Event Listening: A Way to Understand Where You’ve Been, Where You Are, and Where You’re Going

One reason why people post, comment, review or converse online is because they are responding to – or motivated by – events that occur. Events can be such things as new ideas, product introductions, protests, legislation, military action, or natural disaster. Listening to events is key to understanding markets and consumers, and gives us a leg up on forecasting change.

Events Drive Change

Although we often experience change as something recent and suddenly upon us, change unfolds over time and in a predictable sequence. It doesn’t merely “hit us” like a rogue wave, but often builds gradually. Sequencing events over time – a historical view, allows us to recognize patterns of change clearly.

The Sequence of Change

Keeping it simple, historical analyses show that there are four stages of change, each one characterized by certain types of events. The three stages are:

1. Emergence: characterized by the introduction of new ideas or leading events. Often these are isolated and may appear in fragmented places and over a period of time. Think of a piece of original research in a scholarly publication, or a story about a new practice, belief or behavior in an esoteric one.

2. Development: Eventually experts, authorities and commentators pick up these ideas and begin to give them shape and definition. A new line of cutting-edge research or inquiry originates and eventually gets looked at by people who connect the dots. Think of Malcolm Gladwell’s pieces in the New Yorker – they move the research he describes out of the academy and into broader discussion. In addition to ideas, this is the phase when prototypes and early products are introduced.

3. Disposition or Resolution: This stage brings change to a type of closure, not a true end, as new events may kickstart the process all over again. Not all change processes get resolved, they may be stuck or inconclusive. On the business side, markets that were characterized by uncertainty or many new products, for example, settle down. A classic case of business resolution happened in the PC market. Prior to IBM’s introduction of its first personal computer, the market was torn between two different operating systems and architecture for a number of years. Following the IBM PC’s introduction in 1981, MS-DOS became the de facto standard and computer designs stabilized around Intel chips. IBM-compatibility became the standard on which all others were evaluated. On the regulatory and legislative front, politicians may take notice of events and recognize the need for action. Thus starts an often contentious and adversarial process to encourage or suppress the proposed remedies and laws.

Understanding the Sequence of Change Provides Valuable Strategic Insight and Opportunities

Now that you know the sequence of change and the types of events that characterize them, you also know that the progression can not alter: Resolution must occur after Development, and that must follow Emergence. This allows us to understand where we are, how we got here, and what is likely to come next: we have a basis for forecasting with a degree of precision and not from the hip.

Placing our situation in one of the stages, opens a strategic vista.

Emergence: This period gives us the longest time horizon for planning our actions.

Development: Here we have an intermediate time frame for considering options, testing, introducing and evaluating. This is a period of market shaping, setting expectations, establishing competitive positions and so on.

Resolution: This stage gives us the shortest time horizon, it is primarily tactical and response-based with focus on minimizing impacts or choosing among more limited options.

Google Timeline Was Ideal for Event Listening and Historical Analysis

Timeline’s display of results arrayed events over time and went far back. One analysis I did on the “economic divide” – a root cause of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) – went back to 1901, to the McKinley assassination. Until then I only knew of McKinley as one of four murdered Presidents, but this told me the reason: an anarchist killed McKinley over the economic divide at the time in America. Eye-opening. The build up to OWS was over a century in the making.

Thanks to Google’s Timeline search tool, I plotted search volumes over time, and could then see how results for “economic divide” started mounting in the 1970s, and kept building year over year, decade over decade. Google allowed you to narrow the results down by clicking on a date range. A quick look at the results enabled me to pick out the events and lay them out. In a matter of seconds, I had a historical timeline that effortlessly arrayed events over time, and then I assigned events to the stages of change.

Apparently, not enough people utilized Google’s Timeline historical search. It was retired without any notice – it just disappeared one day. Posters on Google’s web search help forum explained Timeline’s value and the calmly and persuasively expressed their disappointment in its disappearance. Google’s community manager pointed out that several other search tools existed that provided some of the features, but the writers found that argument entirely unconvincing. I was one of them.

Tablet Computer Example

Here’s an example of the tablet computer market, that goes back not a couple of years, but 40. I’ve taken a few illustrative events to show the sequence.

(click to enlarge)

As you can see, the tablet marketplace started with an idea promoted by a XEROX PARC researcher named Alan Kay in 1971, a prototype followed some years later. Those types of events characterize Emergence.

From 1975-2010, a 3.5 decade span, the market started Developing – prototypes were introduced, alliances and joint ventures announced, products came out, and murmurings of a tablet from Apple started in 2001. This is a classic example of a market with potential, but is unsettled.

Resolution started in 2010, when Apple introduced the iPad. That product sent a clear and loud signal to the manufacturers and marketers. Now they had something to support or compete against, but the uncertainty was gone. With its huge success, companies could understand the features and functions that people desired, enjoyed or had trouble with, that provided clues for future market developments.

Think About What You Would Have Done

If you had the clarity this timeline provided five years ago, what would you have thought, what events would you have expected, and what would you have done if you were Apple or a different company?

Become an “Event Listener”

Without Google Timeline, event listening got a lot harder for us because, staying within the Google family, it means we have to use some other Google tools and good old-fashioned historical analysis – time-consuming at a minimum.

Whatever tools you use, such as the many social media monitoring offerings, develop a strategy for going back in time, as far as you can. