When Looking For Product Insights, Not All Social Media Are Created Equal

"Location" — the "L" in Forrester's PLOT method for applying social media to product management decision-making — deserves special attention. The landscape of social media is now so broad, the tools so varied, and the creation costs so (relatively) low that useful data can reside anywhere but often is not where you might expect it to be. The challenges of finding valuable product data go beyond simple questions of medium, such as wikis versus blogs, or forums versus social networking. Depending on the type of question, some social media outlets will be good places to look for answers — and others far less useful or reliable.