I was happy to see Andy leverage the valuable community we assembled at our first-ever and sold-out Summit in May by recording five video interviews. It was truly an amazing group of individuals, charged with word of mouth marketing at many of the largest companies in the world, from Bank of America to Wal-Mart. It was humbling to be in the presence of so many smart industry leaders, sharing best practices with each other in our rapidly emerging field. Because of them (as well as the hard work by our team), we have set a very high bar for our Summit next year.

Andy recently published his interview of me. We discussed how user-generated content is changing the merchandising culture at companies, helping them become more customer-centric and successful as a result.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read on to see more interviews by Andy.

Andy previously published an interview of Ze Frank, another one of our keynotes and one of the funniest but smartest online personalities you will ever meet. Ze's interview at our Summit by Kelly Mooney (a Summit keynote speaker, author of The Open Brand, and President of Resource Interactive) was a personal mental highlight for me, probing into some very deep issues. Andy covers topics like viral marketing with Ze. By the way, that gong behind Ze in the interview is a very important part of Bazaarvoice's culture, and has been since the beginning. You can thank my co-founder, Brant Barton, for that, and you can find multiple gongs in our Austin office and one in our London office (so far).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Andy also previously published an interview of Steve Leveen, the founder and CEO of Levenger. Steve is a very smart leader, and brought his son to our event. Steve gave me some great tips on raising our daughter, Rachel, and is a very kind person (as is his son, by the way).  In Andy's interview of Steve, they talk about the use of video reviews and Flickr as a natural medium for Levenger's sophisticated customers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you have not subscribed to Andy's blog yet, do it today. Incredibly useful tips are published on an almost daily basis. I found myself recently evangelizing on why to follow it to the founder of Hey Cupcake, a local joint in Austin. I connected with the founder, Wes Hurt, recently after reading about him in Tribeza because we may be related (it is a long story). You must try these cupcakes the next time you are in Austin – they are unreal. But I'm off topic – I was telling Wes to read Andy's book and subscribe to his blog because he will quickly learn how to build his business as a result. I also found myself telling Wes the story of how Krispy Kreme lost its "specialness", parroting Andy telling me the same story.

On Andy's blog, he will soon be publishing the remaining two interviews he did at our Summit: Bryan Eisenberg (highly respected industry consultant, co-founder of the Web Analytics Association, keynote speaker at our Summit and several other conferences, prominent author [ClickZ, Call To Action, and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?], and Bazaarvoice Advisory Board member) and Seth Greenberg (former CEO of eHobbies.com – one of the online pioneers, former Shop.org Board peer, and leader at Intuit).

* Note: we are proud members of WOMMA and our own Sam Decker serves on the Board of Directors while WOMMA's President is my fellow Board Director at Bazaarvoice, Ed Keller (keynote speaker at our Summit, author of The Influentials, former CEO of Roper, and co-founder and CEO of The Keller Fay Group).

We had the pleasure of hosting Kelly Mooney, President of Resource Interactive and my peer on the Shop.org Board of Directors, as one of our keynote speakers at our Social Commerce Summit last week (note: the event was amazing, see the recap post from Sam Decker, our CMO).  Kelly was great, as always.  Her interview of Ze Frank, one of our Advisory Board members, was fantastically thought-provoking and entertaining.  Hey keynote presentation on The Open Brand, her new book (see my interview of Kelly), was also top-notch.  What I remembered most from her presentation was the "Yes We Can" shared community video produced by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.  Kelly blogs about it here (her blog is one of the few that I personally follow).  The video is an awesome expression of community participation and user-generated content (note: mouse over the mosiac as it plays).

Whether or not you support Obama, his innovative use of the online channel will be emulated for future democratic elections.  And as politics gets more "open", that will benefit us all.  Just like customer-generated reviews benefits all with better products and services (at our Summit, I learned that Wal-Mart drops any product nationwide after it gets a certain number of negative reviews online), so will politics as candidates engage in openness.

