Launch Exclusive: Bzzers Unites Word Of Mouth With Social Networking

Bzzers is a brand new buzz marketing social network, officially launching on Monday, that’s set to take the Italian marketing world by storm. (Update: After publishing the post, blognation learned that Bzzers first client, announced today, is Nokia. Complimenti!)

Headed up by Francesco D’Orazio, the social network’s aim is to project buzz marketing into the web 2.0 world, combining the strength of word of mouth marketing (WOM) with a powerful social network. It is the first platform that brings together the typical vertical buzz marketing agency structure with the horizontal capabilities of social networking, adding the community aspect.

Bypassing the private beta phase, Bzzers is heading straight for public beta going live on Monday; “we had such a good response from professionals and brands that we needed to launch as soon as possible so we decided to go public and conduct the testing in public.”

D’Orazio is developing Bzzers with an Italian company called Extendi based in Florence, who already counts Professional On The Web and FeedMyApp among their recent projects: “I spotted them on the web last year, they had a really interesting profile. They were one of the few Italian web agencies specialised in web2.0 apps.”

The idea behind Bzzers came from D’Orazio’s experiences working with other buzz marketing platforms; “when I was doing my Ph.D. on immersive communication at the Mcluhan Program in culture and technology in Canada in 2005, I became interested in word of mouth marketing I got involved in platforms such as BzzAgent and BzzParadise but felt something was missing there.”

Compared to sites like BzzAgent, for example, Bzzers adds the community aspect and social networking functionalities into the powerful mix. Their aim for Bzzers is “to make it grow as a kind of last.fm for brands and consumption habits”.

D’Orazio continues: “What I think was missing was a proper social network structure to empower the agency structure, which is fairly vertical without the vital horizontal connections. Developing horizontal activities between a community will assist in developing a richer expression of the self vital for brand feedback. So we start developing a hybrid platform, and this first release will be followed to other three rounds of development to increase the range and the scope of social networking activities.”

The social network, built in house with Ruby on Rails, will allow word of mouth marketeers to explore other profiles and interact, create a buzz team and find out about relevant connections with people who have the same interests. This will allow profiles to be matched and real neighbourhood systems to be constructed.

Backgrounder on buzz marketing
Buzz marketing revolves around the building of a community of people interested in different topics, with totally different profiles. What links all them together is a shared love of word of mouth: people who enjoy being the first to find out news from their favourite brands and who like to try it out before it goes to market. The early adopters.

D’Orazio explains: “We as an agency propose to the relevant members of the community to join a word of mouth campaign about a brand. We only propose it to the people who have already told us they’re interested in a particular brand, so we know that word of mouth is as honest as possible.”

The people who get invited participate voluntarily to the campaign and decide if they want to join in, so the agency sends them the product to try and experience it for free and before it goes to market. This is where an effective social networking tool comes in and it will be interesting to track the growth of the Bzzers community as brands start to embrace this concept. Connecting the community of early adopters through a social network like Buzzers should have enormous appeal for marketing departments in any sector.

Bzzers will launch officially on Monday, until then visitors to the site can take part in a brand wars game to find out how a brand’s strength compares with that of their counterparts.

Company Index: Bzzers