Wanted: Adventurous and Creative Clients. Must Be Willing To Experiment with New Research Tools.

Here’s a good working definition of Market Research:

An objective approach to finding solutions to problems in marketing. Involves qualitative and quantitative research and analysis of the findings to help marketers’ best target and reach their audiences.

For me, the operative phrases are finding solutions to problems and reach their audiences.Thanks to the emergence of Social Media, problems and solutions are the pulsebeat of our non-stop global online conversations. From the tell-it-like-it-is Power Mom bloggers to the 200 million+ Facebook members to the exploding Twitterverse, we’re chattering about everything from politics to products to people. As of December 2008, more than one billion of the world’s population is now on the Internet. Why on earth would market researchers resist these irresistible methodologies?

Here are my favorite new market research tools — I dare you, O Clients, to (hire me) to give these a try:

Twitter

Quick, easy and budget-friendly, Twitter is a goldmine of fresh consumer insights. It’s a global stream-of-consciousness on every topic imaginable. Plus, all kinds of tools and third-party services are available to convert raw data into actionable information including trends and hot topics.

Trendrr is my favorite for trend tracking and comparison. Its Twitter Search graphs are invaluable – virtually real-time, they provide graphing of keyword mentions by the hour.

Tweetmeme: Here’s how to find the most popular links on Twitter.

For your iPhone: Twitter Trend: This free app provides a tag cloud for looking at emerging trends on Twitter.

Twithority is an easy way to have the most recent Twitter trends tweeted to you. The links provide a view of Twitter trends based on both time and authority.

Hashtags.orgIf you were checking this site right now, you’d know that #liesboystell and #liesgirlstell are the numbers one and two hashtags of the moment.

Twist: Twist is a trip. Twist provides a graphical interface for trends and keywords on Twitter.

Facebook: While most of us are waiting for Facebook to do some serious monetizing via its growing datamine, in the meantime, there’s Facebook Lexicon. Lexicon aggregates and analyzes millions of Facebook Wall posts every day to provide a searchable database of trends over time. Users can query a single word or two-word combinations and compare as many as five strings per query. The results display a chart plotting the frequency with which the words are being discussed each day. All this is done automatically with no person reading individual Wall posts and all information aggregated anonymously to protect your privacy.

Brand Community Platforms Every brand researcher in existence has to be drooling over this hot new opportunity for brand-love: BzzAgents new Bzzscapes. Now brand passionistas can erect online altars to their favorites, then watch as fellow fans join in, adding their own content to the social media mix. Will the overzealous (companies included) try to game the system? How organic and authentic can these sites be?

Private Online Communities: From Ning to Communispace, building your own private online community is easier than ever and can be valuable low-risk market research tool. These ‘walled gardens’ are a safe place to engage your with best opt-in customers, test ideas, evaluate user experience and experiment with new initiatives.

Projective Expression/Journaling Platforms
Glogsterbrings graphic blogging to the masses, and just happens to be a promising online ‘projective expression’ tool, similar to the popular Focus Group technique: Collaging. The service is focused on letting people create “posters” of various bits of premade and user-generated content. Using the right tools, Glogster users can create colorful stuff with a distinct visual style — one that could be used to represent “My Customer Service Experience with Yahoo” or “If I Could Invent My Own Perfect Hair Color It Would Be …”

Glogster offers private .edu accounts, which could be used for corporate market research.

Another site, Scrapblog, lets users create personalized scrapbooks with photos, video and thousands of creative elements, and also lets them print the scrapblogs. They’ve added top scrapbooking designers with high-quality content that’s available to purchase. The problem with this site is the user is locked into Scrapblog’s formatting — which does not even provide a ‘blank’ scrapbook for true customization.

A cool new site currently in beta, Plumkeeper, is described as ‘Family Journaling Made Easy’. This promising technology leverages everything consumers already do online –including emailed stories and photos, funny text messages, mobile photos, Facebook, Twitter and more. This makes for uber-authentic market research indeed– as it plucks from existing attitudes and behaviors in all their spontaneous authenticity. If I had a Mom or family-oriented product, I’d tap right into Plumkeeper for fresh and juicy insights.

Say Goodbye to Bill Gates — and Windows XP.

Bill Gates has left the building.

And soon, Windows XP, the last operating system anybody (sorta) liked and actually wanted to use, will go poof as well. As of today, Microsoft is scheduled to stop selling XP to retailers and major computer makers, despite fervent protests from frustrated users who want nothing to do with XP’s successor, Vista. While there are still a few ways to get an XP loaded machine — including limited sales via smaller shops till January 2009 –all but the most resourceful will be forced to switch to the once heavily-hawked Vista.

This is why a group of PC users created a “Save XP” petition which is posted on InfoWorld, now reportedly with more than 210, 563 signatures–including mine. Signers want Microsoft to keep selling XP until the next operating system, Windows 7, is available.

Eric Knorr of InfoWorld pens an impassioned plea: We began this campaign because our readers compelled us to do so. Those of us who have been in the industry for a long time have never seen anything like the negative reaction to Windows Vista. Our readers have frequently voiced their frustrations about software incompatibilities, arbitrary UI changes, expanded hardware requirements, and altered security business rules. On the other hand, we’ve also heard from many users who are clearly satisfied with Vista.

Our point from the beginning has been that Microsoft customers should have a choice: For a reasonable period, those who want to license Windows XP should be able to continue to do so just as easily as they can license Windows Vista.

I will add my impassioned plea to Eric’s. As a Microsoft market research vendor, Customer Experience pro and frequent tech focus group moderator for the company and others in the industry, I have over the past ten years listened to hundreds of opinions, stories, criticisms and raves on the subject of Microsoft. I’ve worked with developers, consumers, enterprise, small business, IT, evangelists, you-name-it. My training is all about sifting through reams of feedback, crystallizing what has been expressed and spinning it into actionable form. In this case, seldom has there been such consensus: Vista sucks.

The lone (sorta) good news coming from Redmond? At least they will be providing technical support for XP through 2009.