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This month, after the Nielsen/PatientsLikeMe.com story broke in the WSJ, several of the market research forums and LinkedIn groups were abuzz.  The best of the lot was led by Tom Anderson of Anderson Analytics and his Next Gen Market Research group. 

In case you missed the dustup, here’s an excerpt from the WSJ.com article:

At 1 a.m. on May 7, the website PatientsLikeMe.com noticed suspicious activity on its “Mood” discussion board. There, people exchange highly personal stories about their emotional disorders, ranging from bipolar disease to a desire to cut themselves.

It was a break-in. A new member of the site, using sophisticated software, was “scraping,” or copying, every single message off PatientsLikeMe’s private online forums.

Bilal Ahmed wrote about his health on a site that was scraped.

PatientsLikeMe managed to block and identify the intruder: Nielsen Co., the privately held New York media-research firm. Nielsen monitors online “buzz” for clients, including major drug makers, which buy data gleaned from the Web to get insight from consumers about their products, Nielsen says.

I felt totally violated,” says Bilal Ahmed, a 33-year-old resident of Sydney, Australia, who used PatientsLikeMe to connect with other people suffering from depression. He used a pseudonym on the message boards, but his PatientsLikeMe profile linked to his blog, which contains his real name.

After PatientsLikeMe told users about the break-in, Mr. Ahmed deleted all his posts, plus a list of drugs he uses. “It was very disturbing to know that your information is being sold,” he says. Nielsen says it no longer scrapes sites requiring an individual account for access, unless it has permission.

Coincidentally, the 11/1/10 issue of Newsweek has an article entitled “Privacy is Dead.”  The author, a young woman, describes a new “score” created to help employers understanding social media behaviors of potential employees.  For this article, she hired a company called ReputationDefender (who works to clean up online reputations, but has a mixed reputation themselves) to see what they could learn about her (a job they usually don’t do).  As she said:

Three Silicon Valley engineers, several decades of experience, and access to publically available databases like Spokeo, Facebook, and LinkedIn (no, they didn’t do any hacking) – and voila.  Within 30 minutes the company had my Social Security number; in two hours they knew where I lived, my body type, my hometown, and my health status.

As she points out, it’s one thing if employers get this info; another if it’s a credit-card company or data aggregator who is turning around and selling info on you to other companies for a profit.  And maybe these companies aren’t talking about what they’re doing;  end-clients may not know (or don’t ask) how these companies are so effective in reaching a marketer’s  target audience.

The “debate” centers on several factors: 

What is “Public”?  I think we all believe that if we post something to our own public blog, or to a public LinkedIn or Facebook group, or Twitter, there’s the expectation that people can “take it” for analysis.

The Gray Area.   I was never naïve enough to believe that sites weren’t using our information for profit in some way.  However, I did assume that there was a gatekeeper in place: 

Case 1:  Amazon makes recommendations to its own customers based on past shopping and purchasing behaviors.  This is a closed system; I know I have a relationship with Amazon.

Case 2:  Site A describes its user profile to Advertiser B.  Advertiser B says they’d like to reach just those who are, let’s say, unmarried women under the age of 30.  Site A says no problem, send over your ad, and using an ad-server engine delivers the ad to just the desired target.  (Okay, a lot more complicated than that, but similar to how magazine lists were “rented” in the past.)

The Ugly Underbelly.  But what’s going on is often ugly and/or dishonest:  lying to join sites to scrap content; changing a privacy policy after someone has signed up to create a loophole for selling what had been private info.  Facebook’s privacy issues over the past year is the most well-known example of this right now – and Congress continues to investigate. 

Nielsen is a very large and respected media research company.  However, this Nielsen case, in my opinion, is just another part of the ugly underbelly – “mindless parasites” that weren’t programmed to consider the ramifications of their methodology.    Nielsen joined PatientsLikeMe.com with the intent of eavesdropping, not participating as a member.  Not okay – and I respect them less for having done so.

The good companies doing social media (text) analysis will seek permission from a site to analyze its content for a client (who’s likely to be a potential advertiser).  You might ask why a company would agree to have their content scraped.  It’s simple:   It’s another revenue stream.

Setting Some Standards Today. 
There are many aspects to this debate and I really urge you to think about what the possible solutions might be.  The leading market research organizations around the world, including ESOMAR, are dealing with these topics right now.  In the meantime, here are my initial thoughts:

• If a comment was made on a public blog, it can be quoted in a report delivered to a client.
• If a quote was made by a member of a private site, with the permission of the site owner to look at the data, those findings should not be quoted, but can become part of the aggregated analysis.
• Reporting is a greater challenge for qualitative approaches which tend to rely on quotes. 
• Finally, Terms of Service will need to evolve so consumers have greater buy-in when they sign up and as policy changes are made.  Easy to say and really hard to do. 

