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Inc. 5000 Conference – 2010 @ryanbuch Twitter Feed

Ryan Buchanan — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 04:46:43 +0000

At pdx, waiting to catch plane to wash dc for #inc500 conf. This will my fourth straight year at this awesome conference. Great insights.
10:14 PM Sep 29th via TweetDeck

President Bill Clinton addresses @inc500 conf thru video
5:42 AM Oct 1st via TweetDeck

Gary Hirshberg CEO – Stonyfield Yogurt

Should be good! RT @inc5000: Today’s 1st session is starting! Gary Hirshberg, the CE-YO from Stoneyfield at #inc500conferenece!

Stonyfield Yogurt is up to $360 million in sales now. Gary going to go over his philosophy on triple bottom line.
5:47 AM Oct 1st

Churchill quote “success is the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”
5:49 AM Oct 1st

If the rest of the world adopted USA energy and total consumption, we’d need 5 Earths to be able to handle it.
5:52 AM Oct 1st

67% of Americans are obese or overweight. Just like the environment, unintentional actions lead to disastrous effects.
5:56 AM Oct 1st

Stonyfield first 9 years to get to $4m revenue and barely unprofitable. Never got venture money. Grew with cradle to cradle thinking.
6:04 AM Oct 1st

9 carbon footprint teams – transportation, greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable packaging, etc
6:08 AM Oct 1st via TweetDeck

Real sustainability is about innovation not just Eco efficiency
6:11 AM Oct 1st

@inc5000 Gary hirshberg, stonyfield yogurt CEO. Cradle to cradle = no waste. Highly profitable, requires a little investment up front.
6:15 AM Oct 1st

Organic cows live twice as long as conventional cows. Whoda thunk that?
6:21 AM Oct 1st

The challenge: stonyfields gross margins are 10 percent less than competitors. Better net margins from less advertising.
6:25 AM Oct 1st

Stonyfield lids talk about their causes. Huge customer loyalty. Advocacy.
6:27 AM Oct 1st

Stonyfield is deeply engaged in PR and social media. This year- 4 billion media impressions.
Fri Oct 01 2010 06:33:56

Mollusks take calcium carbonate from their environment to make their homes. Humans will need to do this with carbon.
Fri Oct 01 2010 06:38:33

Kevin Surace CEO – Serious Materials

@inc5000 next speaker Kevin Surace of Serious Materials rethinking an industry retrofitting homes and building with Eco drywall
Fri Oct 01 2010 06:44:24

Kevin surace – Inc. Magazine entrepreneur of the year. Need to identify a big problem. For him: climate change.
Fri Oct 01 2010 06:51:34

Today- only 0.4% comes from wind and solar. Everything else is coal, oil, and others.
Fri Oct 01 2010 06:54:45

Ecorock tackles the problem that 40% of total world energy usage is in building energy inefficiancy.
Fri Oct 01 2010 06:57:33

QuietRock is 5x more than drywall but total installed cost was actually quite a bit less.
Fri Oct 01 2010 07:02:39

People advice- look at hiring people outside your industry who look at a problem differently. Take company to next level
Fri Oct 01 2010 07:04:37

Your customers will not go with you just because you are green. Got to save them money. Most important.
Fri Oct 01 2010 07:07:22

Serious Materials replaced out all windows on the Empire State building with high Rsquared value windows. 6500 windows, saves $28m.
Fri Oct 01 2010 07:09:53

Everyone says they are innovative, but to truly disrupt an industry is really really hard.
Fri Oct 01 2010 07:11:47

Apple is most well known example as a disruptor. iPod was 50th digital music player in the market, but did it uniquely.
Fri Oct 01 2010 07:13:44

Serious Materials CEO is PR genius by buying shutdown doors and windows manufacturing plants and partnering with unions. Moving fast.
7:27 AM Oct 1st

