I read about Caitlin just this afternoon as I was reading Boing Boing, my favorite blog.  Sorry Sam!  Xeni Jardin, one of BB's editors, links to a compelling story entitled "Say Everything" at New York Magazine.  I highly recommend you read the story, but the main gist is that the proverbial "younger generation" is shamelessly comfortable with revealing the details of their personal lives to the rest of the world in the form of TypePad posts, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and the agency of a thousand and one (and growing everyday) new social networking and community tools and websites.  The article provides a glimpse into the lives of several of the young people driving this trend, some of which have been burned by the limelight but others that can't seem to get enough of it.

If your time is scarce, save reading the article for later and just check out the spread on Caitlin, a teen that has thoroughly documented her life (and blast-off into adulthood) on Flickr, Facebook, Vimeo, MySpace, and her own personal website.  While Caitlin's portfolio of self-generated online content is impressive, she isn't an outlier.  There are thousands more like her and they have been generating content for all the online world to see since their first broadband connection. 

Thinking beyond the novelty of this, Caitlin is an archetype for the customer of tomorrow.  Consider your customers of today and the relationships you maintain with them, in the context of your target demographics.  Direct mail?  Email newsletters?  Loyalty programs?  Now fast forward just 5-10 years and imagine competing for the attention and loyalty and walletshare of someone like Caitlin.  Like her peers, she has an amazing ability to multi-task and juggle connections with real world friends, virtual IM and chat buddies, websites and online communities, brands, products, and the list goes on.  Where do you fit in? 

I wish I had a clear answer for you, but I don't.  I do believe, however, that the starting point to building a long-lasting relationship with customers like Caitlin is to start speaking their language.  They talk, they post, they share everything online.  Resistance is futile.  At some point, they will talk about you, your brand, your products, your services.  Will it be good or bad?  You can control this to a degree by striving to make every customer interaction the best it can be, with the full awareness that there is a new currency by which your success and desirability are measured.  Call it buzz or word of mouth or whatever you like, but the concept is pretty simple: Are you worth talking about?  

If the answer to the question above is no, the next 5-10 years and beyond won't be much fun.  But my question is a bit more complex than it reads.  What I really mean to ask is are you inviting consumers to talk about you?  Are you encouraging, enabling, and participating in the discussion?  Are you willing to take a little bit of constructive criticism along with the praise you believe you deserve?  Again, if the answer is no, you may very well lose all relevance in the next 5-10 years.  The customers of tomorrow, the thousands of Caitlins out there and the millions that will follow her, demand a voice.  If you give them a voice, they will talk and they may just talk directly to you!  If you don't, they will talk elsewhere and that may include talking to your competitors.  

Alinea reminded me of how being unique and great can spark word of mouth in a profound manner.  The genius behind Alinea is Grant Achatz, who is only 32 but worked under the infamous Thomas Keller at The French Laundry, a restaurant that is widely known as one of the best, if not the best, in the country.  But Alinea is far different.

First, you open a door into the building the restaurant is housed in with no hostess standing by.  Instead, you see a long empty corridor that appears to be getting smaller as you walk down it.  It is an architectural optical illusion, and Greg and I almost got a sense of vertigo as we walked towards the end of it.  No door into the restaurant was to be seen, which I found to be very odd.  Then, all of a sudden, a door slid open with mechanical precision and a near-silent swooshing sound.  It immediately made me think of Star Trek; my second thought was "how cool".  This "portal" into the restaurant prepares you for a transition.  I first learned about the power of portals over dinner with "The Wizard of Ads", Roy Williams, at a sushi restaurant here in Austin.  I suggest you read his memo if you want to learn more.  Once you start to look for portals, they show up everywhere (for example, in movies actors frequently walk through a door into "another world" like an insanely energetic nightclub or a horrific scene).

Walking into the restaurant, which is quite cozy (not cramped) with two levels, you notice the open kitchen on your right.  Grant works there in the kitchen every evening, many times until 3:30am.  I noticed that there were about 15 chefs in the kitchen (all looked 30 or younger); all were dressed in very professional modern, white attire.  There was a MacBook in the center of the kitchen that Grant constantly referred to in between preparations.  Two hostesses greeted us (also under 30) and took our coats.  Instead of a stuffy feeling, you felt energy.  The hostesses were very friendly and professional, saying, "Welcome to Alinea", in unison.

They sat us at a nice table where we could see ourselves in a mirror.  Only the mirror was at the back of a long tunnel under a staircase.  It appeared to be another room, but sure enough, it was just a mirror – looking at us.  Another "cool" moment.  At a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) conference a year ago, I had the pleasure of seeing "Scott" speak.  He has worn a nametag for 2,285 days straight and evangelizes on being approachable (essentially he is speaking about the power of openness and communication – "getting real").  His main message was: do something worthwhile with your life, be "that guy", be something that when people ask you what you do for a living their response is "that's cool".  Back to Alinea: it was clear to me, by now, that Alinea was going to be a cool experience.  There was no way this meal was going to suck.

