Bryan Person's Blog

On some Fridays, my SocialVoice blog will feature posts that are decidedly more personal, and less business focused.
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In my hometown of Boston and throughout the New England region, the month of October means three things: the crispness of early autumn, stunning foliage, and the unbeatable drama that accompanies watching the Boston Red Sox, our beloved Old Towne Team, battle it out for a World Series championship.

It’s my favorite time of year.

And although I’ve recently relocated to Austin, Texas and will have to settle for watching this year’s postseason action from afar, I’m no less excited about the start of “Soxtober.”

It certainly helps that the Red Sox have as good a chance as anyone to capture the 2008 title, which would be their third in the last five years.

Barring a Red Sox three-game sweep of the Yankees and three straight losses for the AL East-leading Rays this weekend, Boston will enter the playoffs as the American League’s wild card entry and face the Anaheim Angels in a best-of-five series beginning next Wednesday or Thursday.

It’s worth noting that the Red Sox have been a dramatically better team at home (55-23) than on the road (39-42) and have been manhandled by the Angels in head-to-head competition this season (Anaheim won 8 of the 9 meetings between the two clubs), but most of the time, regular-season performance means very little come playoff time.

The Red Sox have a core group of veterans with postseason experience and have showed in posteasons past (see also: 2004, 2007) that they can win big games away from Fenway in October – including against the Angels four years ago. I’m optimistic that recent history is about to repeat itself.

Boston’s 2008 squad features October stud Josh Beckett as the probable Game 1 starter, followed by Jon Lester and Daisuke Matsuzaka, if not necessarily in that order, in Games 2 and 3. It’s an impressive trio that should hold a scrappy, but not overpowering, Anaheim offense at bay.

Boston’s own lineup isn’t as potent if J.D. Drew and Mike Lowell aren’t healthy, but guys like Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youikilis, and David “Big Papi” Ortiz should all produce.

In short, Boston certainly has the talent and poise to repeat as World Series champs. How the games actually play out, of course, is sometimes another matter. It’s all part of the reason I’ll be glued to the action throughout October.

Red Sox fans and social media
There is a community component here, of course.

With a little boost from social media, I’ve made connections to dozens of fellow Red Sox fans that only serves to ratchet up my passion for the team by several notches.

Take Twitter, for example. In my own very unscientific research over the past two seasons, I’ve found that Red Sox fans are the most vocal baseball fan group on Twitter. There was even a feature about our in-game Twittering on NPR back in April.

Check out the #RedSox hashtag action during a playoff game, and you’ll see our zeal: dozens of 140-character missives and barbs commenting on the action.

I’ll also be contributing to a newly launched Big Papelpon Red Sox Talk Radio podcast with Aaron Strout and friends over the next few weeks, checking in before and after games and giving my take on the playoff proceedings.

So it really doesn’t matter that I’m 1,800 miles from Boston this fall. Thanks to Red Sox community on the Web – and Time Warner cable – I’ll be just as much as part of the October action as ever.

Let’s play ball.

Here's an interesting nugget from Mitch Joel's recent post wrapping up the Shop.org Annual Summit: On customer ratings and reviews site, "a negative review converts more effectively into a sale than a positive review."

At first, this might sound counter-intuitive, but think about it: If you're looking to buy a new book, CD, or gadget (I confess that the Amazon Kindle is on my mind for the coming holiday season) and every piece of feedback is positively glowing, don't you smell a rat and suspect that comment sanitizing is at work? I know I do.

But when customer reviews are balanced, as Mitch notes, you're more likely to trust that feedback site and make a purchase from that site.

The value of negative comments
The same can be said of critical remarks by members in branded communities, too, and it's the primary reason we advise our customers to adopt an inclusive commenting and posting policy.

"Originally, most clients will say, 'No, no, no,'" to that recommendation, says Julia McDonald, LiveWorld's senior manager of moderation services. "But we tell them, 'Those comments are just as important as the positive ones.' It lets [the companies] know what the issues are."

Kristie Wells, the founder and president of the Social Media Club, has a similar take. "It shows a confident company, that they can take a little criticism," Kristie says. "Allowing negative comments to stand could build a level of trust in the customer base that says, 'This company is not trying to sugarcoat everyone.'"

On her own blog, Kristie is guided by her own "no-[expletive] policy." As long as commenters are adding to the discussion at hand and not resorting to personal attacks or harassment in the process, their contributions stay.