Tim Westergren Founder – Pandora

Pandora founder Tim Westergren speaking now @inc5000 conference. Very psyched to hear his story of going broke then $100m rev this year.
7:36 AM Oct 1st

By end of 2001, over 50 Pandora employees worked for free. It stayed that way for 2 years. Founder had $200k personal debt. Got $9m VC in 04
7:46 AM Oct 1st

Tried it as a subscription model, but people didn’t want to pay. Pandora now has 65 million users in US. 100k new users per day @inc5000
7:49 AM Oct 1st

@pandora – your founder talking now about responsiveness to real human listeners. Do u engage on Twitter?
7:55 AM Oct 1st

Washington dc political process nearly shut down pandora due to Internet levy on streaming music. 400k faxes to congress in 3 days. Saved.
8:04 AM Oct 1st

Radio is 85% of how people consume music. Biggest $ part of industry. Pandora makes money thru advertising. Cash flow positive, but not prof
8:10 AM Oct 1st

Pandora 90k artists. 70% independent. @inc5000
Fri Oct 01 2010 08:12:44

@inc5000 panel “inside the mind of an investor”. Only 500 actine VCs in country. As entrepreneur, still need to be selective
Fri Oct 01 2010 09:19:41

Danny Meyer – New York City restaurateur and CEO of the Union Square Hospitality Group

@inc5000 current speaker is Danny meyer of the famous NYC restaurant Gramercy Tavern
Fri Oct 01 2010 11:58:01

51% of your success is how you make customers feel. 49% is the technical delivery of your products and services. Hospitality is adapting to
Fri Oct 01 2010 12:19:48

Jean Chatzky – Author of “The Difference”

@inc5000 speaker now is Jean Chatzky, author of “the difference”. Anyone can prosper even in toughest times.
Fri Oct 01 2010 12:48:23

As an entrepreneur, Jean knows company owners think often about finances, but how structured are we in our thinking?
Fri Oct 01 2010 12:58:47

#inc500 Human nature in personal finance is to be over-confident about our future finances.
Fri Oct 01 2010 13:03:12

3 traits of financially secure people: Habitual savings, diversified investing, and …
Fri Oct 01 2010 13:11:34

Money doesn’t bring happiness. Statistically, happiness attracts money and success in all stages of life.
Fri Oct 01 2010 13:18:53

Saturday, Oct 2 – Day 2
#inc500 First session on virtualization and cloud computing is a bit of an infomercial for Dell.
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:11:29

RT @IncMagazine: “Giving entrepreneurs better access to capital would have been No. 1 way to get us out of the economic downturn.” S. Felice
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:12:54

Steve Felice word of advice is to not wait so long to get international experience. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:41:03

John Gerzema says the great recession could be the best thing for america. Underlying sense of optimism. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:43:31

Based on a huge study on American spending habits, there is a major shift from mindless to mindful purchases
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:44:51

Author of “Spendshift” says American consumers collectively saying “if you want to sell to me, you better have my back”.
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:46:51

Shift happened in 2005 from superficial stuff to authentic, craft-driven meaningful products. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:48:23

RT @IncEvents: Final Day @ Inc. 500 conference! Listen to @johngerzema talk about Decoding the New Consumer right now.
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:49:57

Trends since 2005 – fewer logos on new clothing, more volunteerism, retooling empowerment betterment, people becoming self-reliant.
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:52:38

Lots more Americans, even in Dallas, have backyard chickens. Fascinating that this defines a trend.
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:54:44

Time banks is a cool concept. You give time as a guitar teacher and I give back by doing yardwork. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:56:23

Spend Shift trend – badge of awesomeness – creativity but keeping it simple and frugal and Eco. Nimble, adaptable.
Sat Oct 02 2010 06:58:54

50% of mellenials don’t have a land line, bookrenter.com, neighborgoods.com. Use hulu.com and don’t pay for tv cable #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 07:02:40

