Archive for the ‘New at Bazaarvoice’ Category

New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Michael Osborne What are 100,000,000,000 impressions worth?

March 5th, 2010 by Michael Osborne Chief Revenue Officer

100 billion impressionsYou read it right. 100 billion impressions. At one a second that would be over 3,168 years. Or about 65% of recorded history. Incredible. But as you might have remembered from my last blog post about the net present value of user generated content, I like to think in terms of “what’s that worth?”

To put it simply, it’s a lot. Let’s consider a few assumptions:

Running a few simple calculations, this puts the value per impression at $0.56. Or in total, about $56 billion dollars of online value. If you use the stats published for offline influence, it goes up to $3.25 per impression, or $325 billion in value. Sounds incredible – and sure, there are some assumptions here, but when you think about the impressions we’ve served up in just under five years being worth $325 billion, it ranks as just above the 25th highest Gross Domestic Product. In another five years, it will eclipse the top 10.

Who’d have thought 100 billion user-generated content impressions would be worth more than the GDP of Austria?  ;-)

New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Andy Maag A behind-the-scenes look at hosting 100 billion impressions

March 1st, 2010 by Andy Maag Chief Technology Officer

100 billion impressionsAs I think about the impact and significance of serving over 100 billion impressions of social commerce content (questions & answers, reviews and stories), I think about all the people behind the scenes that made this possible. Looking back, we have had to continuously scale our SaaS application and data center infrastructure to respond to a staggering amount of traffic growth from the days of our first few live clients. As Brett mentioned, we could never have done this without the help of our clients, employees, partners, investors and advisors. Based on our client growth, the growth in the amount of content collected by our clients, and the ever increasing feature set that my team works hard to build, we serve out over 10,000 times the content of our earliest days!

This simply wouldn’t be possible without the tireless dedication to quality, performance, and efficiency by the men and women of the Bazaarvoice Engineering team. I congratulate them on this milestone – without their support, 100 billion would still be a dream. I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge a few vendor partners who have been with us during our greatest periods of growth. Akamai, who in spite of our great traffic growth never misses a beat – no doubt this is because they deliver approximately 20 percent of traffic to end users on the internet! And Rackspace, who for many years has supported our data center hardware and network infrastructure 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

As an admitted statistics junkie, I’ve been looking forward to this point for some time, and I will now look forward to reaching the 1 trillion impression mark!

New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Brant Barton 100 billion & climbing, thanks to our partners

March 1st, 2010 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer

100 billion impressionsBrett and Sam shared their perspectives on the importance of hitting the milestone of 100 billion impressions of UGC served by our platform. This milestone is meaningful to our customers, our company, and the industry as a whole. For my team, however, this milestone is an especially important reminder of just how critical partners have been to the success of Bazaarvoice and the many mutual customers that we share with them.

As you can see on the Partners section of our website, we keep the best company in our industry. We recognized the strategic value of building a partner ecosystem very early in the process of founding Bazaarvoice and launching our first product, Ratings & Reviews. However, the many colorful logos of our partners tend to obscure and depersonalize the close personal relationships that make those partnerships work. Over the years, many of our counterparts at partner companies have become personal friends. Conversations may end with talk of action items and target dates, but they begin with talk of family, highlights from recent vacations, and live music (Craig, our friend at Sapient, always has a story to share!).

The very best partnerships are built on trust, transparency, and shared values – all things that are very real at an individual and personal level but somewhat abstract at a corporate level. The individual and personal relationships with our partners are the ones we truly cherish. They make our work fun and rewarding, especially when we can see how our actions, as a business partner, positively impact our friends and colleagues on the other side.

I am very proud of the partner company that Bazaarvoice keeps, but I am more grateful for the individuals that have believed in our vision, championed our cause (inside and out of their own companies), and come to see us as more than just business associates. Thank you for all of your support and encouragement. With your continued partnership and friendship, we look forward to hitting the 1 trillion impressions milestone in just a few short years!

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New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Heather Brunner B2B, B2C… 100 billion C2C (client to customer) interactions!

March 1st, 2010 by Heather Brunner Chief Operations Officer

100 billion impressionsAt this tremendous milestone in our business, I wanted to express our sincere gratitude for the partnership we enjoy with you, our clients. One of the most energizing things about working at Bazaarvoice is helping our clients connect to their customers in a transparent, authentic dialogue. A key part of our role is to be a change agent – to challenge the status quo. The courage of our clients to embrace open feedback and drive change in their business inspires us daily.

