Buying a Kindle DX ten months ago and now an iPad (delivered in the first batch on April 3rd), it really struck me recently how messy (or exciting!) everything is getting.  Mash-ups of business models are happening everywhere, and at an accelerating pace.  Here are a dozen big trends that I'm watching for this year, some relevant to Bazaarvoice and others not so much:

1. After Amazon.com launched the Kindle, it quickly became their number-one seller.  The free wifi to download a book from anywhere was just too compelling to pass up, along with the very easy to read screen.  Amazon projected that it would increase compulsive buying of books to the point where the wifi was subsidized by Amazon.com.  And it is working (for now).
2. And while we're talking about compulsive buying, consider Amazon.com Prime for "consolidated" buying vs. other retailers.  Other retailers have tried to emulate Prime and failed to do so.  It is difficult to do – you have to be very quick to ship (i.e., many distribution centers), with the availability (i.e., tons of inventory), to really trigger the compulsive buying effect.  There are profound implications on the long-tail as Amazon.com expands.  And, in their most recent quarterly report, Amazon's same-store U.S. sales were up a staggering 75%.  It seems that both the Kindle and Prime are triggering the compulsive buying effect, coupled with Amazon's long-tail inventory.  Many retailers same-store sales are flat to down as we come out of the Great Recession, and Amazon.com's stellar performance has to be noticed by them.  Our Chief Marketing Officer, Sam, blogged about this in November of 2008 and it is even more true today.
3. Enter the iPad.  The week Apple launched the iPad it sold 450,000 units with 600,000 books (via iBooks) shortly after.  Now that I have had the iPad for awhile, I don't just think of it as competitive with the Kindle or other eReaders or "tablets" – it is also competitive with netbooks (another mash-up), as Steve Jobs eagerly stressed.  Just project out a few years when the iPad has 256gb capacity, instead of the 64gb my model has today, combined with the new iPhone 4.0 OS (coming out at the end of this year) that enables multitasking, a micro-USB port or two, and wireless streaming everywhere allowing for seamless connectivity no matter where you are.  The iPad already has a keyboard docking station, which I also bought, and, of course, bluetooth for connecting to wireless keyboards.  And new TVs and DVDs are coming out with built-in home network and wireless capabilities, allowing you to stream TV to laptops, netbooks, desktops, iPads, iPhones, or whatever you choose to use around the house (or while you are on the road if you have a Slingbox or something similar).  The bottom line is that the genius author, Kevin Kelly, got it right in this Wired magazine article (comparing tablets to a portable window into the world).
4. Will the iPad hurt Kindle sales?  Many Wall Street analysts and journalists think so.  My personal take?  Well, I was skeptical about whether or not I would enjoy reading books on it as much as I do the Kindle.  Initially we were just buying the iPad as a family device for watching movies, playing games, and keeping up with blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.  But now with the Kindle app loaded on my iPad, adjusted to a sepia "paper" color and 60% brightness, I can read for hours just fine.  But to really see how the iPad transforms books, just check out the book it comes pre-loaded with (a Winnie the Pooh children's book, which is, of course, in beautiful color).  No color on the Kindle.  Every try to read a no-color book to a child?  And then check out the app, The Elements, which has gorgeous color, 3D illustrations, and full-on video.  Or look at what Wired magazine may be planning to do with tablets.  I was watching Alice in Wonderland with our daughter recently, and Alice said (shortly before falling down the rabbit hole), "What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?".  Just look back in history at the adoption rates once color television came out vs. black-and-white television.  It is just a matter of time before our children are carrying interactive tablets in their backpacks instead of heavy textbooks.  Yes, I think it is going to impact Kindle sales.
5. Ok, let's talk about mobile.  Google's Android (open platform) continues to gain traction vs. Apple's iPhone OS (closed platform).  It wasn't surprising to me when Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's Board of Directors.  I moderated a panel of amazing venture capitalists at NRF and Shop.org's Innovate conference back in March, where my good friend Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital predicted that Android would overtake the iPhone OS over time.  Of course, Android will power tablets too.  We've seen this movie before as Apple stayed closed vs. the PC world being open.  Will the movie be the same this time?