Recyclebank – works like frequent flyer miles for rewarding recycling. Trend towards uber-local support #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 07:06:43

Simplicity example – Shoebox banking. Put all your personal financial statements in a shoebox and bank figures it all out for u #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 07:08:52

We are moving from a credit to a debit society. The $ that we are spending today is really ours. More selective, mindful consumption.
Sat Oct 02 2010 07:13:34

America is an emerging market for values-led innovation. Future is bright. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 07:14:41

Hilarious zappos video about the “happiness bus” playing at #inc500conferenece. 3 month happy bus tour
Sat Oct 02 2010 08:54:06

I gotta check out the happy bus outside the Gaylord resort Hotel here #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 08:57:55

Tony Hsieh CEO – Zappos

Tony Hsieh speaking now. Glad he is adapting his presentation from last year #inc5000. Happy bus coming to Portland in 6 weeks
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:02:27

RT @IncMagazine: “I sold LinkExchange because it wasn’t fun anymore…the company culture went down.” says Tony Hsieh @zapppos #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:02:40

New zappos record for longest phone call. 7 1/2 hours. What if you need to go to bathroom? #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:10:44

Zappos Call center people are trained to check pricing with 3 competitors and tell customer to go with less $ competitor product
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:13:04

Nice! RT @sandydlc: #zappos saved me for inc conference gala outfit. Ordered sandals Monday, arrived Tuesday, flight early Thursday #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:16:02

Growing zappos brand over next few years – clothing, customer service, culture #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:17:45

Two books in Zappos giving library – Good to Great, Tribal Leadership. Important findings #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:20:37

Commitable core values – doing a google search on any 1 of 10 core values – zappos shows up #1. Unique. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:23:39

Luck is really about being open to opportunities. More perspective than fact #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:25:29

Zappos has 1500 vendors that have total access to info in zappos extranet #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:28:31

Great companies had really strong cultures and all had a higher purpose. Chase the vision, not the money #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:33:27

Zappos took the high human touch approach, not high tech approach.
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:37:35

2009 timing of when zappos vision became broader to “delivering happiness”. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:38:48

What is your goal in life? Ultimately, it’s to be happy and fulfilled. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:49:42

Happiness framework – perceived control, perceived progress, vision #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:51:37

To build enduring, great companies, you need profits, passion, purpose. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 09:55:46

Norm Brodsky #inc5000 talk on sales -listen to your customer, take responsibility, everybody sells
Sat Oct 02 2010 11:31:31

Learn from others. What you like. What you don’t like. Borrow others ideas and embellish them. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 11:33:46

Hire salespeople who want to stay with the company forever. Right attitude is everything. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 11:46:04

Norm Brodsky – some of the best suggestions come from employees. Put up a suggestion box and use it! #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 11:54:02

The real question is “why are we doing this?” prioritize. Need to write down your life plan. Do that with your wife. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 12:06:18

Norm says you have 48 hours to put things you’ve learned into action or you won’t do it. #inc5000
Sat Oct 02 2010 12:12:58