We don’t take the trust you have bestowed in us for granted. We are working tirelessly to partner with you to drive tangible, measureable business value, create insight and build deeper intimacy with your customers. Your organizations are evolving to embrace the voice of your customer and we are evolving along with you to bring new services and capabilities to bear. We are listening to your ongoing feedback on our products, services and roadmap… and we are innovating constantly!

We can’t wait to host you at our 2010 Social Commerce Summit April 19 – 21st. The Summit will be a great opportunity to reflect & strategize on how to amplify the voice of your customer like never before on your brand site, your partner sites and across the socialsphere. There is even an Executive Boot Camp for more hands-on learning. It is shaping up to be the best client event in our history.

Thank you for the opportunity to be of service to you. Thank you for embracing us as part of your extended team. And thank you for sharing your insights and successes! Your success is our success. Here’s to the next 100 billion!

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New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Mike Svatek One hundred billion. That’s a big number, even for Congress.

March 1st, 2010 by Mike Svatek Chief Product Officer

100 billion impressionsI get a little misty-eyed when I think about how transformational our actions, as consumers, have become. Rare is the case where you meet someone who doesn’t rely on others’ opinions, stories, experiences, and recommendations when shopping for products or researching service providers like dentists and daycares online. And as you may have read, Bazaarvoice hit 100 billion user-generated impressions served last week.

We as consumers are sharing opinions online at a rate far greater than in the physical world. While that may not seem like a stop-the-Wordpress kind of statement, let’s look at some numbers. Each of those 100 billion impressions represents a time a consumer was exposed to opinions… regardless of how many opinions were expressed. If you figure that a typical exposure contains 10 ideas – be they questions, answers, product reviews, stories, photos, etc. – then you’re looking at 1 trillion (yes, trillion) opinions shared. That’s 170 opinions for every living person on earth, and about 600 opinions for everyone who’s wired today.

That’s just the content Bazaarvoice’s 750 clients are pumping through their websites. When you expand the lens to all opinions shared through all other social commerce channels (and not to mention social networks) you’re looking at some staggering numbers, where every single person in the world is getting at least one opinion, every day, wired or not.

Virtual has clearly surpassed physical in volume, and when you consider the reach of our digital opinions – where shoppers in South Korea are helping those in Ireland – we have long surpassed what the physical world could have granted us. Forward-thinking brands and consumers, together, have changed the face of commerce forever. I extend a heartfelt thank you to our customers, partners, and all consumers who are helping advance the reach of social commerce and its impact on our everyday lives.

New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Sam Decker 10 reasons why 100 billion impressions matter to you

February 28th, 2010 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
10 Reasons that 100 Billion Impressions Matter To You
This week we passed the 100 billion mark, meaning we have served over 100 billion impressions of social commerce content (questions & answers, reviews and stories). So what does that mean to you as a marketer?
It means that hundreds of millions of people worldwide have made better purchase decisions (including you)
It means that hundreds of retailers and manufacturers are getting “Customer Oxygen” into their company, transforming the way  they do business
It is evidence that markets truly are conversations (See chapter 4 of Cluetrain Manifesto and the meaning of Bazaarvoice)
It means that this is just the beginning. The customer content “flywheel” is now turning at full speed and we will continue to innovate with our clients to keep up.
It means that if you haven’t started to facilitate customer conversations, you have less to fear.
It means there is an ecosystem of relevant product & service conversations across the web, which can amplify the voice of your customer
It means that you will see more search results come from product-related customer content
It’s evidence that customers are more likely to read this type of content than other ‘community’ content that is not relevant to shopping.
It means that social commerce is a scalable marketing strategy, proven by over 750 brands.
It means that you now have a reason to champion the voice of your customer to senior executives.
What else does it mean? I welcome your comments.
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100 billion impressions servedAs Brett posted earlier, this week we passed the 100 billion mark, meaning we have served over 100 billion impressions of social commerce content (questions & answers, reviews and stories).

So what does that mean to you, as a marketer?

  1. It means that hundreds of millions of people worldwide have made better purchase decisions (including you).
  2. It means that hundreds of retailers and manufacturers are getting “Customer Oxygen” into their company, transforming the way they do business.
  3. It is evidence that markets truly are conversations (See chapter 4 of Cluetrain Manifesto and the meaning of “Bazaarvoice”).
  4. It means that this is just the beginning. The customer content “flywheel” is now turning at full speed and we will continue to innovate with our clients to keep up.
  5. It means that if you haven’t started yet, you have less to fear from facilitating customer conversations than ever.
  6. It means there is an ecosystem of relevant product and service conversations across the web, which can amplify the voice of your customer.
  7. It means that you will see more search results come from product-related customer content.
  8. It’s evidence that customers are more likely to read this type of content than other ‘community’ content that is not relevant to shopping.
  9. It means that social commerce is a scalable marketing strategy, proven by over 750 brands.
  10. It means that you now have a reason to champion the voice of your customer to senior executives.

This is an inflection point, and just one data point that pales in comparison to the transformation occurring inside our clients’ businesses. Which, in the end, is making products and services better. Which makes me proud to bring the customer voice to market!

Impression Counter

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New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Brett Hurt The “hidden” impact of 100 billion: the new textbook

February 28th, 2010 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO

100 billion impressions servedThis week, you will see a series of Bazaarblog posts by our executive team about the achievement of our biggest milestone to date. As of late last week (the week that CNN profiled us!), we passed 100 billion impressions of user-generated content, including customer Reviews, Answers, and Stories! As of this writing, the real-time counter on our homepage is over 100.3 billion and climbing rapidly. Why count impressions? Well, in a world where 80% of consumers seek user-generated content while shopping, impressions of user-generated content are “the new advertising.” Actually, what is “new” is old – “the voice of the marketplace” (read the story behind our name) has always been with us, but this is the first time in human history that word of mouth is digital, and that’s more transformational than all of us can imagine today.

As we celebrate this milestone, we are also close to celebrating our 5-year anniversary (Brant and I founded Bazaarvoice on May 2, 2005). With 80% of consumers now looking for customer reviews, it is hard to appreciate now just how few U.S. retailers offered customer reviews on their websites in May of 2005. Would you believe only four? Today we serve more than 50 of the top 100 U.S. retailers, more than 25 of the top 50 U.K. retailers, and similar numbers in Australia, France, and Germany. And we serve many clients outside of retail, from health care to manufacturing to financial services. We have rapidly grown into a company of 750 clients and 515 employees globally, operating across 25 international languages. I do not take our success for granted one bit and I’m very proud of and thankful for our partnerships with our clients. I’m also proud of the culture we have created here. We spend the majority of our waking time at work, and we strive to make that time as fun and meaningful as possible. Our passionate culture impacts the way we serve our clients and also give back to the community.

Bazaarvoice School of C2C MarketingAs I look back to my first Bazaarblog post, I think back to my analytical roots, spending seven years building Coremetrics, and reflect on how much we have achieved on the analytical front at Bazaarvoice. The “hidden” impact of 100 billion impressions is how we are writing the new marketing and merchandising textbook together with our clients. In a world of increasingly fragmented media, a dramatic shift to time spent in the online channel vs. other channels, and a rise in the prominence of the voice of the customer, the “hidden” impact is felt in how marketers and merchandisers adopt new practices based on user-generated content. And, to be totally frank, I underestimated the impact in how Bazaarvoice would change the world in this way. The Bazaarvoice School of C2C Marketing Seal to the left is from our first Social Commerce Summit in 2008, which quickly sold-out and was a magical event, full of clients speaking about writing the new textbook together (our fifth Summit is coming up in Austin April 19-21 and is almost sold-out already).

So this blog is dedicated to some of the most dramatic changes I have seen on the path to 100 billion. Here is a look back on just a few of them:

It has been an amazing 4 years, 10 months, and I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all of our clients, employees, partners, investors, and advisors. We promise not to take our success for granted, and we are ramping up R&D and Client Services like never before. This quarter alone, we are attempting to hire at least 80 people, but our very high bar makes this difficult indeed (we have 14 full-time recruiters working in our office at Bazaarvoice today and there is nothing more important for our culture than its foundation: our people). If you know of someone that may be interested in joining us, see the many jobs available here and note our referral incentives.

