It is always dangerous to make any conclusions based on only your own behavior.  You need to look no further than the failure of Webvan, which raised $1 billion based on the premise that everyone in the U.S. was like San Franciscans.  But I still find it fascinating that I am more compelled to write about people than products.  Perhaps it is the nature of my job or personality type.  Or perhaps most of us talk more about people (i.e., generating more word of mouth) than products in everyday life.  Let’s not forget how many Americans voted on the last American Idol (74 million in the last round).

In a previous post, I gave the three reasons why I believe consumers write reviews: 1. ego, 2. social connection, and 3. good karma.  But these three rules may be slightly different when writing reviews on people.  The majority of reviews I have written on people have been on LinkedIn.  LinkedIn recently reached a tipping point, as you may have noticed from the increased number of "let's-connect" invitations that you have been receiving.  The network effect is kicking in (more on that subject in the brilliant book Information Rules), just as it has for eBay, Amazon.com, MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, StumbleUpon, Digg, Threadless, and many other businesses literally built on community.

I am often solicited to write these reviews (on people), not dissimilar from the way we at Bazaarvoice suggest our retail clients encourage their customers to write reviews on their purchases.  But I have a more emotional connection to people than I do to products, and therefore I am likely to act when asked.  And writing a review on a former employee or service provider on LinkedIn takes me a lot less time (5 minutes) than writing a recommendation letter for an MBA applicant (2-3 hours).

In any case, I believe that reason #1, “ego”, needs to be replaced with “emotion”.  I am compelled to thank the person publicly by writing the review – it's the reciprocity principle in action.  The other two reasons, “social connection” and “good karma”, fit fine.  I’m also not sure if the "J-Curve" will hold up when reviewing people.  From my own experience, I haven’t written a single negative review on LinkedIn.  I just won’t write the review at all if I don’t feel comfortable with doing so.

But that may be different on Avvo.  One thing is for sure with their launch – it is a whole new world for lawyers.  Just wait – this is coming for doctors, dentists, teachers, consultants, and all forms of service providers in a big way (I say “big” because there are already examples of all on smaller-trafficked sites).  Imagine for a moment joining a new HMO and having access to all members’ ratings on pediatricians.  Revolutionary, yes.  Incredibly useful, yes.  Scary, for some.  But I am convinced that it is just a matter of time before every person, place, product, service, or thing becomes reviewable – and very easily accessible to all.  And I am optimistic about this future, ultimately believing that it will lead to more accountability and better service overall.

But like I said at the beginning, let’s not make any conclusions from my own behavior.  As the founder of Coremetrics, spending seven years immersed in Web analytics, I learned that data tells the real story over time.  We’ll analyze Avvo and other clients as they build people-review volume and report back on the trends once they become clear.  For now, I would love to hear from you.  Do you review more people than products online?  Why?

Update 6/16: What timing!  I am a little behind on my TechCrunch reading, and was alerted by one of our Sales Directors that Avvo is now being sued by lawyers that are unhappy with negative reviews!  This is pretty ironic given my post yesterday was about how skewed to the positive I am when rating people. 

I'm assuming that Avvo expected this given the nature of some lawyers.  Avvo's CEO, Mark Britton, responds to the lawsuit on Avvo's blog.  There is a heated debate between readers of each blog post that is worth reading (although the reactions are as you would expect).  I applaud Avvo for providing a controversial, and highly useful, service.  And I hope that ultimately this press helps Avvo establish a well-known brand early in their history (remember that they just launched in beta).  My prediction is that the lawsuit gets dismissed and Avvo gets a ton of free press out of it.

During a little downtime this week, I have seen three profound examples of user-generated content in action:

1. Today, MarketingSherpa released a new case study on how President's Choice (large Canadian grocer) is leveraging online customer reviews of their private-label products in their stores, circulars, loyalty program, and product lab.  It is well worth the read; it is one of the most powerful multichannel examples that we have worked on with any client to date.  I also encourage you to look at the creative samples they provided.  Note that free access is only available for seven days from the publish date.

2. Yesterday (and again tonight), I saw a new Ford Fusion commercial that uses customer review content from Yahoo! Autos in the ad as the primary selling message.  I think this may be an industry first.  I have seen user-generated content used in many forms, but not actual customer review content on a major television advertisement (it ran on American Idol's session finale tonight – that can't be cheap).  The commercials are branded with Ford's new website: Ford Challenge.  I wrote about General Motors doing something similar last year, but not quite as profound.

3. On Monday, I read an article on Yahoo! about 45 million people globally voting on the new Seven Wonders of the World.   Quick – can you name the historical Seven?  I couldn't, and only one of them survives today.  This is notable news to me for two reasons.  First, 45 million (and one) people globally are now engaged in caring about important historical places in the world (although it somewhat saddens me that, by comparison, 74 million people voted on the new American Idol winner).  Second, it taps into three trends that I have been following: the wisdom of crowds (and crowdsourcing), the power of the new globally connected individual (see Kryptonite mention), and the upheaval of traditional power structures (this one being the intellectuals in 200 BC that selected the historical Seven). 

On that last trend, I am reading David Weinberger's new book, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, which covers this trend extensively.  It is a pretty good read by one of the ingenious authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto (one of my favorite books – I consider Chapter 4 a must-read for marketers).  The basic theme of the book is that the laws of the physical world have constrained the desires of individuals for the purpose of organizing the masses.  For example, you can't dynamically rearrange a physical retail store for a specific niche shopper to make it easy for them, but you can do that online.  This may be obvious to many of you by now, but Mr. Weinberger has a unique style and writes of the history behind (including such topics as the invention of alphabetized lists) and the implications of this very important trend.

I think it is very cool that the Internet has enabled projects that would have never been possible before – like the new seven wonders voting.  Frankly, most would trust the opinion of 45 million people globally than a few intellectuals anyway.

And I was also very happy to see Shop.org announce this week that David Weinberger is one of the four keynotes at the Annual Summit this year in Las Vegas.  I hope to see you there!