Great black tie #inc5000 awards ceremony tonight!
Sat Oct 02 2010 17:02:43

Startups: My Delayed Response to Calacanis and Cuban

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:03:16 +0000

I love entrepreneurial passion and how both Jason Calacanis and Mark Cuban’s blog posts ‘tell it like it is’. In the process, there has been quite a bit of controversy from Jason’s blog post “How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)” that got picked up by TechCrunch and the TechCrunch blog comments were charged statements of brutal opposition or strongly in favor of Jason’s tips, especially #11: “Fire people who are not workaholics…. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz.” Jason goes onto give advice of where to spend money and where to cut back. I have to admit that I disagreed with a lot of Jason’s perspective, especially expecting all employees to work as hard and long as a founder/owner when there is much less upside for that employee. Jason – 16 hours a day, 7 days a week is not sustainable. Startups are marathons, not sprints. Make sure you got some honest perspective from your employees, your spouse, your family, and their spouses and families to see if everyone is enjoying the creative process of starting your startup when they are burnt out. Mark Cuban had some good advice on his blog post “A Couple of My Rules for Startups” – very opinionated – but surprisingly mature comments. You can tell he really knows what he’s talking about. I think Cuban is a hot-head, wannabe cool guy, but he is hell of a sales guy from his past success in startups and growing $billion companies. Here are a few key excerpts: “1. Don’t start a company unless its an obsession and something you love. 2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession. 3. Hire people who you think will love working there. 4. Sales Cures All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales. 5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap 6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.” “7. No offices. Open offices keeps everyone in tune with what is going on and keeps the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show them how to use the lock on the john. There is nothing private in a start up. This is also a good way to keep from hiring execs who can not operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over their secretary, run away. If an exec wont go on salescalls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company. 8. As far as technology, go with what you know. That is always the cheapest way. If you know Apple, use it. If you know Vista… ask yourself why, then use it. Its a startup, there are just a few employees. Let people use what they know. 9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics. 10. NEVER EVER EVER buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, its ok to buy for your own folks, but if you really think someone is going to wear your Yobaby.com polo you sent them in public, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money 11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications, shows and websites you already watch, listen to and read. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them an email introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communications with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you. 12. Make the job fun for employees. Keep a pulse on the stress levels and accomplishments of your people and reward them. My first company, MicroSolutions, when we had a record sales month, or someone did something special, I would walk around handing out 100 dollar bills to salespeople. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, we had a company shot. Kamikaze. We would take people to a bar every now and then and buy one or 10 for everyone. At MicroSolutions, more often than not we had vendors cover the tab. Vendors always love a good party :0″

Day #1 of Visit to the NYC office

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:45:45 +0000

I took the train in from Princeton, New Jersey this morning (spent the night at my childhood friend’s house in Princeton, after recovering from a huge night out at TGI Fridays – with him, his wife, and adorable 2-year-old son, followed by an intense game of Scrabble where his British wife crushed us with words like “cheque” and other non-American, English words). I digress. It’s a balmy 55 degree, overcast day in Manhattan and I’m loving the freedom of walking everywhere in this town.

I connected w/ Chris Masagatani, our NYC Director, at my hotel near Madison Square Garden and we walked to his interim office at ReturnPath – an awesome partner of ours. It’s amazing what you can get done in just a few hours when you have uninterrupted time in person with someone. Chris and I went over updates on all of our NY region clients – roughly 40 of them. We made travel arrangements for him to come back to see us in April in P’town. We also went over a NYC-specific grassroots marketing campaign of reaching out to other bloggers in NYC in the marketing, interactive, and advertising industries.

Chris’s blog is www.CrossPixelNation.com. It’s barebones from a design perspective, but it will soon be a key asset to our NYC office.

We treated ReturnPath Exec Stephanie Miller out to a tasty lunch of Southern cooking nearby and caught up on the happenings within the email and interactive industry. Huge thanks again to Matt, Stephanie, and the ReturnPath team to making our entry into the NYC market so much more enjoyable than scrapping away and learning the hard way.

Another update. We hired an awesome NYC-dedicated account coordinator, Donald Law, in our Portland office and he’s hitting the ground floor running this week.

If you still haven’t clicked through to Chris’s blog, here is Episode II of his video talents and impressions of the Big Apple after living here for the past 6 weeks:

2008 eROI Online Marketing Prediction #9: B2B UGC

Ryan Buchanan — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 04:19:59 +0000

User-Generated content will be an ingredient in most business website launches (and nearly all consumer sites). In 2006, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook got all of the press. Wait, they still do. But, legions of major consumer brands launched their own primary sites or campaign micro-sites with clever concepts that drove consumers to feel a sense of ownership of the future of those brands. Notable examples include HBO’s Justin Timberlake show FutureSexLove, ABC/Disney’s 13 Nights of Halloween, and Doritos user-generated Super-Bowl ads.