The next 100 billion impression milestone will no doubt be achieved much faster than the first, but I expect our impact to be no less profound than with the first (see our many case studies, webinars, or whitepapers for more). Thank you, thank you, and thank you again for your support. And stay tuned to this blog as we continue this exciting journey. As I said in my first-ever blog post on Feb. 3rd, 2006 (and remains just as true today):

Welcome to the age of customer empowerment in our hyper-connected global village! We look forward to being your tour guide in this wild, wild ride.

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New at Bazaarvoice

Jacob Salamon Announcing the Bazaarblog iPhone app

January 22nd, 2010 by Jacob Salamon Marketing Manager, International

Bazaarblog iPhone AppToday we are very proud to announce the launch of the Bazaarblog iPhone app, making it even easier to read Bazaarblog news stories, interviews, Social Commerce case studies, best practices, and more on your iPhone and iPod Touch. Also get access to the latest Tweets from our Bazaarvoice Twitter stream.

Using a very intuitive and exciting tool called AppMakr, we were able to develop this app in less than a day and deploy it to the iTunes App Store within a week. Now it’s time to see the user reviews trickle in!

iPhone and iPod Touch Users No iPhone?
iPod or iPhone Google Chrome
Download from the App Store Play with the App Online
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Customer Centricity, Marketing Strategy, New at Bazaarvoice, Research

Amber Quist Participate – interact – sell: Building relationships online

January 11th, 2010 by Amber Quist Senior Marketing Manager

Every interaction with a consumer – no matter how small – drives conversations, which drive business results. Our recent white paper, “Get Them Talking: How Growing Participation Chains Will Grow Sales” shows how even small interactions can increase sales and loyalty – and every word counts. Read more about participation chains in this blog post.

Now we’re following up with a webinar featuring new media visionary Ze Frank and Bazaarvoice CMO Sam Decker: “Participate, Interact, Sell: Building Relationships Online.”

Tune in to learn:

  • How to create a participation chain strategy that captures every interaction possible
  • How top brands build successful participation chains
  • Top reasons people are motivated to participate or contribute content

Join Ze and Sam for this webinar on Tuesday, January 19, 2010, at 1 pm CST by registering here:

Register for the Webinar here!Download the free white paper, “Get Them Talking: How Growing Participation Chains Will Grow Sales,” here.

Download the white paper here!We look forward to talking more about how to get consumers participating – and buying.

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New at Bazaarvoice

Mike Svatek Latest Bazaarvoice release helps drive traffic, sales

September 10th, 2009 by Mike Svatek Chief Product Officer

Another seven weeks has passed, which means we have released another new set of capabilities for Bazaarvoice clients. In most cases, our continuous innovation builds upon requests from clients, and with our SaaS model, these same clients get to benefit from these immediately.

This release focuses on two main needs of our client base:

•    Increase site traffic through SEO and social networks
•    Drive discovery and sales with social merchandising

For a little more detail on each of these, keep reading.

Optimizing search by putting keywords directly in URLs

Keyword density plays a major role in driving natural search traffic, and adding keywords directly into the URL amps up optimization. Adding specific keywords into SearchVoice Microsite or UGC Landing Pages helps increase traffic to these already-search-enhanced pages.

Using Facebook to spread word of mouth

Our Facebook Connect integration lets consumers post reviews, stories, questions or answers directly to their Facebook pages as part of the submission process, increasing the content shared across social networks. Brands still retain complete control over what gets posted and when – whether the content appears once it’s fully moderated, un-moderated snippets are shown, or content is displayed immediately upon submission. So far, no other provider offers these options.

Facebook Connect

Letting customers recommend their favorite products to shoppers in Ask & Answer

Customers can already help each other find the information they need with Ask & Answer. With Social Recommendations, answerers can now post product recommendations directly in their answer, putting the reader one click away from a purchase.

Product Recommendations

Helping shoppers discover new products with input from brands in Stories

Customers have been able to post product recommendations with their stories, and now brands can complement existing stories with their own recommendations, making it easy for customers to purchase.

Client recommendations

This month marks another exciting release for Bazaarvoice, and rest assured we’re already working on our November release. Watch this space for updates every seven weeks – that’s how fast we iterate. And if you’re a Bazaarvoice customer, talk to your Community Manager about implementing these new capabilities.

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