Social Technology and Consumer Research

For anyone interested in other examples of how to use social technology for consumer research- check out Sparta or Revelation services.

Article: Revelation PROJECT v2 provides richer data and new level of customer access for researchers and ease for study participants 
Revelation PROJECT v2 Article
Sparta Social Networks Webiste

The premise is that you recruit participants to be willing to chat about your category space, you build relationships with them through daily interactions (questions, homework assignments, pictures) and capture their feedback through online participant engagement.

In my experience, it works as follows:

• Each participant (paid) gets a facebook-like profile page where they can share information about themselves and get to know the group of participants
• Participants are not directly informed on specific product ideas as this research is best for identifying insights and behaviors during the discovery phase of research
•  Sparta has a facebook-like wall feature where you can see what different participants chat about (some really neat insights
• Revelation has a similar style but you can also dissect the group and talk to people individually or in the large group (side conversations are easier)