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.

In any case, I view the Mozilla news as very significant.  Just like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon have Web browser plug-ins that drive high adoption of their services, so will "The Coop".  Instead of visiting Facebook as a Web destination, The Coop integrates it directly into your Web browser.  Kelly Mooney of Resource Interactive showed a great demo of "social shopping" at the Shop.org Annual Summit last year.  Resource Interactive had created the demo for Victoria's Secret Pink.  Via mobile and the Web, they made it appear easy for an in-store shopper to share an outfit that she was thinking of buying with her friends online.  Everyone benefited from the resulting feedback and shopping list it created for all.  Millennials have been shown to follow each other more than the more "independent" generations of the past, so the Resource demo seemed like a natural evolution.  And it is no mistake that The Coop chose Facebook as their embedded partner, as Facebook is most heavily used by Millennials.

The Coop will accelerate the hyper-education of consumers that is underway.  It is just a matter of time when consumers have nearly instant access to global peer ratings and reviews on any product, service, place, person, or thing.  Access no matter if they are shopping online or offline.  While that may sound scary, it will actually be a beautiful thing.  Markets will become democratized, the voice of the marketplace will be "rediscovered", smart companies will react quickly, and as a result "consuming" will be driven to higher levels as shoppers gain more confidence to buy when leveraging the wisdom of the crowd.  Manufacturers will build better products, service providers will respond with better services, and companies will become more customer-centric.  Everyone will benefit, but the short-term disruption will make the old guard question the revolution underway.  Change is often difficult.

Expect Microsoft to quickly follow Mozilla, as they did with tabbed browsing and other Mozilla-led innovations.  It is just a matter of time before social networking becomes intimately interwoven in all Web browsers.  And then we will all wonder why it took so long as adoption skyrockets.

And speaking of revolutions, have you seen the short film, "Web 2.0 – The Machine Is Us/ing Us"?  The Kevin Kelly article it references is brilliant, and the film itself is pretty cool.  It's a powerfully brief summary of Web history. 

He also knows a thing or two about word-of-mouth marketing.  Outside of the fact that he has made many investments that have to do with the subject, you may remember that Half.com bought the naming rights to a city in Oregon and renamed it Half.com.  This was a seemingly silly PR stunt (as I remember how the media initially reported the story at the time), but it paid off in spades.  Read Mark Hughes bio (a past speaker at a Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference) and you'll see what I mean.

1. In December, Time Magazine announced that their “Person of the Year” is “you”.  As in the “prosumer”, or consumer-turned-producer.  Do you agree that the power of the “crowd” was the biggest trend of 2006?

Yes.  I think we’re seeing a major shift in the online value chain.  The initial killer application of the Internet was email (one-to-one), followed by websites (one-to-many).  We’re now seeing the creation of a whole class of tools that easily allow people to create, organize and publicize content (many-to-many).  With so much content being put online every day, the big challenge (and opportunity) is to find ways to help people discover the stuff that is relevant to them.  Leveraging the “wisdom of crowds” to intelligently filter/recommend content is a very large and meaningful opportunity.  

Other than Bazaarvoice (of course), other “social media” companies in our portfolio include:

VideoEgg has built a very powerful distributed video network – and currently power the user-generated video of 5 of the top 20 social networks (AOL, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged, and MyYearbook).

StumbleUpon has developed an innovative (and addicting) way to harness the wisdom of crowds for website discovery.

Aggregate Knowledge uses the behavior of previous visitors to a web page to automatically generate product and content recommendations.

Wikia was founded by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.  The company leverages people's innate need to create, share, and contribute to the subject areas that they are most passionate about.

3. How do you think consumer-generated content will impact the world of advertising?

I see it having an impact in a couple of ways.  First, advertising goes where the eyeballs are.  Consumers are spending far more time consuming consumer-generated content so over time advertising budgets will increasingly move towards that space.  Second, it increasingly allows consumers to participate in the advertising process itself.  The traditional one-way advertising broadcast model is now evolving towards more of a dialog between advertisers and consumers.  Forward thinking advertisers are using the collective intelligence and creativity of their consumers to help them craft their messages and even create their advertising.  This will result in advertising that is much more personal and relevant.

4. Do you think Google overpaid for YouTube?

No.  With its massive user base and powerful community, YouTube has clearly emerged as the leader in the online video sharing space.  With online video advertising set to exceed $1BB by the end of next year, and Google's ability to extract the most value out of any given online inventory, the acquisition seems like a very savvy move on Google's part.  This is especially true when you think about the fact that we are only beginning to see the potential of video on the Web, and the opportunities that lie ahead in this space.

5. Given your experience at Half.com, what advice would you give our clients in leveraging their consumer-generated content?

I think it's important to understand the impact that consumer-generated content such as ratings and reviews can have on a business.  In addition to allowing your consumers to communicate with each other, they also allow online merchants to begin tapping into the wisdom inherent in their current consumer base, and leverage that to create a better shopping experience for everyone who comes after them.  Companies can no longer afford to not participate in the dialog that their customers are having about them and the products/service that they provide.

6. What is the future of consumer-generated content?  Where does all of this lead us 5 years from now?  10 years?

Consumers today are more empowered than ever. It is now cheaper and easier than ever to create content, share your opinion, and distribute it over the Web. While this will inevitably create an overabundance of content, it will make finding the content that is most relevant to you increasingly difficult.  Over time I think there will be less reliance on traditional “editors” (e.g. newspapers) and “packagers” (e.g. music labels, publishers and studios) and more reliance on automated discovery tools that harness the "implicit web" to allow people to find the content that is most interesting to them.

7. What do you think the biggest trend of 2007 will be?

Online video has reached a tipping point. Given the amount of innovation, new developments, and widespread consumer adoption in this space, I think video will continue to be the biggest trend of 2007.

I'm sure Josh would love to hear your comments, so please write in.