6. Mobile is now at a tipping point, with GPS built in, good camera phones, and great web browsers (e.g., Safari and Chrome).  We'll see a lot of mash-ups in this area as mobile is increasingly used by consumers while in stores, which will one-up the mobile use we've seen in social commerce so far.  Interestingly, the VCs on my NRF and Shop.org panel in March thought it would take several years, so our prediction about "the year of mobile" in 2009 may have been a bit early, although I would argue that the iPhone's rapid adoption that year did change the game.  And it certainly hasn't slowed down Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley to produce the most comprehensive report (at 424 pages) I've ever seen on the state of the mobile industry, nor did it prevent NRF and Shop.org from having a Mobile Boot Camp at the March conference.
7. How about blogging?  My guess is that blog-post length has decreased (this post aside!) as Facebook has increased to a longer status format and people have become more and more used to Twitter's 140-character length updates.  Perhaps blog views have also decreased.  This leads to more "lightweight", or surface-level, conversations than the deeper-thinking conversations on blogs.  But we'll survive just fine.  I simply don't buy Nick Carr's arguments but I'll debate that later if you wish.
8. Although this would be the obvious place to discuss this trend, I'll purposely stay away from Facebook Like vs. Google Buzz vs. Google AdSense as my co-founder and our Chief Innovation Officer, Brant, is addressing that in a future post.  But needless to say, social is permeating the Web and that trend is accelerating, so we will continue to innovate quickly in this area.
9. Let's talk about transparency.  At the Liberty Interactive NetLeaders Forum in 2008, I remember Rich Barton, founder of Expedia and Zillow, presenting, "everything that can be reviewed will be reviewed [on the Web]".  He showed us examples of CEOs being reviewed on Glassdoor.com.  My opinion?  This will lead to a company culture revolution, which is part of the reason I feel so compelled to write my forthcoming book, How to Make Your Company Suck Less.  And Chris Fralic of First Round Capital as well as Kamal Kirpalani of Bazaarvoice recently asked me to review them on Unvarnished.  I wrote about transparency awhile back, based on a leadership talk I gave at The Wharton School.  In short, I think this is a very profound trend that will not only cause a renaissance in commerce but also in politics, government, and all types of human activities and relationships.
10. At Bazaarvoice, we're leading a revolution of marketing and merchandising with social commerce and user-generated content – or (my preference) digital word of mouth.  Digital word of mouth is quickly becoming the central point of insight for marketers and merchants.  We are writing the marketing and merchandising textbook of the future in our work with our clients (read my previous thoughts on this, from when we reached out 100-billion-impression milestone in February).  Digital word of mouth is getting mashed-up versus the aging focus group, NetPromoter, customer survey, and other methods that get "close" but aren't nearly as pure as how customers speak to each other with no bias vs. how they communicate while in the context of talking to the company.  Things for you to consider here: a) the market has always been based on conversations (read this chapter that was the namesake of our company), b) reviews are the new advertising as we are already beginning to commonly see, c) consumers write reviews to help each other (i.e., altruism, or with no bias), and d) this trend is why Google and Nielsen partnered with us.
11. Channel marketing is becoming more wired.  We see a major trend in this area with the adoption of our BrandVoice and BrandAnswers solutions.  We are at the beginning of this shift, and it is logical to think that, just as offline to advertising shift has fueled online advertising, we will see a similar accelerating trend as suppliers of retailers become more savvy at online channel marketing in a world where 80% of consumers read reviews while they are shopping (Nielsen's most recent stat).  And, of course, mobile is a major accelerant of this trend.
12. Finally, the digital executive will continue to rise in prominence as companies work hard to make sense of the rapid shift to a more digital, hyper-connected world.  For some early indicators of this, look at Raul Vazquez's promotion from CEO of Walmart.com to EVP and President of Walmart West.  Or Toby Lenk's, the founder of the original eToys, rise to President of Direct at Gap.  (I should mention that both are among the best speakers we have ever had at Shop.org events, where I proudly serve on the Board of Directors.)  These are very exciting times for those who really "get it" in digital.