Millennials will demand this as they have grown up online, marinating in "community".  I found Wired's Founding Editor's letter to his children (Millennials themselves) in this month's issue especially uplifting given the gravity of change we need (when speaking of the global warming issue alone).  Here's the best excerpt:

Strauss and Howe's [of Generations] description of Millennials inspired us: "This generation will show more teamlike spirit and more like-mindedness in action than most Americans then alive will recall ever having seen in young people… Millennials will carry out whatever crisis mission they are assigned — as long as they can connect it with their own secular blueprint for progress. If crisis brings war, soldiers will obey orders without complaint. If it involves environmental danger or natural resource depletion, young scientists will make historic breakthroughs. If the crisis is mostly economic, the youthful labor force will be a mighty engine of renewed American prosperity. Whatever their elder-bestowed mission, these rising youths will not disappoint. Assuming the crisis turns out well, Millennials will be forever honored as a generation of civic achievers."

What's heartening to me, Orson and Zoe, is that even though you and your peers have grown up watching your parents become self-absorbed, hypocritical, and now plain crotchety and rancorous (not Jane and me, of course), and even if you stand in the rubble of the social institutions toppled by the Digital Revolution, your response is not the me-me-me of your parents' generation but us-us-us. Whether you're addressing climate change or serving in Iraq, you are simultaneously more traditionalist and future-forward, more practical and idealistic, than your parents.

The challenge is obvious, the dangers present, the need great. But be optimistic. I would say that, wouldn't I, since we were often accused during my time at Wired of being overly optimistic. But optimism is not false hope, it's a strategy for living. If you are optimistic about the future, you will step up and take responsibility and attempt to make it better for yourselves and your own children.

As I promised, Part 2 is more focused on the forces shaping global commerce that we directly see in our business, working with our clients and partners.

5.    Digitally archived word-of-mouth: Blogs are here to stay (see BusinessWeek for a recap).  Word-of-mouth online is not a phase.  It’s a permanent shift.  Word-of-mouth has always been with us (that’s why I named our company Bazaarvoice).  More than 70 of the top 100 retailers in the U.S. have, or are launching, customer reviews today.  When Brant and I launched Bazaarvoice three years ago, only five retailers in the U.S. offered customer reviews, including Amazon.com.  Over the past three years, we have served 10 billion reviews to shoppers (see our recent celebration of this and real-time counter) and are on a current run-rate to serve another 20 billion over just the next year of our business.  Customer reviews are word-of-mouth.  People speak the same way about products online as they do offline.  We are literally seeing word-of-mouth for the first time in human history.

        Luxury retailers are still vigorously debating this – not wanting to give up control and open up their brand.  Like I do almost every week (it seems), I spent time on Wednesday in NYC debating this with the head of online marketing and merchandising of a luxury apparel retailer.  Meanwhile, Best Buy and Wal-Mart have been launching incredible multichannel campaigns (see them here and here), leveraging the power of customer reviews to drive sales online and offline.  Wal-Mart and QVC have all of their online merchandisers plugged into our reports.  They are having intense conversations with their suppliers to reduce returns, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately evolve their offerings.  The end-game?  Better products and services for all of us.  I knew we were on to something big when we started Bazaarvoice.  But I had no idea it would affect this much change, this quickly.  The fact that Wal-Mart launched customer-review-focused, in-store nationwide campaigns only six months after they launched with us online has staggering implications for the retail industry.

        And it’s not just limited to retail.  Any market where word-of-mouth plays a significant role in driving the transaction are good markets for the type of transformation we offer.  We are, or soon will be (due to signed agreements), powering customer reviews for some of the largest manufacturers of consumer products, banks, credit unions, insurance companies, portals, travel sites, and healthcare companies.  We are doing this globally, in 20 international languages.  We have four offices now – Austin, London, Paris, and now Singapore.  This is a global movement.  As an entrepreneur, it is impossible for me to not be passionate about helping clients lead this transformation.  Word-of-mouth online is an incredibly disruptive force, and I mean this in a positive way if harnessed correctly.  Why did I start this company after seven years at Coremetrics?  Because I knew it worked – but I didn't realize that it worked as well as I know it does now. 

