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Quick Summary: I use data from Forrester Research to compare the social technographics profiles for USA/ Europe with Japan/ Metro China to kick off my series on how the social web is not flat.

Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff have played an important role in increasing our understanding of the social media space over the last year, both through their book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (website) and their Social Technographics Study.

The Forrester Research Social Technographics Study classifies consumers into a ladder with six overlapping levels based on their of participation in social media. The six levels in the Social Technographics Ladder are –

1. Creators, who publish blogs, maintain websites, or upload self-created photos, podcasts or videos on social sites (like Flickr or YouTube).

2. Critics, who post ratings and reviews of products and services on user review sites (like Amazon), comment on someone else’s blogs or contribute to online forums or wikis (like Wikipedia).

3. Collectors, who create metadata that’s shared with the entire community, by aggregating RSS feeds in a feed reader (like Bloglines), by saving or tagging URLs on a social bookmarking service (like del.cio.us), or by voting for websites on a social voting site (like Digg).

4. Joiners, who visit and maintain profiles on social networking sites (like MySpace or Facebook).

5. Spectators, who read blogs, online forums and customer ratings/ reviews, listen to podcasts and watch peer-generated video.

6. Inactives, who do not participate at all in social media activities.

Basically, Creators create the user generated content, Critics and Collectors help disseminate it and Spectators consume it. Joiners are a special species, specific to social networking sites, who play all the other four roles in that context.

The core idea is that, instead of starting from a list of social media tools, companies should start with their target audience, and develop their social media strategy based on the social technographics profile of their audience.

Now Forrester has made their finding available in a nifty free Social Technographics Profile Tool. The data is based on Forrester Research Technographics surveys conducted with more than 40,000 respondents in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific in Q1/ Q2 2007. It’s a useful tool that allows you to split the data by age, gender and geography, and I’m sure that I’ll return to it frequently over the next few months.

In this post, however, I will focus on the geographical split and compare the social technographics profiles for USA/ Europe with Japan/ Metro China to kick off my series on how the social web is not flat.

First, only one fourth of the consumers in Japan/ Metro China are Inactives, compared to more than half the consumers in USA/ Europe. If Forrester’s claim that about three-fourth of all consumers in Japan/ Metro China engage with social media in some form or the other is indeed true, then the social media opportunity in Asia Pacific is much bigger than I expected it to be.

Second, and even more importantly, more than one third of the consumers in Metro China are Creators, compared to about one fifth of the consumers in Japan and USA and one tenth of the consumers in Europe. If you add to it the high percentage of Critics and Collectors in Metro China, it’s obvious that the social media scene in Metro China is much more vibrant than Japan or USA, and especially Europe.

Third, even in the specific context of social networking sites, almost one third of the consumers in Metro China are Joiners, compared to almost one fourth in Japan and USA and one eighth in Europe, pointing to a huge potential for social networking sites in the Asia Pacific.

I must point out here that the data has some limitations. The sample sizes for Japan and Metro China are limited, so that splits by age and gender are not possible, but they should be realistic at overall levels. Then, to compare Metro China to Europe isn’t really fair, as we are comparing a few cities to a continent. Finally, the six levels are overlapping and it will be interesting to look at the overlaps between the different levels in each geography to see, for instance, how many consumers in Metro China are either Creators or Critics or Collectors. Still, given China’s huge population, even Metro China must add up to a sizable segment.

Finally, I wish that this data was also available for India, or at least Metro India. However, given the low penetration of internet, even in Metro India, I suspect that the Creators will be in low single digits, Critics/ Collectors in high single digits, and Joiners/ Spectators in low double digits. What do you think?

• Everyone is a Creators Now! Really? (0)
• The Social Web is Not Flat (Part 2): The Social Technographics Profile of Metro India (7)
• The World is Not Flat and Neither is the Social Web (7)
• Six Levels of Web 2.0 Participation (0)
• Blogworks Report: An Overview of Internet, Blog & Social Media Environment in India (1)