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!

First, Google has introduced an interesting application of crowdsourcing, Google Image Labeler.  Given the size of Google's passionate user base, all Google images could effectively be labeled in only two months.  This is a controversial initiative, with comments from sophisticated Internet users like Ryan W. who says, 

"After about 2 days, when the novelty wears off, why would users do this? Especially enough users to label google’s entire image index of billions of images? No incentive."

to Orli Yakuel who counters,

"Ryan, It’s like asking why people writing in wikipedia, for example.
This is what we do when we spending so much hours on the Net,
we’re either consume or provide information and knowledge FOR FREE."

My vote is that this will work for Google (and it's users).  Why?  Because Google's user base actually cares about Google.  When you use a service every day and get value from it, you become loyal to it.  Not everyone can get their customers to work for them, and many fail trying, but Google is one of those rare companies whose business was built entirely by word-of-mouth (when was the last time you saw Google advertise their service anywhere?).  Out of modern businesses, Starbucks can also make that kind of claim.  Like Starbucks did with their stores, Google plowed millions that could have been spent on advertising on creating the world's best product for their category.  The foundation of word-of-mouth success is a great product.  You will hear this in almost every presentation at any WOMMA conference.

For more information on the power of crowdsourcing, check out my May blog post on the topic.

And that leads me to discuss a bad product, the movie "Snakes on a Plane".  Although this movie has the widest distribution of any movie currently showing and had Web buzz galore, it has pretty much been a flop, only grossing $26 million to date.  Why?  Well, there a range of opinions on this topic.  First, let's look back at history and look at what the word-of-mouth pundits predicted:

• "The Snakes phenomenon will probably go down as one of the most significant early events in this fledgling Buzz industry."
• "Why Will 'Snakes on a Plane' Be a Hit? It's the Internet, Stupid"

And it goes on and on.  I could easily provide you with a list of 50 such articles, but why bother.

There are many predictions on why the movie bombed, including the fear of snakes, the film studios still don't get the Internet, and the fact that the movie is dumb.  But the most plausible reason I found was in a discussion forum where JR wrote,

"A well-deserved end to this ill-conceived experiment in mass internet-marketing and over saturation TV-spot advertising. Word of  mouth still counts. Real word of mouth… and despite the studio's best efforts and big bux, most people can still distinguish genuine word of mouth from studio-purchased word of mouth, even if it is being broadcast by bloggers."

At the end of the day, "Snakes on a Plane" may have faired better than it otherwise would have as a bad product.  But no one should call this piece of trash a hit.  "Snakes on a Plane" was viral online because people knew it would suck – it was fun to make fun of.  At a low production cost, the movie will be profitable, which is more than you could probably say if it didn't have some buzz.  But if it had been a great movie, it literally could have been in the top-20 grossing movies of all time.  Because everyone knew about it (and, therefore, knew it met their low expectations when the initial reviews came in post release).

I am modifying the old adage, "there is no such thing as bad PR", to "there may be no such thing as bad PR when you have a great product".

And, to close, let's talk about word-of-mouth when you have a great product.  A few weeks ago, Starbucks had to pull an email promotion because it went viral immediately due to the ease of email forwarding and the attractiveness of the promotion.  Now that, my friends, is the power of real word-of-mouth!

Update: Caribou Coffee is honoring the voided Starbucks' coupons.  I'm not sure if I view this as a brilliant or desperate move by a company that is worth 6% of Starbucks (on a market cap basis).  I guess it all depends on whether or not Caribou Coffee has a great product (and that doesn't just mean the coffee, I'm also talking about the ambiance of the store).