        Seven years ago, Michael Porter wrote about the Web’s incredibly disruptive impact on the five forces (standard material for any MBA program).  When I read this article in 2001, I thought, "Porter is late to the game".  Now when I re-read it in the context of the social media movement, I think he was incredibly visionary.  Smart companies are reaping the rewards of that disruption, while others have been too slow to change and are going out of business.

6.    Six degrees of separation (tip of the hat to my brilliant and passionate friend, Mitch): Millennials are growing up connected to social networks, namely Facebook.  Their network of friends is intact for as long as they’ve been in “the system”.  They will be able to track their friends’ progress throughout life’s many stages – forever.  I’ve been a programmer since I was 7 and have communicated online (via BBSs) since I was 8 (launching my own when I was 10).  So I can relate.  But I can’t imagine all of the implications of all of this connectedness.  What does it mean, as a human being, to be able to so easily track your friends evolution in life as they go from preteen to teen to college to career to marriage to parenthood and, ultimately, to death?  A typical Millennial is connected to hundreds of friends on Facebook.  By comparison, I personally keep in close touch with only one of my early childhood friends (a few more are reconnecting via Facebook, but I have missed decades of their life and its hard to relate to them anymore). 

        How will these Millennials be shaped by this as shoppers?  As people?  Obviously, social media everywhere will be an expectation.  Ubiquitous Web access, via mobile, is rapidly coming.  How will companies adapt?  Typical Facebook banner-ads are getting .005% click-thru rates, as reported on the Web 2.0 panel at Shop.org last week by those helping their clients experiment with them.  That’s pathetic performance!  Millennials don’t want the disruption by brands when they are in the modality of friending – unless they actually help them enhance that experience.  Being on Google, Yahoo!, or Live.com and clicking on a paid-search link when they are in a shopping modality is a whole different story, and obviously that works – ridiculously well.  Facebook applications, however, are performing when they give unique value to these consumers.  On that same Shop.org panel, the Victoria’s Secret PINK Facebook application was pointed as one good example. 

        What are the long-term implications of this connectedness?  I don’t know, but we’re determined to help figure this out by working with all of our clients.

Thank you again for an amazing three years in business.  It is a true honor to work with such smart clients, and I look forward to seeing you soon at our Social Commerce Summit. 

My co-founder, Brant Barton, told me about Wikileaks.org a year ago.  At the time, we discussed that it could be the new user-generated "Watergate".  I didn't write about it then because, frankly, I wanted to see if it had staying power.  And then I read an article today, one year later, about how they were shut down by a federal judge, only to quickly reopen under massive protest.  If you haven't checked out this NY Times article, or their site yet, it is worth doing so.  User-generated content, via a connected global experience (i.e., the Internet/Web), will radically transform governments, corporations, and journalism, just like it is already doing for retail and travel.  There is no way it won't.  Information can't be confined to small geographic spaces anymore.  And accountability will be enforced throughout the system.  Operating with ethics and integrity is the only way.  And don't get me started with what happens when all voting in elections is truly done via the Internet, instead of today's outdated and cumbersome method.  The cat is already out of the bag.

We live in such an exciting period in history.  Humanity is being unleashed online, and it will only accelerate from here via word-of-mouth.

Additional materials: Look at this NY Times blog entry for the background on where Wikileaks.org originated from.  A globally-connected experience, indeed.

This marks a seachange in the financial software space.  Intuit is known as one of the best companies in the world to work for, and now they are known as one of the most "open" brands for embracing customer centricity through user-generated content.  Although the reviews are generally very positive, what makes them authentic to customers is that even a 5-star review will point out features that Intuit can improve in their next release of TurboTax.