For the long-term potential of the Web, I recommend you check out Kevin Kelly's speech at TED in Dec 2007 or his similarly brilliant article in Wired magazine.  And if you have time to get really far out in thinking about technology's impact on the world, just read chapter 1 (trust me, it's enough) of Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (thanks to my good friend, Ethan Holland at American Eagle, for suggesting it to me).

As 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!

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.

As 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:

• Oriental Trading's CEO, Sam Taylor, leads a radical organizational change to reform merchandising based on user-generated content and wins the prestigious Gartner Group Customer Experience award (read the Bazaarblog post on the award, and another on specifics).
• The customer reviewer becomes the spotlight for campaigns (Free People example, and Urban Outfitters too). At that time, I believe this was an industry first. With 80% of reviews usually coming from the top 20% of your customers by lifetime value, this campaign technique will be adopted rapidly.
• Sephora uses in-store signs to get customers to read reviews via their mobile devices, and trains in-store associates to promote it. [Note: the sold-out Shop.org (NRF) and RAMA Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference in San Francisco this week will feature Julie Bornstein of Sephora - read her interview by NRF on the ROI of social media, a special Mobile Boot Camp, and me moderating a panel of rockstar venture capitalists.] Related to Sephora, Intuit's TurboTax did the same with their in-store displays, and made an impact at every Best Buy, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, and Walmart store in the U.S.
• The broad multichannel marketing implications of user-generated content, from print, to TV, to online. I'll never forget the first time this reviews were promoted on in-store receipts and by whom.
• The transformation of channel advertising with BrandVoice and BrandAnswers. With 80% of consumers searching for reviews, the implications for channel advertising are huge and user-generated content in the channel is quickly becoming a business imperative for a supplier. And it isn't just UGC. BrandAnswers and Ask & Answer now bring in supplier-generated content as well as retailer-generated content to answer user-generated content in the form of product pre-sell questions.
• TurboTax partners with us to launch the "Friendalyzer", where you can see TurboTax reviews written by your friends on social networks, including Facebook (which now has 400 million users). Seth Greenberg of Intuit will be presenting the great results on this live at our Social Commerce Summit this April 19-21 in Austin. The implication for technologies like Facebook Connect are profound for user-generated content at large and we are in Inning One for these innovations.

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.

So maybe it's not surprising that my events manager, and a collection of Bazaarvoice executives, would put themselves on the roof of our garage in exchange for the Bazaarvoice team breaking the quarter's Social Commerce Summit registration goals (it's selling out fast, actually!). We blew away the stretch goal, so Sarah fulfilled her commitment to dance in her hot dog suit, with a few condiment executives joining.

If that's what it takes, then that's what it takes!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The intent of the vendor ranking is to help retailers make decisions about suppliers. Internet Retailer is a great organization and we’re happy to be listed as one of the top providers of customer reviews; however, we noticed that the numbers can be a bit deceiving. The breakdown cited Bazaarvoice as serving  40 of the Internet Retailer 500. In fact, we are proud that we partner with over 100 of the Internet Retailer 500, making Bazaarvoice #1 for ratings and reviews, not to mention for social commerce solutions.

Why did they cite only 40? In the case of the Internet Retailer Guide, the methodology is for retailers to self report about which eCommerce providers they used. It’s the prerogative of the one person who fills out the survey to choose or know who their provider is for each function of their ecommerce ecosystem. It’s possible larger clients are less inclined to divulge all their providers, or perhaps the person filling out the survey doesn’t know all of their providers. Either way, according to our actual client records, Bazaarvoice was vastly underreported in this year’s Guide. We noticed other large eCommerce providers, such as IBM and ATG, were also underrepresented in the survey.

You could also look at market leadership in terms of size of clients or business size. In the Internet Retailer Guide, no additional weight was given to the largest retailers – the #1 retailer is ranked the same as #500. While smaller retailers may serve niche markets, the huge mass retailers amass tons of internal knowledge and expertise to become the largest in the United States, and more of the larger retailers choose Bazaarvoice. Among the Top 50 retailers, Bazaarvoice outranks the closest competition by a ratio of nearly 7:1 with clients like Best Buy, Dell, QVC, Macy’s, Costco, Overstock.com, and more. And in the Top 100, we outserve our nearest competitor by a ratio of 4:1.  See our partial client list here (not all clients give permission to display their logos).
When you factor in retailers who don’t have reviews or host them in-house, Bazaarvoice’s leadership is even more pronounced, with more than 80% of the Top 100 retailers choosing Bazaarvoice. And we are just talking about our Ratings & Reviews product, not to mention our other social commerce solutions, such as Ask & Answer and Stories.

This is an important point because as a hosted provider, part of our value to each client is learning from the whole. We help shape and share best practices from innovative, smaller clients (such as Vintage Tub and Bath or Fair Indigo) to large multi-channel retailers, such as Best Buy, Dell, and Costco. We truly believe we are inventing the future with our clients, and with a cross-vertical client list across small and large clients, we are able to innovate products rapidly (every seven weeks) and share best practices that help all clients grow ROI from social commerce.

Today over 525 brands, including over 100 of the Internet Retailer 500, turn to Bazaarvoice because we are the leader in ratings and reviews…and moreover the leader in social commerce.  We’d rather not beat our chest about these things, but we are proud of the company we keep, proud of what we’ve accomplished, and believe it’s important that our clients know the facts.

