Looking back at the type of discussions we had with clients about stakeholder engagement, I like to think that we are trying to solve, or more modestly trying to contribute to solve, a very interesting issue : how conversations build knowledge and how knowledge fuel conversations. What has indeed struck me as we work on corporate social networks is the shift from database-centric knowledge to people centric knowledge : what used to be the most important was the ability to find very easily all documents about any topic; what our clients are discovering is that it is much more important to facilitate the discovery of conversations about any topics : while it is necessary to have at your fingertips the last market survey to decide whether to launch a new product for example, what is much more helpful is to have access to various live conversations and work groups about this, usually ranked, with indeed some documents as Appendices. From a conceptual point of view the ability to access libraries of conversations speed up the graduation from Data to Information to then Knowledge and finally Wisdom, the so-called DIKW hierarchy, pioneered by Jonathan Hey.

In short, what drives the workflow is the conversation, not the file, it is the people, not the database. This has huge implication on the document and content management industry as what they are becoming are “appendices” to conversations; on the other side, stirring internal conversations within a company to foster knowledge sharing and innovation takes the center stage. In addition, making sure employees stay engaged in large companies will have to borrow from CRM tactics, especially to get the initial community to take-off.

Some might find it a bit ambitious but I find it very exciting to be tackling on behalf of our clients very hot issues about human interaction: how knowledge is created and transferred, what type of connections between people should be fostered to accelerate that process, and how to make the whole circle self-sustainable.

Perhaps it is not surprising to hear about Yahoo’s extended partnership with Facebook, the search company’s latest attempt to provide deeper integration with the social networking site. Internet users now demand two-dimensional interactions when it comes to receiving information, either from friends or people they trust or share a passion with through social networks.

With this new evolution of using the Web, information and content is still king, but instead of just receiving and absorbing information passively, it is an ‘information exchange’ where general users have the power to be part of the collective intelligence. For example, users can add, amend and request to remove a certain piece of information on Wikipedia.  

Opinions are no longer a privilege of a small group of people, everyone is entitled to their opinions and via reviews and ranking features on most websites, they can express them. A good example is a user-generated content site called Qype where users recommend and review shops, restaurants, bars, gigs and services based on their personal experiences.

We are entering a world where information is truly available to everyone, not only as a one-way reference, but also as a collective intellect built upon conversations and discussions among the general public via websites, forums, blogs and social networks.

As is often the case in technology adoption, consumers are leading here, but the revolution will be even bigger on the corporate side as companies discover that the elusive knowledge management that they have always been craving for will not be driven by powerful search on douments but by the ability to engage employees in contributing to conversations that can then evolve in proper innovation. People and their ideas are back to the center, documents are the back-up, the mean, the output, but certainly not where it starts and getting this process started is the difficult part.That will be the topic of one of my next posts.

Social networks are often associated with external communications due to the success of many high-profile promotional campaigns cleverly created by companies such as Dell, Cadbury and Burger King, trying to generate additional buzz via popular platforms like microblogging site Twitter or building their own like Time Warner UK did with Webjam for its NME magazine (part of the IPC media Unit). More and more organisations see the rise of social networks as one of the best channels to keep in touch with their customers and other external audiences. But how will this trend evolve in corporate environments?

As the popularity of social networks continues to grow and gradually replaces traditional communication channels such as email, they can be used more than simply as an internal communications tool to share company news and corporate updates. Instead, there are at least three key areas where social networks can make a difference within an organisation.

• First of all, the concept of social networks builds upon a sense of purpose, ie tha ability to bring group of people to tackle company issues together, from fostering innovation to organizing a team day-out; this in turn helps nurture a sense of belonging which will boost staff morale and maintain employee loyalty;
• Secondly, interactions and conversations are key to generating ideas, swapping knowledge and transform what could start as mundane discussions into proper innovative projects;
• Finally, an open platform for honest dialogues can be a good place for managers to identify talents by providing an environment that nurtures the type of leadership companies crave for : one that is not based on hierachy but on commitment, competence and enthusiasm, in other words the natural leadership that any organisation needs to foster to grow;

If you are interested in looking further into these business cases for internal social media, and exploring the challenges as well as solutions for implementing social networks internally as we have recently done for Unilever, my full article is now available on Figaro Digital Magazine.