Clearly this is a topic I’ll continue to watch closely as it impacts marketing research, including qualitative analysis of social media content.

Your thoughts?

I recently saw a Pew Research report on gadget ownership. The graph below says it all.

Tablet PC ownership is currently only 4%, but I expect that will skyrocket next year as the android versions hit the market.  Personally, I’m expecting cell phones to merge with these devices soon.  Short of that, companies like Verizon will be offering data plans for tablets like the Samsung Galaxy as early as next month.

As an aside, care should be taken when assuming who owns the latest devices.  Deeper in the report it highlighted that African-Americans are more likely than others to own an eReader (7% vs. 5% for Whites and 4% for Hispanics) and Hispanics are twice as likely to own a tablet than the other groups (6% vs. 3%).

When I was trying to explore what “ownership” meant (family owns vs. owns unit for self – which I could never find out), I saw the survey response rates:  13.6% for the landline sample and 17.0% for the cell phone sample.  That rather surprised me.  What wasn’t a surprise was the level of cell phone ownership.

Collectively, these findings suggest to me the following:

• As phones (and tablets) come to do more and more, and we see continued consolidation in devices, it’s important that we ask how we can best reach each respondent.  For example, texting a focus group reminder notice may be much better than sending an email (if email isn’t checked often).
• Asking someone how they’re most likely to access the Internet should become a routine question.  If it’s on their cell, online screeners or email blasts should be optimized for that format.  (Same thing with the tablets.)
• I’d like to see more on best practices based on what’s working.  Text reminders might work, but slef-administered screening via a smartphone might not.

Of course, two years from now, the issues will be new and different!

How do you think these findings might impact recruiting for qualitative research?  Or conducting qualitative research for that matter?

As a marketing researcher and consumer advocate, I’ve long held that no business would be in business without customers, and that the consumer-brand relationship is paramount in all business activities.  The Internet has made these relationships both more intimate and interactive.  And selling can be a bit more difficult in this environment.  Many of the old “relationship” rules no longer hold up.

“Brand Butlers” – just the clever name – caught my eye recently.  Coming out of TrendWatching.com, this opinion piece says there’s a transition underway:  “Why serving is the new selling” is their proposition.

The argument  is that recession-weary consumers are “jaded, time-poor, and pragmatic” and are looking for “uber-relevant services” offered anywhere, anytime – by companies that show they aren’t in it just for the money (that they care about their customers and their lives).

From a brand perspective, these new, closer relationships allow for greater interaction, more immediate understanding of the customers’ needs (as it directly or indirectly relates to the brand), and greater feedback overall.

Personally, I don’t think is this an entirely new wave or generation of relationship marketing, but rather an outgrowth of a related technology which is allowing for better, softer-sell, sponsored-sell, and generally relationship-building opportunities.  (Hence the 2.5 designation.)

Having said that, the Brand Butler paper has some great examples of their new relationship-service proposition.  A lot of them are mobile web apps for smartphones and others are web-based or offline.  Take a peak.

• Obvious Butler:  Mastercard’s ATM Hunter iPhone app allows users to find their nearest ATMs by entering their location or using built-in GPS functionality.
• In the Know Butler:  Nike’s True City iPhone app aims to give consumers ‘insider’ information on six European cities, while also allowing users to share their own tips and delivering exclusive Nike offers and information.
• Money-Saving Butler:  Sprize, provided by Gap in and around Vancouver, BC, allows shoppers to register online before they shop, and if an item’s price is reduced within 45 days of purchase, their Sprize account will automatically be credited the difference.
• “Finding” Butler:  Pet food brand Purina offers a branded application that helps consumers to find ‘Petcentric’ locations in their vicinity.
• Connectivity Butler:  vtravelled, launched by Virgin Atlantic, is a social network aimed at creating a global community of travel lovers. The free service allows members to share travel knowledge, thoughts and photos, and access real time updates about destination events and information.
• Health Butler:  The Nivea Sun iPhone app is designed to help Brazilians tan safely. The app collects information about the user, suggests the correct SPF to be used on a particular day, and alerts the user when the protection should be reapplied.
• Advice Butler:   In 2009, Smirnoff held a series of master-classes for men wanting to become ‘Modern Gentlemen’. Three complimentary classes were delivered in London to a limited number of guests, focusing on classic cocktail making, style consulting and grooming.
• Utility Butlers:  The Zipcar iPhone app  allows members of the car-sharing service to find, reserve and unlock vehicles using their mobile device.  And  ColorSnap is a free iPhone app from US paint brand Sherwin-Williams that allows consumers to match the color of a photo taken on their iPhone with over 1,500 colors listed in the Sherwin-Williams database.

