ll get yelled at.

Marty: facebook branded page that talks about upcoming products, have pop-ups. How much want to get involved vs engage with fan pages. “larger ecosystem” wall that lets people talk about product.

Don’t look at what you’re creating, there are people talking about product there, so go there and engage

User-generated libel in other countries?

Joe: general courtesy and protocol should take care of it before it gets that far

Lane: when marketing dominates the thinking, have to get away from the “campaign mentality” because this is an ongoing conversation