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 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.

The interview, available on Shop.org’s blog, also covers today’s hot topics in ecommerce: mobile, the economy, social media, and of course, customer ratings and reviews.

Brett also had the chance to touch on one of his favorite topics – building a great corporate culture – when asked about his upcoming book. “Corporate culture is a huge passion of mine, so I’m writing a book about building a great culture,” Brett told Shop.org. “The working title is How to Make Your Company Suck Less. It’s based on my experiences in founding five companies (Bazaarvoice, Coremetrics, and three other smaller endeavors), and I’ve reached out to other CEOs and experts to interview them, too.”

For more, including case studies of retailers that have used social commerce to create a better customer experience, read the whole interview on Shop.org’s blog.

The department store's website encourages customers to share information in product reviews. Lundgren, former CEO of Nieman Marcus and Federated Merchandising Group, addressed a common point of hesitation among retailers considering implementing user-generated content on their site.

"We were worried about what customers would say on product reviews. We realized that if you start getting bad reviews on a product, get rid of that product. Stop doing business with that particular product," Lundgren said.

“If you start getting bad reviews on a particular product…guess what? The product is bad! It’s not the customer,” Lundgren told NRF President & CEO Tracy Mullin in an interview after his address. “To me, all product reviews are good. When they’re bad, you have to get it off the site, get rid of the product. We do that.”

Lundgren’s philosophy falls right in line with the results we’ve seen among our clients. Our recent webinar with Andy Sernovitz focused on dealing with and benefitting from negative word of mouth. Most reviews are positive, but some negative feedback is inevitable. Savvy brands learn to use this negative feedback to improve their offering – Oriental Trading Company improved over 700 products. Their attention to customer satisfaction helped them win this year’s Gartner Customer Experience Award.

A recap of the webinar is available here, and you can request the full webinar here.

Our tradeshow staple Badge Flair has been helping visitors to our booth express themselves since February 2007. Who needs a “Speaker” ribbon when you can sport one demanding “More Cowbell!”? Brightening up a bored (or hungover?) tradeshow attendee’s morning is how we bring a little bit of our Austin culture with us everywhere we go.

Gearing up for this year’s "Biggest Shop.org Annual Summit Ever," the marketing team put the word out at the office for new badge flair submissions. After 213 submissions from nearly thirty people, our new set of flair was ready for the show. “Case of the Mondays” and “#AWESOME” made the new set at Booth 706, and our VP of Business Development, Brant Barton, took first prize with “Nice Tweets.”

But bringing the atmosphere of our home office on the road isn’t all fun and games. Sure, our company culture wins us awards like Austin’s Best Place to Work, but that doesn’t stop us from taking our booth attendee drivers very seriously.

For example, take our swag at this year's Shop.org Summit. We devoted weeks to a rigorous screening process, evaluating dozens of various flying animal candidates. In the end, though, the Flying Monkeys were the hands-down favorite. Their scream is the scream of a true Social Commerce Superhero.

That, and the flying pigs just couldn’t pull off the cape.

Connect with the Bazaarvoice team at the show in Booth 706, or schedule a meeting with our executives here.

Kicking off what’s being called the “biggest Shop.org Summit ever,” Bazaarvoice and PETCO led a discussion in social media today at the Online Retail Boot Camp.

Bazaarvoice founder and CEO, Brett Hurt, and VP eCommerce for PETCO Animal Supplies Inc., John Lazarchic, shared best practices to leverage social throughout the organization. These social commerce tactics impact marketing, merchandising, and customer support to transform customer relationships, increase sales, and reduce returns.

The #shoporg Twitter hashtag for this year’s Shop.org Annual Summit was abuzz with comments and takeaways from the discussion.

• @surfsquire At #shoporg hearing more on the power of social media and commerce. Brett – bazaarvoice and John L – petco leading a boot camp
• @EstherSteinfeld Here we go! The formidable @bazaarbrett on stage at #shoporg http://twitpic.com/ilcjt
• @DavidCatalano Petco found a 20% reduction in return rates for products with reviews. Shoppers now expect reviews. #shoporg
• @jacquimurphy "Evolve your marketing with the consumer voice" #shoporg

You can read more in the hashtag and on our Twitter page.

Want to connect with us at the show? The Bazaarvoice team will be onsite at the Summit beginning tomorrow in booth #706, ready to take your questions. Stop by or click here to schedule a meeting with our executives.

Forget the grand strategy talks. Ignore the expensive, time-consuming software implementations. Discard the hard-to-measure long-term plans. This session is about specific, actionable tactics you can use to make money NOW.

The panel of experts – including Bazaarvoice’s own Heather Brunner, VP of Worldwide Client Services – is going to give you killer tips to improve your paid search, natural search, affiliate marketing, social marketing, email marketing, web 2.0, shopping feeds, technology issues, and site optimization.

Led by moderator Allan Dick, CMO and Chief Plumbing Evangelist for our client, Vintage Tub & Bath, this panel will move so fast session attendees will really need the provided handout with all the gory details. This is the session to attend if you’re looking to get your hands dirty and improve your bottom line. And the takeaways will help you convince your boss that you came to the Summit to make money – not just to party in Vegas.

Check out the website to find out who’s on the panel and what you can expect to learn. Want to connect at the Show? The Bazaarvoice team will be onsite in booth #706, ready to take your questions. Stop by or schedule a meeting with our executives.

Session Information

September 22, 2009
3:15 – 4:15pm
Track 4: Tactics

• "Want to lose one million more jobs?  Just keep talking."

The ad is by the U.S. Travel Association and promotes the website Meetings Mean Business.

This ad really resonates with me.  Business is best achieved by in-person conversations, not email, not web meetings, and definitely not Second Life.  I preach this at our company often as our CEO.  In the age of BlackBerrys, iPhones, and Android, you have to struggle to remember that relationships are fostered in-person.  Most communication should occur that way, especially within a company.  Email is best for mass-distribution messages or very quick yes/no responses.  I would use IM over email any day of the week for a real-time conversation.  Even Facebook messenger is better than email, for the simple reason of having my face and the recipient's face IN the message, making it more personal.  The problem with many executive teams and CEOs is a lack of humility, and it is simply harder to be a jerk in person.  Email masks many cultural problems.

I remember watching Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, on CNBC while he was at the World Economic Forum in Davos.  I remember him ranting about his fellow CEOs of financial services companies not being there.  Being "in the bunker" instead.  Not doing their part to get their companies back on track, with the impact their CEOs could have at such an important event.  I couldn't agree with him more.  Don't be in the bunker. Business gets done in person. As Andy Grove wrote in one of my favorites, High-Output Management, meetings are the medium of management.

I understand how tough the economy is, but those that didn't show at Shop.org's Strategy & Innovation Forum, where attendance was way down as compared to last year's event, really missed out.  We had our best content ever (I serve on the Board of Directors and was very proud of how educational the content was this year).  At least you can read the blog entries.

I hope to see you at our Summit this April in Austin.  It is our single best training event of the year.  You will make far more impact in your company as a result of attending it, and the little money you spend on travel to attend will be an afterthought as a result.  Executives last year told me that it was the most actionable conference they attended all year.

And here's Jamie Dimon on the economy.  I think he's the real deal, and I'm listening to his interviews carefully:

Click here to view the embedded video.