The 'Rules of the Road'
As companies launch new communities, we exhort them to post community standards, or "rules of the road," to a page that's easy for members to find and refer back to. Good community standards make clear the kind of content, language, tone that is encouraged and allowed, and what isn't acceptable. They should also note whether comments are moderated before or after they're published (we generally recommend that latter, but every community is different).

Companies that advocate for and then actually embrace a full range of voices -- complimentary and dissenting alike -- are well on their way to building strong communities.

Peter Kim hits on an issue today that I alluded to in a SocialVoice post last week: the real definition of community.

It's troubling -- though not entirely surprising -- to see that word thrown around so carelessly, as if a blog or a message board on its own is a community. It isn't. Without people congregating, connecting, and building relationships around a shared interest on that forum or blog, there is no community -- only an empty room (or a blogger talking to himself).

The distinction here is important -- and it's one that we continue to make in conversations with current and prospective clients.

The social-bookmarking site Delicious is one of my favorite online social tools. Here are some of the ways that I use the application:

• To track trends or current events, including the 2008 presidential election


• To chronicle important social networking/social media developments, such as brands that have Twitter accounts


• To collect links in preparation for a presentation that I'm leading (see my Pod101 tag as an example)


• To follow what's catching the eye of friends and colleagues (Google Reader, Twitter, and FriendFeed help me in this effort, too).

LiveWorld on Delicious
Last week, as we were launching LiveBar^TM, I opened a Delicious account for LiveWorld. In addition to tracking specific mentions of our company online, I also plan to share links to discussions, blog posts, conferences, etc. for the online community/social networking as a whole. A few early examples of posts that I've flagged:

• Connie Bensen offers a plan for community managers to assess their day-to-day performance.


• Dawn Foster provides a list of dos and don'ts for building corporate communities.


• Katharine Taylor tackles the issue of ROI in social media.

Following the LiveWorld bookmarks
If you're an RSS user, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for all of our Delicious bookmarks. Otherwise, visit the LiveWorld Delicious page directly.

Sessions are underway on Wednesday morning here at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City.

If you're attending the event, I'd like to meet you and say hello. Here's where and how you can connect with me -- and my LiveWorld colleagues -- over the next two days.

At LiveWorld booth 1429 on the Expo Floor

Our LiveWorld team (see all of our smiling faces below) will in the booth from 11:00am-6:00pm on Wednesday and 10:00am-5:00pm on Thursday.

My scheduled shifts are 4:00-6:00pm on Wednesday and 1:00-3:00pm on Thursday.



At the Web2Open sessions
Web2Open is an unconference built into the larger Web 2.0 event. Several sessions have been pre-scheduled, while others, in true unconference style, will be created on the fly! I may try my hand at presenting, too.

On Twitter
Follow me from my @BryanPerson account and our company Tweets over at @LiveWorld.

In the hallways
Aren't the best conference conversations the ones that happen in the hallways? I think so. If you see me walking by, grab me and we'll talk.

In addition to turning on our new SocialVoice community today, we’re also launching a product called LiveBar^TM.

Jenna Woodul, chief community officer at LiveWorld (and my boss), offers her take on LiveBar, including its potential to bring a whole new crop of users into community conversations.

And while we’re truly excited to see just how communities will develop around sites using LiveBar, we also know this: true community isn’t about the tools. Instead, community is about people connecting and building relationships around shared interests/goals/values.

LiveBar makes it drop-dead easy for companies to provide gathering points around the compelling content on their sites. But turning those gatherings into genuine communities requires a commitment to the best practices of community management, too: serving as engaging hosts in the discussions, offering fresh content, recognizing and rewarding members for their contributions, welcoming new points of view, etc. We look forward to watching that happen.

Welcome to SocialVoice, LiveWorld’s new social media home on the web.

SocialVoice is the place where we’ll share our views on the comings and goings of the social networking/online community/interactive marketing industry, as well as mix in stories about our personal interests and hobbies (in my case, that could very well mean trying to entertain you with a little Boston Red Sox talk!).

So, let me say hello. I’m Bryan Person, LiveWorld’s new social media evangelist. I’ve been blogging, podcasting, and otherwise jumping into online and face-to-face discussions about social media since 2005, and I’ll be doing plenty more of that right here in the coming weeks and months.

Some of what you can expect on this blog:

• Reporting and insights from events that I attend and speak at


• Interviews with newsmakers and influencers


• Audio and video podcasts


• Case studies and lessons learned from our own customer projects

Along the way, I’ll also be asking for your feedback. When you learn something new here, I encourage you to jump in with a comment. But when I’m all wet, make sure you tell me that, too.

Today, we put SocialVoice into overdrive. Thanks for coming along for the ride.