Here comes the cyber czar

On his first full-day as US President, Barack Obama on Wednesday outlined plans to declare the country's computer infrastructure a national asset that will be protected by a cyber advisor who will report directly to the president.…

Paul Dwyer, (2007). Measuring the Value of Electronic Word of Mouth and It’s Impact in Consumer Communities. Journal of Interactive Marketing. 14 pages.

Reviewed by Jane An, January 08, 2009

Executive Summary:

Dwyer introduces a new metric called the Adapted Pagerank or APR, to measure social and informational interaction processes of online communities. He uses the APR metric to not only measure the volume of social capital, but to analyze key influences that drive network growth and decay as well.

The APR function is an adaptation of the well known Pagerank function used by Google, which determines the importance of a page by measuring the page's value of centrality and prestige. Centrality is defined as the "number of nodes to which a given node is connected" while prestige is a "variant of centrality where a node has many incoming ties but is very selective in initiating ties with others." The Pagerank function quantifies these factors by calculating the ratio of outbound and inbound links of a page, in relation to the ratios of the linking pages. Using APR as one of the algorithms in his analysis, Dwyer examines the relationships between content and its authors in 10 product-oriented online groups. He uncovers that members with high expertise in the subject matter are the most influential players in growing or deteriorating an online network, regardless of who they are linked to. These experts not only hold the key in shaping informational networks, but also help shape the social network within these environments as well.

Review:

By leveraging the knowledge capital currently available, Dwyer creatively avoids reinventing the wheel while providing marketers a solid approach in understanding how their online communities actually work. However, Dwyer leaves readers wanting more validation of how he adapted the Pagerank function to measure social networks. More specifically, it is not clear how he arrived at the factors set for the outdegree parameter (used to evaluate prestige) and the proportioning factor (evaluating page importance of linking pages). In addition, it is vague how the DAG (directed acyclic graph) models are applied and how it relates to the APR metric. Lastly, the limitations of the study were covered minimally, which leaves room for additional uncertainties.

Methodological considerations aside, the results from analyzing the 10 product-oriented online groups is surprising, particularly because of the way network growth is currently understood. Previous studies in social psychology (e.g. Stanley Milgram's "six degrees of separation" study) view highly connected members as the primary catalyst for information proliferation. "The law of the few" in Malcolm Gladwell's international bestseller, The Tipping Point, states that individuals who have a higher number of friends and acquaintances are key drivers of social epidemics. However, Gladwell also does state that human behavior is powerfully affected by the environment in which they interact. All in all, the results indicate that marketers trained in classical market research should reevaluate their online measurement efforts, as it is clear that social dynamics in the online world are different than offline world.

In practical application, Dwyer's findings validate the use of corporate moderators and industry experts in product-oriented communities. A variety of marketers are already jumping ahead of the curve by integrating industry experts into their online communities and now we have good evidence that this approach is helping marketers drive focus and growth in their communities. Moreover, it would be really valuable for marketers who are interested in understanding whether community-oriented groups exhibit similar behavior. Do Facebook members interact the same way that a community of BMW-enthusiasts? Would they exhibit behavior similar to Milgram-esque models or online product-focused models?

Dwyer’s article is recommended to web analytics practitioners who are interested in delving deeper into the nascent field of social media measurement. Among current methods, using APR sounds promising as it is grounded in quantifiable and conceptually sound. However, it might be helpful to reach out to Dwyer to discuss the tactical details of the actual implementation.

A single copy of the full journal reviewed above is available to members of the Web Analytics Association. To request a copy, email .

22-Jan-09 2:45 PM

Singh, Nitish, Pereira, Arun, Baack, Daniel W., Baack, Donald., (2008). Culturally Customizing Websites for U.S. Hispanic Online Consumers. Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 48, No. 2. 9 pages.

Reviewed by Christopher Berry, January 2009

Executive Summary:

The authors note the growing importance and influence of the Hispanic Online Consumer to US businesses, and the relative difficulty in reaching them. Their literature review identifies acculturation differences between US Hispanic Consumers as being a major challenge – and go onto define acculturation as “the process of learning a culture that is different from ones own, which in turn leads to change in values, attitudes, behavior patterns, and language use”. Also noted in the review are previous research on the US Hispanic Consumer acculturation levels and its impact on offline media usage.

They use a survey methodology (n=400) to conclude “U.S. Hispanic customers have clear preferences regarding online marketing content and that acculturation level affects these preferences.” Specifically, that that weakly-acculturated US Hispanics in particular have a “significantly higher levels of preference for both English and Spanish language web pages in comparison to highly acculturated Hispanics.” They also found that only weakly acculturated US Hispanics had significantly higher preferences, attitudes, and even purchase intentions for websites that provided information about Hispanic community involvement.

The authors also tested the use of creative involving grandparents, found that it was important to low acculturation Hispanics, and concluded that a “respect of elders” theme would be helpful for marketing to this group.

