by Charlene Li I was once asked what was the best career advice I ever received - and it was to plan for job obsolescence every 18 months , because research showed that people typically master a job in that time period and fall into a routine. It's a testament to Forrester that I've been happily employed at the company for over nine years )that's 36 Internet years or 63 dog years(. I have been continually challenged, from tackling new coverage areas,

By Charlene Li Thanks to the generosity of our publisher, Harvard Business Press , we have 100 copies of " Groundswell " to give away to the first 100 bloggers who respond, first come first served. It doesn't matter what kind of blog you write - if you think your audience would be interested in a review, we'd like to send you a copy. In the end, it's up to you to decide if you'd like to write a review - no strings attached. To get a copy,

By Charlene Li I had the opportunity to sit down with Clark Kokich, the CEO of Avenue A |Razorfish last week at AARF's Client Summit in New York City. One of the things we discussed was AARF's great use of social technologies within the organization - in fact, it's a featured case study within the Groundswell book , in the chapter entitled "The groundswell inside your company". One of the things Clark does is to blog regularly - but internally to his employees.

by Charlene Li Josh and I will be giving a series of four teleconferences over the next few weeks, examining various topics discussed in the book. These are deeper dives into the topics, and will also feature plenty of time for questions and discussions. )Please note that these Webinars are part of Forrester's client offerings, so you will need to be a client to attend or pay a fee.

by Charlene Li Google announced that it would be releasing Google Friend Connect this evening )link won't work until Monday evening.( The idea behind Friend Connect is to give Web masters the tools to easily add social features to their sites. This is what Google announced: "With Google Friend Connect )see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening's Campfire One(,

by Charlene Li Facebook just announced " Facebook Connect ", which they position as the natural evolution of Facebook as an open platform, which started from their initial API in 2006 and expanded with Facebook Platform in May 2007. This is how they describe Facebook Connect: "Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to "connect" their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site.

by Charlene Li Josh and I will be doing a free webinar "G roundswell: A Framework For Using Web 2.0 For Business Advantage" on Friday, May 9th at 8am PT / 11am ET / 5pm CET. We'll be reviewing the core ideas laid out in our "Groundswell" book, going through the frameworks and strategies needed to approach and thrive in the groundswell. We hope you can join us - and invite your colleagues if you think they would benefit!

by Charlene Li There was an audible collective sigh of relief that the Microsoft-Yahoo! acquisition soap opera was finally at an end. For three months, the tech world has been paralyzed by the prospect of "Microhoo", believing that the deal was inevitable. Sanity prevailed on Saturday, as the two giants couldn't come to an agreement on price and Microsoft declined to pursue a hostile bid that could have proven ruinous to both companies.

by Charlene Li Yahoo! unveiled Yahoo! Open at O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo today. In a nutshell, Yahoo! is doing the following: 1. Rewiring Yahoo!. They are making it possible to create applications that can be shown throughout all of Yahoo!. That means search, mail, front page - everything. 2. Open Yahoo! to developers like never before. Third party developers will be able to write applications that appear throughout Yahoo!.

By Charlene Li Josh and I will be at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, with the hope of meeting as many of you as possible! Below is our general schedule, and in between sessions we'll be roaming the halls and show floor. You can track our whereabouts via our Twitter feeds ) Charlene and Josh's feeds, respectively(. And if you have a copy of the book , we'll be happy to sign it )it will be on sale on the Expo floor(. Wednesday, April 23rd 9:40am-10:20am, Conference Session,

by Charlene Li In an effort to listen to our readers and to improve this blog, we've created a survey to get feedback on this blog, as well as several other Forrester blogs ) Forrester's Marketing Blog , Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang , and Being Peter Kim (. We'd like to get your honest feedback with the survey, and it will take a few minutes of your time. We'll publish the results here, so that you can learn about your fellow readers and also connect via comments.

By Charlene Li Kudos to O'Reilly for organizing a women's networking event during the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo. I'm going to be attending the event )details below( and am really looking forward to it. There's a tremendous need for this - I attend and speak at many technology events, and while our numbers are growing, it's still uncommon enough that I celebrate each woman speaker on stage or on a panel. In fact,

by Charlene Li I'm often asked if Twitter is important or not, and while I'm not a major booster, I fall on the side that it's an idea and technology to watch closely. A conversation with a colleague yesterday sparked me to write this post, which has been rattling around in my brain for a while. It shows how Twitter connects people in new ways previously not possible. Twitter is somewhat of a new thing for me - I'm what is described as a "binge twitter-er",

by Charlene Li In my work, I often find that companies eager to create a social strategy often struggle with how to get started. One of the key recommendations we have in the book is to find the spark, champion, and evangelist within the company - the person who is most passionate about forming a relationship with your audience, be it customers or employees. You probably already know who this person is within your organization.

by Charlene Li Today I tried out Starbucks' new customer feedback and idea generation site at mystarbucksidea.com , which is powered by Salesforce Idea )it's the same product that's behind Salesforce's own Idea Exchange and Dell's Ideastorm (. Josh and I feature these two sites in our Groundswell book , as an example of how a company can execute an "embracing" objective. On these sites, people like you and me can "share" an idea. Then other people can "vote" for them,

by Charlene LI This time, it's my turn to trek to the East Coast. I'm going to be in New York City Monday, March 31st along with Josh Bernoff and we'd love to meet other bloggers. The goal is the same as our San Francisco blogger meet up: to have a stimulating discussion around any topic that intrigues us - in other words, all things social. No pitching allowed! In the spirit of community blogger dinners,

by Charlene Li Josh is making his way to the West coast so we're going to have an informal, no-host blogger dinner on Tuesday, March 25th in San Francisco. Also joining us will be Jeremiah Owyang ) bio, blog (. The goal: to have a stimulating discussion around any topic that intrigues us - in other words, all things social. No pitching allowed! It's pretty normal at blogger dinners that everyone pay their own way, and in the spirit of community blogger dinners,

AOL announced that it would buy social networking site Bebo for $850 million. I have several points of view on what it means, and I've summarized some of the key ones below. Future direction of social networks. In many ways, I think this deal represents how social networks will develop in the future . That's because as a stand-alone social network, Bebo had no chance of competing against big boys like MySpace and Facebook.

by Charlene Li On Monday, I gave the kick off speech for the Graphing Social Patterns West conference on the topic, "The Future Of Social Networks" ) slides are available on SlideShare , summaries available on News.com , ReadWriteWeb , and allfacebook .( Note that this is still ongoing research, so I welcome your comments. I set my time frame for the long term - five, even ten years out. That's because unless we know where we want to end up,

Facebook finally launched Friend List , a way to organize your friends into different categories. This is not to be confused with the Facebook application Top Friends which allows you to identify your best 32 friends ) an activity fraught with consequences, IMHO(. I've been waiting for this feature for a long time, as my Facebook presence is primarily about my public persona. Yet,