In 2008, B2B companies will follow suit, but it won’t be easy. User-Generated content needs to be used in a way that accomplishes specific marketing objectives, and oftentimes B2B companies meet those objectives through Resource Centers (whitepaper, case study, and guide downloads), web forms, giveaways, or surveys. None of these online marketing tactics allow for community building, commenting, rating, “digging”, or creating profiles.

Extending this to what we do as an online marketing company that works with other businesses (not consumers), we just launched our own site, eroi.com, and there simply aren’t any social networking tools built into our primary site. We have done a tremendous amount of Web 2.0 tactics outside of our main site – four distinct blogs with built-in RSS feeds, Pageflakes, delicious, and digg capabilities, our own Facebook Group page, MySpace page, YouTube Channel, and Flickr feeds, but we haven’t pulled them all together and integrated social networking tools into our primary site. As a self-fulfilling prophecy, we could look at implementing some of these tools into our site or, even better, our products. Online support can leverage the wisdom of other customers and allow searchable discussion threads for product support issues between multiple customers. B2B technology companies can learn from Salesforce, Google and Facebook and open the API to their products to allow for anyone to build modules that easily integrate into their online products.

Movable Type 4.0 Transition is Complete

Ryan Buchanan — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 06:49:36 +0000

For the past month, this Blog – Email Days and our other eROI blogs, The Email Wars and Return on Subscriber all had a few errors on them due to the challenging server upgrade of Movable Type 3.1 to the insanely powerful and feature-rich Movable Type 4.0. We weren’t able to display our Category pages, Permalinks, and Comment pages on all pre-transition postings which there numbered in the thousands of blog postings. All that is fixed as of this afternoon and we can let out our inner-geek spirit in celebration!

We will roll out new features in the upcoming weeks for this blog including digg and de.li.cious links, Captcha code for Comments to reduce blog comment spam, create some widgets, and play around with a variety of other MT 4.0 features that I’m just learning about.

Blog Guilt

Ryan Buchanan — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:09:45 +0000

I admit it. I’m guilty of NOT blogging in over two weeks. I was on vacation for 8 days and loved every minute of it. I went white water rafting, climbed a couple mountains in Central Oregon, made a fort in our vacation house backyard with my daughters, nephews, and neices. The crazy thing is that I was relaxed, checked in on my email, but somehow blogging was not a priority while on vacation.

Just writing this blog post is making me feel a whole lot better about my BLOG GUILT. Cathartic, indeed! A bunch of relevant online marketing stuff has happened while on vacation – I am now a part-owner in a new building in Old Town, Portland and eROI will move to 505 NW Couch Street on December 1 of this year. In the past couple weeks, we’ve launched some high profile websites that I will blog about once we get clearance from our clients (I try to learn from past mistakes where we mention a client that doesn’t want certain press).

So, my blog guilt is absolved. Now, I’m off to write a dozen blog posts with video and pics from our party. Lots of entertainment there. Cheers!

Seth Godin is Right: Small is the New Big

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:43:37 +0000

If you haven’t read any of Seth Godin’s books or his blog, you probably aren’t in the eMarketing, online marketing, interactive marketing, viral marketing or just plain old marketing world. He’s phenomenal, he’s candid, and the insight you learn from each of his books and blog posts is power-packed with solid, proven ways to improve your marketing and steadily grow your company by doing lots of little things remarkably well.

I just finished his book “Small is the New Big” which is a compilation of hundreds of his blog posts over the past 4 years. On a local level, I find that I learn from some small, entrepreneurial companies that specialize in a certain niche and share their learning with the world through their blog and with me at lunch or happy hour. Stephen Landau with Substance is one of those people. He and his business partner David have one of the best blogs I’ve seen on Flash and user experiences. Their idealism in truly changing the world is infectious and they are already making a difference. Check out their blog >>

Another blog that provides some creative inspiration as one of the smallest of the “big guys” (although they are the largest independent advertising agency in the country) is Wieden + Kennedy’s Portland blog and their London blog. Both of these blogs are either inspiring or so insanely obscure that it’s pretty funny.