Brant, my co-founder and our VP of Business Development, told me he was going to see 'The Hangover' with his wife soon, and I decided to do my typical research.  Both critic and customer reviews were positive, so Debra and I decided to go.  Let me just warn you that this is one lewd and wild movie, but it is also extremely funny.  We both had some great laughs, and there are some especially funny scenes that feature a "man purse".

The next week I was reading the June 29th edition of "Feeding the Voice: Cutting-Edge Promotions from Bazaarvoice Clients".  This is a weekly email from our Community Management team, and it is one of the most important emails I get all week.  Our clients are using user-generated content throughout their multichannel and online marketing in a transformative way (see recent examples from Urban Outfitters, The Home Depot, and Argos in the UK).  And the number of cutting-edge promotions by our clients working with our Community Managers has risen to 20-30 per week, which is about the volume we saw in an entire year just two years ago.  Back to the slide deck – I open it and the first example is our client, Roots, blogging about the "man purse" in 'The Hangover'.  It turns out it is their "Village Bag in Vintage Tribe Leather", which is rated a 4.9 out of 5!  I was showing the Roots blog post to Debra last night and her comment was, "that is a really, really nice bag".

I thought this coincidence was very cool, and you just never know where the impact of social commerce will show up.  And if you are one of our U.S. readers, enjoy your 4th!  We will proudly be watching the fireworks tonight.

Second, just one week later, our very own Brett Hurt was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Austin – one of four regional winners. The E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year awards recognize entrepreneurs who demonstrate extraordinary success in the areas of innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities.

I can’t think of anyone who deserves this honor more than Brett. In the description above, the word that I would emphasize most in describing Brett's motivation as an entrepreneur is community. An Austin native, Brett is very mindful of the positive, profound, and multi-generational impact that a single entrepreneur and business can have on the prosperity of a community. He sees Bazaarvoice's success and his own as a win for all of Austin, and he sincerely hopes that Bazaarvoice's success will bring prosperity to our community not just in terms of job and wealth creation but in the form of many future companies that our team members will one day start.

When I worked for Brett at Coremetrics, the company he founded prior to Bazaarvoice, he was expecting his first child and was in the process of shopping for a new stroller. Like many first-time parents (I recently went through this process myself), he did a ton of online research, finally landing at Amazon.com and finding an extremely long and detailed review contributed by an aerospace engineer who had methodically deconstructed and reconstructed the stroller in question, documenting the process and his observations on the stroller's design, materials quality, and workmanship at every step. This experience had a profound effect on Brett, as he imagined the power of this content for every shopper and purchase decision if it were available for every product and website. The idea for Bazaarvoice was born a few months later. Fast forward four short years and here we are – we have served 50+ billion reviews for 525+ global brands in 36 countries and we continue to grow (and hire!) like wildfire.

Please join me in congratulating Brett for his many accomplishments as an entrepreneur (Bazaarvoice is his fifth start-up company!), for the positive impact he has had within the Austin business community, and for being a genuinely sincere and humble person. He never fails to show his appreciation for the team at Bazaarvoice, our customers and partners, and the many supporters that have helped the company and Brett personally along the way.

So far, 2009 has been a big year for us – and there's still six months left to go!

The inspiration for this post is the now infamous "Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt", currently the #1 selling Apparel product on Amazon.com. No, that's not a typo. I could efficiently end this post by just telling you to read a few of the reviews for this product. That would more than accomplish my goal of demonstrating the value of not taking yourself (or your brand) too seriously. But I have a minimum length requirement to meet, so I'll go on . . .

Our good friends at Econsultancy in the UK beat me to the punch with an entertaining blog post on the t-shirt. The Washington Post published an article on the same day. No matter who you trust, that's one damn funny t-shirt. If you trust me and took my advice above to read a few of the reviews, I bet you are now making your way through the checkout process while you finish reading this nailbiter of a post. That's impressive multi-tasking.

We see our share of humorous reviews and many of those are just too inappropriate to post, but as reviews of the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt aptly demonstrate, there is a very fine line between inappropriate humor and pure genius, not to mention a word of mouth marketing bonanza. I won't speak for my colleagues at Bazaarvoice (you know who you are), but this t-shirt is responsible for a major drop in productivity last Friday because I was personally contributing to the millions of word of mouth "impressions" that the product received. While it may be difficult to put a dollar value on each of those impressions, you can most definitely put a dollar value on lost productivity.

In closing, if you offer customer reviews of your products and services, whether you are a Bazaarvoice client or not, I urge you to evaluate whether your definition of inappropriate is too strict and your tolerance of humor too low. Millions of dollars and an immeasurable wealth of customer word of mouth could be at stake!