I applaud Seth Greenberg, the leader of this initiative and a former Shop.org Board peer and CEO of eHobbies, and his team of remarkable people.

I encourage you to check it out for yourself by visiting TurboTax's home page to see the reviews.  And here are three of the campaign creatives that appeared this weekend.

AOL "Review Bubbles" (note the instant-messenger look):

Review quote:

 Yahoo!'s home page:

Note: these are online-only promotions.  If you have been missing the news on Bazaarblog, check out these great examples of multichannel promotions in 2008 from Best Buy (Bazaarblog link) and Wal-Mart (Bazaarblog link).

The Social Commerce industry hit another major tipping point this holiday season.  Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has begun the process of integrating user-generated content into their stores.  There are three integration points so far (see the bottom of this post for screenshots), with undoubtedly more to come:

1. Store merchandise receipts: encouraging customers to write reviews and visit Walmart.com to shop by reviews.
2. Store shelf fact tag: encouraging customers to research reviews prior to their purchase.
3. In-store and newspaper circulars: encouraging customers to visit Walmart.com to shop by reviews.

In all three integration points, Wal-Mart is pointing their customers to a common URL: Walmart.com/ratings.  This campaign "landing page" not only teaches the mass market how to write reviews (many of them for the first time) on Walmart.com, but it also teaches them how to shop by reviews.   This is a great showcase of what is possible with our partner integrations – Endeca, in this case (see Brant's December interview with Endeca).

This is a nationwide campaign for Wal-Mart, and one of the best examples I have seen to date of multichannel integration.  We have been giving webinars and advice on the topic through our Community Managers and, 2007 marked the year where we saw a lot of traction in this area (ask us for other examples).  But to see the world's largest retailer launch this in such a powerful integrated fashion, just six months after launching Bazaarvoice, is extremely impressive.  Congratulations to our Client Services team for proactively working with Wal-Mart and achieving such a milestone for both our company and industry.

Since the launch of this campaign, we have seen Walmart.com's customer review volume increase substantially. 

For other ideas on multichannel integration, be sure to check out my December post on the topic (integrating for maximum Black Friday and Cyber Monday benefit) and ask your Community Manager for ideas.  We are working hard to evolve with our clients in this area because we see the real impact of user-generated content extending far beyond the walls of your website.

There is no doubt that 2007 has been a banner year for Bazaarvoice.  From winning Red Herring's Global 100 award to launching clients like Wal-Mart, we have achieved one major milestone after another.  And there is also no doubt that it is because of our amazing people that we have had such a year.  I wake up every day with a smile on my face because I work with the best and the brightest.

Culture has been important to me and the executive team from day one.  We regularly put initiatives and policies in place to shape our culture, and it works.  One of them is that we never compromise on hiring.  If we have the slightest reservation about a candidate, we'll pass.  This keeps our foundation incredibly strong.  Some of the others can be seen if you click on the link at the beginning of this paragraph.

