ABSTRACT
One way to get a sense of the real dynamics that characterize communication on the Internet is to spend a little time listening in on it. Listening in on Internet ‘chatter’ is something that this book will have a lot to say about but for now let me just quickly sketch a scenario for you. Ben Hedrington has created a Google App Engine project called ‘spy’ (available at spy.appspot. com) which allows a user to input a search term, say ‘Nike’, and then watch as the engine scrapes every use of that term, pretty much real time, from a number of the most popular social networking sites around the world. So, the results are a continuously streaming set of reports from users of Twitter, FriendFeed, and anyone who produces or comments on content with an RSS feed (which would include virtually all blogs on the net) who happens to be talking about Nike while you are sitting there at your computer. The talk that you can see is, naturally, international. Some of it clearly emanates from one aspect or another of Nike’s corporate communication effort and some it is produced by retail outlets with RSS feeds from their websites but much of it represents informal chat between friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Listening in on these short snippets of Nike-focused chat, one hears people complaining about their Nike + equipment not working properly, others stating how much they use the same equipment and how it has kept them running through the winter, while others remind each other of the Nike sponsored run in their area on the weekend, some compare other products to Nike’s while others use Nike as a metaphor for a variety of characteristics. Hedrington’s ‘spy’ application gives us an instant window onto the current state of Nike’s brand identity and value-it can show us how, right now, a brand fi ts into the normal social life and rhetorical framework of people who live a signifi cant portion of their life online. It would appear to be an excellent way to monitor and gauge the ‘buzz’ around a product, brand, or idea. Imagine that you were a marketing consultant working for Nike-surely such an application would provide you with a perfect way of constructing instantaneous communication audits for your client and then measuring the effectiveness of any marcom efforts you implement? You are literally eavesdropping on your stakeholders . . .