While somewhat limiting if you take them at face value, simple frameworks always help to kick-start a debate and I would argue that it always help to start with what I would call the 3Ps of corporate social networks, ie People, Passion and Purpose. One of the interesting challenges in building a corporate network is to decide to what extent key consumer behaviors should be emulated within a company.

• People : where everything starts of course, with profiles giving a sense of belonging to a community, and an easy way to connect to other people in an authentic way, without an agenda by default. This is where and how Facebook or linkedin started and still excel at doing, this where companies need to go beyond the dull profile of static intranet pages to let people express themselves on their pages or other people walls.
• Passion : the trigger to start many discussions, especially with people you may not know well, is the urge to share either your opinion on topics that you feel strongly about or simple observations that think your community will be interested in. That is the main fuel behind the blogging phenomenon, whereas micro-blogging sites such as Twitter have cleverly fused this with your profile. For some people “my activity is my identity” now, and these are usually the early adopters that will set new trends. Letting people start simple discussions that can at some point be transformed into fully-fledge working groups is crucial.
• Purpose : the key to lasting contributions that serve defined objectives. Whether on groups on Facebook or Linkedin, or simple DIY social networks that you can build on Ning or Webjam free or premium offerings, Purpose provides the glue that will keep a group of people aligned toward achieving anything, from running the local charity ... to discussing product innovation. And by definition, you usually deliver very well on any objective if they are served by Passionate People.While the Purpose of the company social network should be clear, especially, at the beginning, it should have in its DNA the ability for employees to have it evolve based on their actual needs and what they feel is most relevant to their life in the company.

Great networks will look at finding the optimum combination between these 3Ps, first making sure that they fit with both the company overall business objectives, ie what is the goal, and the companies values, ie how do we want to interact together to get there.
Interestingly this is often an iterative process as corporate social networks are by themselves “change agents” that will help crystallise the company culture. The ultimate success indicator is often that passionate employees start by themselves new discussions helping the company to move forward as an organisation, both in terms of projects and atmosphere; but it usually helps to start and then nurture some “top-down triggers” to kick start-discussions and activity. While depending on the overall purpose of the network, these initiatives need to be in any case both relevant and useful to employees’ interests that should be identified upstream; such interests are likely to blend anything ranging from sharing team-building pictures to discussing what the competition is doing or working on a specific project.

Stay tuned as we talk soon about measuring engagement...

Marketers should move to the next stage and actually purposely blend their official message with the informal conversations of their end-users or clients in what I would call Social Media Hubs. The reason is very simple: people now trust first “a person like me” above experts as highlighted in the Edelman Trust barometer. And with recommendations from these “people like me” (even though you may not know them) influencing more and more purchase decisions, getting your reputation right is paramount ... And reputation is not what you say about yourself on your site but what people say about you in their online conversations... And you are likely to be rewarded if you take this into account rather than hide it.

Too many companies are still creating facebook pages and twitter accounts to tick the “social media box” but they are missing the point if they don’t  see these tools as a live giant feedback loop, which is what the internet has actually become from a marketing prospective. It is interesting that while twitter still presents its philosophy as answering the question “what are you doing ?”, their new homepage now says “See what people are saying about ...”. The real opportunity now is to indeed listen to what people are saying about you there, import it on your “official site” which needs to become an anchor for your community, run there a poll about some of the issues raised and then export the results back in a facebook group for example. As fellow co-founder Alberto Barreiro said in the Wow 2.0 conference last week, “Activity is the new Content” as conversations define reputations; the role of marketing today is less and less about controlling an agenda and more and more about fuelling these conversations.

As I said in a recent article about Climbing the social network ladder in Computer Business Review, “Companies need to make followers aware of the brand, not just the medium”. The issue is not to look cool by having a presence on the latest web2.0 sites but to show that you are actively listening and reacting. That won’t happen by keeping separate a “safe” official site and a few groups/feeds here and there. Both have to mingle and brands need to be comfortable with what they want to say about themselves sitting alongside what people say about them by :

• Creating a fully branded, customised  social media environment serving as the hub for their social media presence on the web;
• Aggregating the flow of conversations about themselves, putting them into context and re-sending these to key networks on the web;
• Managing and fostering communities, offering customers a destination to check out on buzz & reputation.

We facilitate that process on Webjam by enabling our clients to create such Social Media Hub(s) so as to generate the activity levels required for the collective construction of their brand identities.