For our holiday party, I asked our team what they liked most about working at Bazaarvoice.  I then presented the best of these at our holiday party.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Delivering value to everyone [to businesses because we increase their revenues / to consumers because we help them make better decisions].
• Co-workers – it is such a relief to know that the people you work with are dynamic, smart, and capable. I also like how everyone is constantly striving and surpassing goals that the entire group is working towards.
• The vast opportunities here. There are always new things to learn, teach, improve, and create.  It makes me really feel and see the personal and professional growth that I’m experiencing at Bazaarvoice.
• The opportunity to work with other people that are themselves jazzed about coming to work every day.  There is a buzz here I've not felt in years in the work environment.
• The people – we rigidly guard our culture.  When we decide to hire somebody, we're as sure as you can be during an interview that the person will fit in at Bazaarvoice.
• We're a very healthy company.  Many of our employees are friends outside of work.
• Good work/life balance – this company is really good about having fun while working and organizing events to get us out of the office and have a change of pace to prevent burnout.
• The "winning team" feeling.  Our company is kicking &*$, and it's great to be on the winning team.  Our competition is inferior to us and we enjoy the success that we have as a team.
• The people – everyone at Bazaarvoice is incredibly helpful.  I feel like I don't have to deal with any unnecessary red-tape when talking to anyone and we all work together to get things done. It is awesome to work on projects and know that everyone else at Bazaarvoice has your back and will be there to support you.
• Our client list.  It is awesome to work on so many well-known companies/brands.  I bet everyone related to a BV employee gets annoyed when we start pointing saying "they're a client… they're a client… they're a client…" but it's just so much fun.
• Complete trust of the proven leadership at our company.  Our solutions are a perfect match for today’s market.
• Everyone I work with is a top performer, without exception.  Because of this, I am constantly challenged by my teammates and have had faster growth here than anywhere else.
• Bazaarvoice People – there's nothing more inspiring than being surrounded by people who like to dream big, always present the energy and excitement on how to improve things, and make things happen.
• There’s a fantastic mix of autonomy and teamwork, which brings out the wacky individualism of everyone as well as the accountability of being part of a team.
• I would actually pay money to see my colleagues’ responses to this question – they’re that creative, energetic, and bullish on Bazaarvoice.
• The products – our products work and our customers love them.  It’s exciting to be on the cutting edge of word of mouth marketing.
• Our customers – we are working with some of the largest companies in the world and it is exciting to know that we are impacting their business.

2008 is going to be an even more amazing year for Bazaarvoice and our clients.  With 7 products in 20 languages, referenceable clients across the world, a clear business opportunity, and a winning team, the sky is the limit.  If you are thinking about joining us, now is the time.  Click here to see our job listings, and please – spread the word to your friends!

But you probably haven't heard about this: today, Google's valuation surpassed Wal-Mart's for the first time.  Wal-Mart is the largest company in the world as the Fortune and Global 1.  As of today's market close, Google is worth $177.6 billion while Wal-Mart is worth $175.58 billion.  Wal-Mart has a P/E ratio of 14.46 while Google's is 46.24.  The high relative P/E is a reflection of Google's insane growth (and projected growth) and margins since their founding (that may seem like a high P/E overall but note that Yahoo!'s is 51.75 and the only explanation is that the market must value a more diversified and theoretically more stable revenue stream).

And talk about a young company.  While Facebook was founded in 2004, Google was founded in 1998 (that's around $20 billion of value created every year since their founding).  It's amazing to think that only around 10% of all advertising is spent online today.  The revenue shift from offline to online advertising is mindboggling.  We are witnessing the creation of the most valuable company in the history of the world.

The only explanation for Facebook's incredible valuation is the average (very long) dwell time of the user (especially Millennials, as Kelly Mooney would call them) and the theoretical future value of their advertising stream.  I presented at a local high school recently and learned, not surprisingly, that the students were communicating (i.e., living) in Facebook more than IM or email.  But it's not just for kids.  Our CMO, Sam Decker, wrote about Facebook taking off for business users in his blog.  I have certainly seen that.  The CEO of Ice.com just sent me an invite to connect on Facebook today (I had the pleasure of presenting with his brother, Pinny, at last week's awesome Shop.org Annual Summit in Vegas).  I am getting 5-6 invites per week now and am spending more time on Facebook than LinkedIn now.  And everyone, including Bazaarvoice, is rushing in to integrate with Facebook. 

I wrote about how the Web browser and social networks are becoming increasingly more integrated in April.  Hang on to your hat – if Microsoft invests in Facebook, it is going to get really interesting really quickly.  How consumer-generated content becomes more integrated in social networks is going to create some very interesting (viral) opportunities.  We're gearing up for that here.

By the way, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Google never advertised.  Neither did Facebook.  Both brands were built entirely by word of mouth.  And both brands are very young but obviously very established.  That's just how valuable of a service they created.  They're worth talking about… really worth talking about.  Now, Facebook me.