Review:

This article is directly applicable to web analytics, and raises a wicked web analytics problem.

The decision to translate a significant portion of a website into Spanish involves the consideration of several direct and indirect costs. Aside from the direct cost of translation, there are less well known costs, such as the design consideration of navigation and template sizing due to content differences. Specifically, Spanish can require up to 20% more space in comparison to English content. As a result, if an existing website was not developed with Spanish translation in mind, errors such as crowded or broken navigation might very well result. In sum - the decision to translate into Spanish properly by offering a Spanish experience is not always a light or simple decision.

The weak-acculturation finding has an important consideration for measuring the effectiveness of these pages and the overall value of the effort.

Many web analytics packages include “Visitors - Languages” reports, that generally sum up the type of language that the browser has been set up for. For example, ‘es’ is the code for ‘espanol’, or Spanish. Language selections are sometimes prefixed by country language localization. For instance, ‘es-ar’ would be ‘Argentina-Spanish’. The likelihood of weakly-acculturated US Hispanics using the default Spanish ‘es’, is low, making the creation of really meaningful custom segments in web analytics software, and then tracking their behavior, less robust.

Moreover, weakly-acculturated US Hispanics might not be likely to actually use the Spanish translated pages at all, but indication of their presence is enough to have a significant impact on conversion, brand perception, and likelihood to return. This is the direct implication of the study – the existence of Spanish translation is what is important to this group – not necessarily the actual use.

As a result of these complicating factors, utilizing solely a pure web analytics approach might not be the most accurate way of gauging the value of translation and effort. Rather, a combined approach incorporating pure web analytics with survey methodology would yield more accurate assessment of translation efforts.

This article is recommended to web analytics practitioners of companies that target US Hispanic consumers. It provides factual evidence that Spanish translated section of a website is important and well worth the effort.

A single copy of the full journal reviewed above is available to members of the Web Analytics Association. To request a copy, email .

22-Jan-09 2:00 PM

Nantel, Jacques & Sekhavat, Yasha, (2008). The Impact of SMS Advertising on Members of a Virtual Community. Journal of Advertising Research. 11 pages.

Reviewed by Jennifer Day, Coremetrics, November 10, 2008

Executive Summary:

The authors conducted field research by sending carefully written SMS (text) messages to opted-in members of a specific community. The community in this case was a subset of gamers who were participating in a large LAN party. The researchers tested the sample’s responsiveness to messages in two language formats (formal/corporate and forum/gamer) and from two sources (the company Subway and a member of the community). They tested combinations of the four variables, and surveyed the participants to establish 1.) the entertainment value, 2.) credibility, 3.) information gained and irritability caused, 4.) intent to purchase. They found that the language chosen had a minimal impact that favored the forum language slightly. They found that the source had the strongest impact and that the message coming from the company was better received. The reputation of the company is critical because “the restaurant guarantees the message.” The research concluded that the combination of a highly credible brand as the message source and use of the community’s language resulted in the highest impact on intent to purchase. However, the researchers caution that a less credible brand should choose formal language, since some loss of understanding and some irritation was recorded by choosing forum speech.

Review:

This article has limited applicability to web analytics in particular, but may have relevance to some of the related disciplines that web analysts may practice. Particularly this could be useful for anyone who writes short creative for SMS- or Twitter-based drive-to-web campaigns or possibly text advertisement creative. Unfortunately, its applicability even to those cases seems to be limited further by the narrow scope of the experiment. The researchers even state several times that no generalizations should be made based on the sample. (If viewing the full text, go to the section “Limitations and Future Research” for details.)

I believe the concepts here may be extended to Twitter because it likewise develops communities of like-minded opted-in people who (because of the character limit) develop certain abbreviated forms of speech. Text advertisement also offers limited space, but I am less certain whether informal abbreviated language would be considered or welcome in a text ad.

However, it seems to me that with the very limited scope of the experiment (very specific audience demographic and situation) that application of the results should be done with extreme caution in any case. I would also caution to pay attention to the method they used to formulate a message in the language of the community, or at least that idea. The language of a community of knitters is not going to be the same as the language of gamers, of course, and their responsiveness to messages in their own language should be expected to vary as well. If you choose to use messaging in the language of your targeted community you may gain insight from the article by looking at the methods under “Methodology” subsection “Experimental Procedure”.

If you do choose to read the full article I would recommend that you start at the subsection entitled “Research Hypothesis” or even “Analysis of Results”. Much of the “Conceptual Framework” is simply citing related works with seemingly simplistic conclusions. The authors here are building the case for the validity of their own experiment and hypotheses. The “Conceptual Framework” may be worth a scan only if you are inexperienced with SMS messaging as a communication medium or with the concepts behind communities.

A single copy of the full journal reviewed above is available to members of the Web Analytics Association. To request a copy, email .

22-Jan-09 2:00 PM

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Network-wide update ban invites worm infection

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Officials: But all our base email are belong to us

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