For the second-time running, Webjam was named last Monday a Guardian Tech Media Invest 100 company, topping some of the previous awards we had over the last two years and confirming our presence on the UK tech scene. This is great news for our clients and partners and of course a source of pride for all of us here, especially given the overall economic outlook.

What do we do now? Well we grow ! in uncertain times, a key reason why many of the companies in that list have been selected is that they have found the virtuous combination between the product, market and business model. What is paradoxical is that the market is not ready to finance anything these days, with VC funding in the whole of Europe  less than that of the Silicon Valley in Q2’09 according to Venture Source quoted by Guardian Richard Wray in the Guardian supplement.  It remains to be seen if banks  will be capable to lend and fund working capital requirements and long sales/partnership cycles: I find it amazing that our bank, HSBC, can only extend the corporate credit card limit to the amount we are ready to freeze on a separate account. We are actually lending money to our bank while they are collecting recurring monthly fees ! This is not a mundane issue for many of the companies mentioned here who usually have in common the need to finance the upfront development and commercial work required to continue gaining paying clients and subscribers.

In any case, I’d rather enjoy being on the side of the entrepreneur these days, with great new clients in the pipe and new business being brought by existing clients: these awards are a celebration of entrepreneurship and it is fitting that our relationship keeps growing with Make Your Mark, the organizer of the worldwide “Entrepreneur’s week” and whose communities across 77 countries are powered by Webjam. I would  definitely share the enthusiasm of Mike Butcher from Techcrunch that this is a good time to start a company, simply because the slump makes competition healthier with everybody zooming on providing real value to the client. It has never been easier to be focused !

As for Webjam, we will continue building on the three trends that make our industry so exciting :

• Social Media is a deep sociological change in human behaviour that is here to stay;
• That makes pro-active on-line reputation management the next big thing in marketing;
• The platforms and solutions that will win are the ones which can interconnect how users interact with brands and organisations across different networks.

Congratulations to all the companies in this Guardian Tech Media Invest 100 list where in many case we have friends and with whom we could end-up partnering at some point !

We had the privilege yesterday evening to have more than 200 of our clients, partners as well as social media experts from the London media, marketing and social networking scene attend the Webjam Summer Celebration party at Whisky Mist in Mayfair, London.
It was a good occasion to share the gospel about social media, the fact that it is not a specific use of technology but simply about people, about transforming passive readers into pro-active and engaged contributors if not publishers. That is exactly what we allow our clients, large companies or smaller organisations, to achieve and we were fortunate to have had four leaders in their respective field speak about their experiences using Webjam yesterday :

• Roger Bratchell, Marketing Director of one the Random House Division, explained how they use Webjam to foster book club creation among their readers (Random House is the world leader in English-book publishing) – launch on its way;
• Chris Spavin, from Enterprise Insight, running the “business led, government backed” Make your Mark initiative organizing the Global Entrepreneurship week in November across 77 countries as you can see on Unleashing ideas.org;
• Ed Speleers, rising british movie actor of Eragon fame, who use Webjam to foster fan club creation as you can see on his official site.
• Ben Hopkins, creative developer at JWT, the digital agency, part of the wordwide WPP network, showing how to use Webjam to foster collaboration inside and outside the company.

Most business news emphasizes revenues stalling or declining and then concludes that the business is in a difficult situation. While cumulated numbers make sense to understand the state of the economy, we should only look at comparative numbers for a business: the only thing that is important is how you fare compared to your competitors. For example, Google drop of 3% in Q1 quarterly revenues does not imply the company is badly it hit by the economic situation: Google is actually getting stronger as its market share is improving in an online advertising market that declined by 10% : Google is indeed not immune to the overall slump but it is actually benefitting from it.

The same reasoning could apply to the social media market. Many thought the economic conditions would badly impact it but it is quite the contrary : marketing budgets may have been slashed but as brands and companies rediscover the power of engaging their audience and clients, the part allocated to social media is actually increasing. As Read Write Web reported a few weeks ago a Forrester Research survey by the insightful Jeremiah Owyang indicates that more than 50% of B2B and B2C businesses intend to spend more money on social media. In other words, the share of budget devoted to social media is actually increasing in 2009.

That is good news for the industry in general and Webjam in particular and explains why we keep signing new clients, including some of the biggest brands to be announced soon. In the meantime, check out some of the newest networks built on Webjam :

. raising money by playing cricket on the Everest on “the Everest Test”

. getting entrepreneurs to share thoughts and risks with the “Founders Club”

. fostering entrepreneurship around the globe with “Make your Mark”

On a much more modest scale there is a lot in it to learn that we can apply to business. A few sentences really resonated for me.