(Source:  www.trendwatching.com/trends/brandbutlers/)

Clearly, the focus is on service (not selling) and supporting a brand by supporting key target groups in ways that go beyond the tried and true.

Inspired to come up with you own Brand Butler idea?  These ideas are fun and clever.  My only suggestion if you’re developing for smartphones is that you develop for the iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry platforms.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had a working theory that the social media buzz of last year is fundamentally changed.   I’m not suggesting that social media is dead – no, it’s here to stay.  Rather, there’s an evolution to its usage; it’s something of a maturing market. Over the past week, several news headlines have caught my attention:

MySpace looks to the past for its future.  The social networking site plans to return to its roots by pushing entertainment content and jettisoning portal-like features.  (3/10/10, LA Times)

Facebook and Twitter join the location wars.  Facebook and Twitter are each rolling out geo-location services designed to link updates to users’ current locations. Twitter’s feature uses Google Map overlays to show users’ whereabouts, while Facebook plans to introduce a location-based service at next month’s f8 conference.  (3/10/10, Smart Brief on Social Media)

At SXSWi, Twitter may finally have met its match.  No question Twitter is still huge here, but Foursquare and Gowalla have to be considered a major part of people’s organizing principle.  (3/16/10,  CNET.com)

Surprised?  It was only a matter of time before end-users started asking – and expecting answers to  – the question:  “what’s in it for me?”  (We saw the same thing with Internet adoption in the mid-to-late 1990s.)  The economic downturn of last year, in my opinion, helped fuel interest in social media (people had more time on their hands), which may have accelerated the questioning of social media’s value/investment.

A  Barracuda Labs’ study of 19 million Twitter accounts supports this idea, at least in part.  Interest in Twitter peaked during the first two-thirds of last year, the height of the economic downturn.

This study reported on in MediaMemo, also did an interesting analysis:  they defined “True” Twitter users as those who had at least 10 followers, were following at least 10 people and had tweeted at least 10 times.  Using that definition, only 21% of Twitter users were “True.”

Furthermore, “in terms of tweets, the report estimates that 34% of Twitter users hadn’t tweeted even once, while a whopping 73% of Twitter’s users tweeted less than 10 times. That means nearly all of the tweets on the social network were coming from about 1/4 of the user base.  Power users dominate.”

If the 80-20 rule applies, that means that around the world, around 5% of Tweeters are generating the content.  In all likelihood, that’s not very engaging or interactive for most people.

So the evolution in social media isn’t all that surprising.  People want to be noticed for their efforts and geo-location services get them noticed.

If you’re a marketer who’s still wondering about social media and its payout, particularly if you have a retail presence, look into the geo-location services and design retention and promotional programs around them.  (They will be especially effective with your younger target and should be eminently measurable.)

If you’re into social media, keep an eye out for the aggregation services (tweets posting to Facebook; the centralization of content).  This way, if you decide to take a “short-cut” you don’t lose your reach with your audience.

Want to learn more?  There’s a great piece from Mashable called “9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing” which you can find by clicking here.

We’ve been hearing a lot about the “new” mixed-method or hybrid market research techniques called “Quant/Qual” of late.  Truth is, if you’ve been around marketing research for any length of time, you know that we’ve been doing “quant/qual” or “qual/quant” for decades.

What’s different – and noteworthy – is the way technology is being leveraged.  Two companies come to mind, yet I’m sure there are others:

iModerate – Fields a larger quant study and then pulls off certain participants to have a one-on-one follow up with a professional moderator.  As their site says:  Research>iMpact provides a hybrid approach in which online qualitative sessions are incorporated into virtually any online survey, giving you qualitative insight that enhances and clarifies the quantitative data.

Invoke Solutions – Seemingly more quantitative in orientation, Invoke is leveraging their technology to obtain richer and deeper open-ended responses.  They say that it’s like a focus group experience, but I’m going to need to learn more before I’m convinced.  Having said that, I’ve seen enough that I’m intrigued and I want to learn more.  The client-interface portion looks very powerful.

But are either of these “new”?  I started this topic thinking, “No, they’re not really new at all.  Just a new twist on an old approach.”

But the more I think about this, the more I believe these might be new approaches.  The dividing line for me lies in the definition of “qualitative research.”

• Qualitative research explores.
• Great open-ended responses in quantitative research explains.

For now, I’m going to continue to think of these newer approaches in these ways – and make client recommendations accordingly.  And, as always, I’ll continue to seek out more info.  If you’ve got something to share on this subject, please do!