Well, my suggestion yesterday that I replace Blurring Boundaries as the working title for my new book, with Customer-Centered Communities was greeted with a universal gaping yawn.
That’s okay. I use this blog and Twitter to get feedback and the feedback was valuable and certainly candid. Better here and now than when there’s a book on a store shelf being ignored for it’s lame title.
In response I came up with a title that got me excited–the first such title that is not already in use and had a URL open.
The new working title is [drum role and envelope please]:
USERVILLE
How Big Software uses Online Communities to get closer to customers.
There are many reasons I like this title. The book is essentially about how IBM, Intuit, Microsoft and SAP are using online communities to get closer with partners and customers. In so doing they are achieving a new sustainable and scalable business value for all parties concerned.
Each of these big software companies discovered these communities work best when they put their customers at at the center of these communities. This may seem to go against conventional wisdom. After all, these four enterprises have invested human resources plus the cost of developing, hosting and managing these communities.
Why shouldn’t the enterprise who foots the bill be at the center? Well, it turns out that there is much greater business value for all parties when the customer is at the center. Ray Wang, a partner at Altimeter Group, estimates that SAP’s ecosystem and partner group has a market value of about $90 billion, for SAP and it’s corporate customers. He emphasized that SAP’s network of communities is the heart of the ecosystem.
Enterprise communities are about the users. When users are put at the center, then they make sense. They answer the tough and nagging Jerry Maguire challenge to social media: “show me the money!” For large and medium-size communities the money is in the social network and it is sustainable and scalable.
Userville, also continues explaining the concept of lethal generosity, which I introduced in my last book, Twitterville. It’s the argument that the companies who are the most generous to their customers will prevail over competitors; that loyalty is strengthened by serving the customers interests and ultimately so is enterprise revenue.
Of course, I like the title because there is continuity to it, with my previous book.
But there is yet another, more subtle reason that I like the title. Dave Winer, is the pioneer who gave us blogging as we know it and RSS subscriptions that catapulted the popularity of blogs. At the time he was head of an innovative software development company called Userland.
It was there that one of his employees learned about blogging and would have a great influence on my thinking of the subject. His name is Robert Scoble.
For me that final reference ties a few pieces together very nicely.
{ 6 comments }
Excited about the new book! And looks like I’ll have time to get through Twitterville in time. :) I just started it the other day and really like it so far!
Erika, [Heh] Ypou can read Twitterville very, very slowly if you wish.
That title is superior to your previous two suggestions, but is perhaps not quite there yet. I think that creating continuity between your family of book titles is best thought of as a side-benefit, as long as it does not become forced. (Userville and Twitterville seem somewhat complementary to me, but I would not be rushing out to buy ‘Locationville’ or ‘Trustville’ and their siblings in the future…) That said, in line with the comments above, I would be reluctant to draw a link between the two books if it suggests more of an alignment of their content than is the case.
I do not plan to create a “ville series.” It is not the book’s primary point, but the same dynamic exists in Twitterville as exists in enterprise communities that I am looking at here. The concept of Global Neighborhoods will be revisited and expanded, as will the lethal generosity argument.
Mostly, I’m picking Userville for the reasons I laid out in this post. It seems accurate to me. Uservilles is probably even more accurate but somehow appeals less to me.
Agree with Isao, this book’s topic seems to be kind of irrelevant with previous book.
VILLE reminds me a new or small ecosystem ,which is perfect for the twitter community
, if as far as big company like IBM involved in,and even more ,there is more than one VILLEs involved in (I guess so )
“USERVILLEs” is my suggestion, to make a slicely change , it will implie that big company should be in more VILLEs to get closer to customers…
Userville reminds me of Smallville and Userland reminds me of Zombieland. I bet the latter is way much cooler, but probably the former sounds more like user-generated communities which matches the theme of the upcoming book.
I still find it hard to connect the dots between “big companies” and “user-centered communities,” which are at odds in the traditional context, by just reading the title. Maybe the subtitle can make the contrast/connection more vivid?
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