• “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals”. It was about time to remind everybody that the end does not always justify the means. Leading by example on that point could definitely help solve some of the geo-political conflicts across the world. Maybe something that should be also be plastered on the walls of the trading rooms that precipitated the economy into chaos.
• “Hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism” : once again it is the work of hard-working entrepreneurs and employees that will bail out a broken financial system, and any company who work along these lines is part of the solution to the current economic woes.
• “With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come”. Well, I’d rather not think to much about icy currents. At Webjam, we’d rather celebrate achievements as you can see here, while virtue definitely includes a glass of wine to help fuel hope… That is why we are organizing in London next Thursday January 29th, our “Beat the 2009 blues party”. If you are interested to discuss social media, just request an invite by clicking on the “send message” link in my profile module on the right.

Happy New Year !

Reproducing here an opinion piece article that appeared a few weeks ago in media magazine mad.co.uk. Will certainly interest those of you keen to discuss online branding.

*** Start ***

Yann Motte, CEO of Webjam, discusses the part social networks can play in online branding.

Online branding has come a long way since the days when simply having a corporate website was seen as the cutting-edge. With the majority of purchasing decisions now being made online and an increasing number of online retailers, a unique brand web-presence and reputation will only become more essential. It is now common practice for brands to allow consumers to comment on them through blogs and forums and many brands also encourage consumers to share and remix brand content online through social networking sites. Yet, branding through social networks has still not matured into its full potential.

Branding through social networking appears deceptively simple, but is notoriously hard to execute. Not only are consumers extremely fickle about the information they will consent to pass on, but it is also increasingly difficult to be heard in our modern media-saturated environment. Yet, there can be no doubt that social networking can provide a powerful forum for brand building, since the influence of friend recommendations on purchasing decisions is well known. Additionally, social networking is fast becoming the conduit of choice for disseminating information very quickly, by making it easy to spread the word virally to “friends”. Add the ability to reach massive audiences (about whom you can access a lot of demographic and behavioural information) and you have a marketer’s dream. That being said, the interaction is very superficial at present. Brands need to go further in exploiting the potential to engage with their prospective followers that social media presents.

The popularity of the most well-known social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, meant that they were often the first port of call for companies trying to build their brands through this new medium. However, marketers are now beginning to realise that the creation of a brand profile on these sites does not really achieve anything, since there can be no one to one relationship between a brand and a consumer. Simply having Nestle as a “friend” is unlikely to alter a consumer’s purchasing decisions. These brand “pages” have become little more than adverts embedded in social networking sites.

Brands need to encourage consumer interactivity in order to spread information about themselves across social networks. The future belongs to brands that will not only engage with their consumers but also empower them to create their own discussions on communities that they themselves manage. Consumers will soon be able to repackage the brand in their own words, which they are doing on some forums already, through reviews and recommendations. Brands may soon create their own social communities, with a goal more akin to social publishing than social networking. Social publishing refers to communities of consumers, who are drawn together online to form a community around a brand, a company or an organisation. Although a brand cannot communicate with individual consumers, these communities of consumers can connect and build relationships amongst themselves. These consumers can then collaborate on their own projects, inspired by their favourite brand or organisation - a shared passion for anything from Nike clothing to helping the NSPCC stop child abuse.

Social publishing allows consumer communities to cooperate across a wide variety of content such as blogs, forums, galleries, videos and polls. Through user generated content (UGC), social networking and shared editing of web-pages, consumers with similar interests can now collaborate on a common goal. Additionally, consumers should be able to talk to each other freely and not have the brand as the hub for all communications. However, brands may well choose to support community projects, such as sponsoring events or organising competitions.

Yet, the holy grail for most organisations is to build a character around their brand values that transcends what the product or service itself provides – to move from being a simple purchasing choice to a lifestyle statement. By allowing affinities between personalities to evolve toward affinities with a brand, social networks are a place where marketers can let brand personality blossom. If a brand has succeeded in communicating about its values, then it is normal that users start talking about those values rather than the product itself. For example, if Lucozade values sporting performance, then that is the type of discussions the brand should foster between its users.

Within a brand network consumers can exchange tips, ideas and opinions not only about the product or service, but also about what the brand means to them or helps them achieve. It is through such networks that online branding will really come into its own.