Our waiter was a sommelier.  He looked like a good friend of mine in Austin, the founder of SKYLIST, except he was a little heavier set and wore a modern-looking suit and tie.  He was also young and looked wise but in a "high-tech industry" sort of way, not in a stuffy sommelier sort of way.  We talked about our options, of which there were only 4.  A 12-course tasting menu (takes 3.5 hours), a 24-course tasting menu (takes 4.5 hours), standard wine pairing, and "premium" wine pairing.  It was 8pm, so we went for the 12-course and he recommend the standard wine pairing unless we were really picky.  Although I love good wine, we picked standard; this was, after all, Alinea.

During the meal, we had plenty of time to talk with each other and the waiters.  The tables were perfectly distanced from each other where there is just the right level of noise.  We learned that Alinea had just been rated #1 in the country, essentially beating out the long-time winner, The French Laundry.  And this was for a restaurant that was the same age as Bazaarvoice (we both opened around May 2005).

So, what are the lessons learned here?  Well, first of all, Grant Achatz decided that Alinea would be very unique and spectacularly good.  I didn't get to interact with him, but this is one detail-oriented founder.  From the interior design of the restaurant (the portals, the spacing of the tables, the modern look, the two levels); the energy, intelligence, professionalism, and friendliness of everyone that works in it; to the incredibly unique format (12 or 24 course), mind-blowing food, and incredible wine; Alinea is the Purple Cow (a compliment to Seth Godin's book on being unique).  As a matter of fact, Alinea means "a new beginning" and the symbol for the restaurant is a new paragraph mark.  The result?  A #1 ranking in the country in less than two years!

So you aren't Steve Jobs or Grant Achatz.  You aren't as cool (I'm certainly not either)?  What do you do?

Listen to your customers.  I am constantly evangelizing to our clients on the value of analyzing customer reviews to redesign their products, strengthen their services, and form stronger relationships with their suppliers.  Customers are willing to be open and honest with each other.  That's why they write reviews – to help each other assess fit and value.  And there is a literal gold-mine of information in this data.  Use it!  As Sam Decker says, "this is customer oxygen".  Breathe it, be unique, and be spectacularly great.  Revenue and profit will rapidly follow.

In closing, I would love to hear from you on what your most memorable restaurants are, and if you have learned anything from them that you have applied to your business.  Some of my other favorites are Morimoto in Philadelphia (#1 on my list for food and almost #1 for interior, right after Alinea now), Michael Mina in Las Vegas (unreal seafood), and Uchi in Austin (unreal sushi and authentic, exotic Japanese cuisine).

Quick note: all of these photos came from Flickr, where there are 782 photos matching the keyword "Alinea".  I did experience the dishes that I included photos for.

Update on May 16, 2008:
My good friend, Matt Cohen (CEO of OneSpot), just sent me this article in The New Yorker about Grant Achatz fight with Stage IV tongue cancer.  It is a fascinating read, and I sincerely hope Grant wins this battle.

Well, the answer to that question is something I have been thinking about ever since launching Bazaarvoice with Brant. Why do people take the time to write reviews? [We will announce next week that we served over 19 million reviews on Cyber Monday!] Why do people take the time (like I did this morning) to vote on community photos for JPG Magazine? Why do people take the time to label images Google has crawled? [Google's top contributor, "wordgirl", has labeled 1,335,500 images since they launched this only three months ago - that is a staggering 14,839 images per day since launch!]

The answer is actually more complex than you may think. It is a combination of ego, social connection, and good karma. Let me explain:

1. Ego – At Bazaarvoice, we know that a reviewer comes back to our client's site three times, on average, after submitting a review to see if it has posted yet. When people take the time to share their opinion, they want to know the world heard it. This fact alone gives our clients three opportunities to resell a customer. In a recent report, Patti Freeman-Evans researched these reviewers.

2. Social connection – Why do you share your favorite movie with an acquaintance? Do you care if they watch it? Why do we talk about our favorite music? The answer is linked to human nature. We all care about connecting with each other as humans. This is what drives the creation of culture.

3. Good karma – A universal truth is that if you help someone, it makes you feel good. When reviewers help each other shop, it saves time. Saving time is one of the most important things we can help each other do, especially in the manic, multitasking world we live in today.

Now, if you apply these three elements to JPG Magazine, it all begins to make sense.

Obviously, we are thinking about the power of photos in customer-generated content at Bazaarvoice. A while back, we added Photo Reviews to our feature set. Wayne blogged about this recently. If you think about the three elements above, photos are a very strong component. Experts believe that the advent of the digital camera is one of the keys to why MySpace took off versus its predecessors (Geocities, etc).

How should you leverage photo reviews? With contests and multichannel recognition. Don't just run a contest for a gift certificate give-away for customers that write a review and include a photo, post the winning photo on your home page! Use it in an email campaign. Use it in a circular. Use it in an in-store display. If your community of customers sees that all three elements – ego, social connection, and good karma – are maximized by you, then it will spark customer participation unlike anything you have seen before. Threadless' entire business model is based on this, and I think it is a brilliant application of the three.

For fun, here is a photo we recently moderated that you won't see on one of our client's site because it came from a rejected review. Alas, it added no obvious value, there was no text review associated with it, and I think this person was just bored (they were thinking about element #1 above only – ego). But, it does grab your attention!