I’m halfway through Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s Forrester backed study on social technologies “Groundswell“. Their definition of groundswell:

A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

100 pages in there hasn’t been anything earth shattering in terms of unexpected insight, though the case studies and different approaches of different industry are worth reading. What is great is the raw data that Li and Bernoff have access to and expose.

From a European perspective some of this data is more than a little troubling. Some hard facts:

Percentage of online consumers using RSS in 2007:

• US: 8%
• UK: 3%
• France: 5%
• Germay: 4%

And some figures on blog and UGC usage (US – UK):

• Read blogs: 25% – 10%
• Comment on blogs: 14% – 4%
• Write a blog: 11% – 3%
• Upload UGC video: 8% – 4%

Yet the percentage of users visiting social networking sites is much more evenly balanced with the US at 25% and the UK at 21%.

Again usage rates differ significantly when it comes to participation in discussion forums and postings ratings and reviews:

• Participate in discussion forums: 18% – 12%
• Read ratings and reviews: 25% – 20%
• Post ratings and reviews: 11% – 5%

And again when various social media roles are looked at the level of engagement of UK audiences are roughly half that of US audiences. Why is this? In some markets lack of broadband is cited as a reason, but it doesn’t take a 2 meg connection to use Google Reader. Similarly, engaging in review cites such as CNet isn’t a high bandwidth task.

Is there then sociological reasons at play? Are Brits simply less inclined to both complain and applaud products and services online? Are they less willing to experiment with new media and plaster the results all over Flickr and YouTube? It would appear so but keepfakingit isn’t so sure why.

Li and Bernoff ( or maybe I’ll call them Charlene and Josh, this is after all social media) point to the reasons for participation in groundswell technologies. Going through these let’s see if there are any pointers to this great Atlantic divide. So, we participate to:

1. Keep up friendships (Facebook etc.)
2. Make new friends, lovers, one night stands (Facebook etc. again)
3. Succumb to pressure from existing friends
4. Paying it forward (you use a review site so feel eventually obliged to submit your own review)
5. The altruistic impulse
6. The prurient impulse (Showing off is fun)
7. The creative impulse (UGC etc.)
8. The validation impulse (we all want to be assured of our place in the world, the rationale behind many blogs)
9. The affinity impulse (Big use case for sports fans).

Nothing in the above jumps out at me as the reason behind this US/UK drift. Let me know your thoughts.