*** end ***

What about transforming web2.0 communities into a profitable activity ? 

The media business has operated for years under the assumption that great content would attract audience which could then be monetized through advertising and subscriptions. Quality content was the only way to get people back. It is only a few years ago, with the rise of the internet, that communities have been seen as way to increase loyalty, but though it often was done reluctantly as readers participating has usually been seen as a source of trouble : it is difficult to control without putting monitoring resources in place while there is always a risk that a conversation not compatible with brand values occur. It is striking to see that while a few traditional media have been as daring as allowing readers to blog under their brand, most are hardly going beyond forums and some, notably local newspapers, are still hiding behind tightly controlled articles.

It is often forgotten that media have been using User Generated Content for decades but that it was subsequently reviewed by a team of editors :  that was simply “classified listings” which have been the life blood of many of the print businesses since their inception, until that industry was leapfrogged by online classified and auction, which even pre-dates the term “UGC”. Many of the content-driven media were thus left with just content to monetize their sites and ensure the recurring production of quality content. Other initiatives like allowing user-generated Photos or Videos are still mainly a black hole cost-wise, heavily subsidised by other cash-generating activities for those who have them, or VCs hoping to find a cash-flow positive buyer. Those media are thus left with the huge issue of fostering user participation, by default seen as a loss-leader, with only the largest publishers able to generate meaningful advertising revenues from the additional inventory created.

UGC is likely to stay that way, a loss leader or at best breaking even, until media graduate to the next step, User Generated Communities (see previous blog post) as these allow to generate recurring revenue streams. Indeed, if you suddenly let your readers, members or clients create their own communities, you empower them to take-over a discussion with a purpose, often around a topic that is dear to your brand. Now, many of these users might want more control on their communities with a willingness to pay for it. That is what we allow them to do through Webjam Premium Services. And by allowing premium subscription within their own branded environment, medias can now finally generate their own recurring fees, on a per community basis, something they could not generate on a per user basis : you probably won’t pay to leave a comment on an article about wedding dresses or a new car, but you may well be willing do so to create your very own wedding site or car fan site.

That is probably the best way today for many medias to monetize User Generated Content and allow them to go back to their roots of providing a service behind just content, here powering a community, which in turns compensate for dwindling revenues such as listings. For others community or e-commerce driven sites, from vertical social networking sites to yellow pages, this also creates an additional stable revenue stream.
Recurring subscription fees is always a welcome addition to advertising and e-commerce revenues : that is what Webjam Premium Services allow when bundled to our Branded Services.

• the cold and rationale user acquisition business where hard numbers are the main story and where every agency, ad networks or metrics company promise to compute any ROI you can dream of to the finest details;
• the softer ways to harness social media by encouraging user to contribute, participate, if not take over the discussion and evangelization about a product or services through its brand values.

The very thing that seems to have disappeared, at least from the online world, is proper branding campaigns that have been squeezed out of the equation by CPA and CPC on one hand and viral social media on the other hand. While we all know branding campaigns are still alive and kicking in the other media (just look at any paper or TV or radio channel and indeed the big portals homepages), I heard in a panel Nigel Morris, CEO of Digital Marketing Agency Isobar, make a very good case that agencies need to adapt to a fundamental trend : Marketing is going to move away from being campaign-driven, ie where you generate sporadic bursts of interest, to continuous engagement/business interaction, ie where you build a recurring sustainable relationship between the client and the brand. The whole game then is about fostering environments where you can encourage “brand conversations”.
I actually don’t believe pure branding campaigns are going to disappear as there will always be the need for new products or services to be introduced to their target audience; but seeing user engagement heralded by big agencies as the next big thing is obviously music to my ears as this is exactly what Webjam allows organisations to achieve. That probably also explains why our “Branded social networks made easy” tagline generated so much interest on our booth, from trade organisations to publishing companies, gaming or e-commerce sites looking to engage and empower their members, audience or clients.