Wordsmithing: Customers Own Your Brand

Ryan Buchanan — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 23:52:48 +0000

In my previous blog post, I reflected on my talk in New Orleans at the annual conference for the IABC on the importance of blogging and social networking. The following day after the speaking engagement, I flew back to spend a couple days with my parents and extended family on a quick vacation. I was telling my Dad about how well the whole event went and some of the key points I made in my speech.

One main point is the notion that: Customers Own Your Brand, NOT YOU (the marketer). The case study I showed was Kettle Foods People’s Choice Awards where the company allowed its customers to name the next flavor of potato chips (Doritos is now copying this campaign 2.5 years later). My Dad understood my point that customers have a huge influence on your brand, but vehemently denied that customers truly owned any consumer brands that were near and dear to their hearts. Those brands controlled their own strategic decisions and at the end of the day, legally and financially owned their own organizations.

Of all the people in the world that I hate to admit he may be right, it’s my Dad (I respect him so much that I’d rather the roles were reversed with me giving the counter-point to his argument). But, the truth is – I need to choose more specific words that don’t exagerate the concept that Customers Must Co-Create Your Brand with You (instead of being talked at).

So, how does that point work for you, Pops?

Every Company will Blog within 5 Years

Ryan Buchanan — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:27:50 +0000

My colleague Kent Lewis and I spoke at the Annual conference for the International Association of Business Communicators.

Our topic: Building brands and community via e-marketing

Date: Monday, 25 June
Time: 10:30 – 11:45 a.m.
Track: Marketing & Brand

If you’re trying to get your head around terms like search engine marketing, blogosphere, podcasting, RSS and social media, this is the session for you. This presentation will provide an overview of effective e-marketing strategies and tactics as well as case studies and helpful resources you can use to develop and implement your own e-marketing program.

In this session, you will learn:
The definition and proper applications of e-marketing
Effective e-marketing strategies and tactics
How do develop your own e-marketing program

There were roughly 1,100 people at the overall event and 250-ish at our session. There was a lot of great dialogue between us (the speakers) and the audience on the importance of the blogosphere and social networking. Search marketing and email marketing were known entities as must-haves in any marketing mix.

The debate around whether or not a blog is worth the effort reminded me of a worldwide Intel conference for employees 10 years ago when then Intel CEO Andy Grove said that every company would be a “web company” (meaning every company would have a website) within 5 years. Guess what – he was right. I think the same thing will happen with corporate blogs in the next 5 years. It is not a question of “if” – it’s a question of when your company will support the 1 hour per week required for maintaining a good blog.

Here is our presentation if you didn’t get a chance to see it at the event: (the file is a bit big, so I need to upload it to the server when I talk to my tech guys at the office – sorry about that).

I’m a lurker

Ryan Buchanan — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:47:57 +0000

I admit it… I’m what they call a lurker. I spend countless hours reading industry blogs and articles. I have more rss feeds than I could read in a lifetime and as the Creative Director of eROI, I build websites on a daily basis that rely on user-generated content. So the question is: Why is this my first blog entry?

Apparently I’m not alone. A recent study published by Forrester Research showed that many people my age (I just turned 30) fall into the lurker category. For those that don’t know the term, a lurker is someone who reads content on the web without participating or adding content themselves. Based on this study, the majority of the creators and participants online fall within the 15-20 year old range. This isn’t a huge surprise based on the success of sites like youtube and myspace, but what does this mean for the future of the web? With this level of adoption and acceptance of social media will virtual environments like Second Life really become a part of our culture? Will adults really interact within one another as if they are in a video game. I don’t think it’s so far fetched to think so.