• Marketing-wise, we are going beyond advertising and pages you can just befriend on social networks, to really engage and empower the audience : by letting users run their own community sites within their environment, they can spread the word about your product or as importantly the values you stand for. Whether you are Yamaha Music engaging with musicians as is already the case on their Webjam, or Greenpeace providing easy-to-use templates to let volunteers quickly react and build buzz around an event, you are going beyond a product or a mission by letting people act with you and/or on your behalf.
• Functionality-wise, we are going to move away from people profile and mini-feeds to start thinking at the community level : in Webjam Channels, as you can also see in our our own editorial Channels, the profile and the activity feed are first and foremost at the community level. It is about connecting networks, whether they are local mother groups, charities or sport clubs as they have experiences to share as groups, not just at the individual level.
• Software wise, if UGC now stands for User Generated Communities, then CMS as “Content Management system” needs to give way to CMS as “Community Management System”. Content is of course a must have, but it is how people use it or collaborate on it, with whom and in which context for which goals that is really the most important.
• Business-wise, whereas a solution like Webjam Branded Services is indeed a Software as a Service – SaaS – (see on wikipedia) offering, we actually see us providing organisations with Marketing as a Service – MaaS -  (which we just made up…). And yes we do aim to nurture and develop this “category” which represents the future of how brands, organisations and people will interact responsibly.

Beyond the big milestone for Webjam today as we crystallise this vision in our B2B2C product offering, it is very exciting for all of us here not only to be part of this behavioural and market shift, but also play a defining role in shaping it.

• most organisations understood a while ago that just pushing out information to their members, readers or clients will never get them very far in terms of engagement, What makes people tick is the values and the soul you have and for this you need to get them involved.
• the holy grail of One2One marketing or relationship is actually a dream simply because it does not scale. It is helpful - if not necessary - when you start out but less and less feasible as you grow. Whether a high-street brand or a charity, you need to get people to move from just knowing, to not even liking but loving your brand. I am not talking marketing tricks here but real value : if you are a wedding magazine, you should provide your readers with online templates to organise their wedding for example.
• On the other hand, many people have spent the last few years trying out blogging, web publishing, social networking, RSS readers and aggregation/sharing platforms and got accustomed to these tools. They have also learned that without a specific purpose, all these tools are actually cumbersome to learn & maintain, that privacy management should be a given, and that the future to get anything done lies with co-edition & collaboration.

Webjam Branded Services are nothing else but a way for organisations & corporations to harness these trends.
Examples of usage already include (remember that you can only see what has been made available to the public in these communities) :

• ZoneMag : providing music lovers with a place to extend their music education
• Digital Hub Irish Agency : Connecting tutors & learners
• Yamaha Music Education : spearheading grassroots music education
• The Other Side : free newspaper distributed in the Tube in London, allowing readers to create blogs
• Centre for Policy Studies : the Conservative Party think-tank e-democracy initiative

By using Webjam, our partners get :

• a simple and easy-to-use social publishing platform to publish & share information with all privacy, member management and collaboration features you can expect;
• a viral engine to get what they or the community are doing best, spreading like wildfire thanks to Webjam one-click site replication;
• a hassle-free solution where Webjam provides the platform, hosting and if necessary additional services like editorial & community management;
• A turn-key solution to grow their business, whether it is by generating more sellable inventory to initiating transactions or (re)selling Webjam Services.

• It confirms that our positioning around "communities with a purpose” indeed answers a growing market, leveraging the fundamental trend towards social publishing that I had the chance to describe at the Red Herring 100 conference.
• The growth model that we are pursuing is indeed the “viral expansion loop” described in this week's Fast Company magazine. That is exactly what we are seeing every day on Webjam with publishers inviting members who end up creating other networks... and then invite other members… etc.
• We are also currently growing 10% a week, without any push in the US, where we actually generate 2/3 of our traffic and revenues.
• Most importantly, after a year and an initial investment of $2 million, we are achieving the same user engagement rates as Ning, who was founded in 2003 and already benefited from two large rounds of financing.
• These numbers are probably due to some of our key differentiators, from an agnostic social publishing platform (not every site has to be a social network), a truly open community where people can leverage through replication what the community is doing best across content, modules/apps, styles/layouts and even pages if not sites, and a pro-active profile management where publishers can decide which parts of their personality they show depending on the webjams they are part of.

I can only congratulate the team for the new platform released in January and encourage our users to continue giving us feedback. They are the ones ultimately steering our growth and the breadth of usage we see is a testimony to their appetite for publishing, aggregating & sharing and our ability to meet their needs.

PS. The graph below comes from compete.com (fairly reliable compared to our own stats and definitely less volatile than Alexa) and looks at the average time spent per visit per user. This is a key metric as it measures the site stickiness or addictiveness, in other words how much it is used and appreciated by its users. This is a key measure of quality and usually a key indicator of future audience growth.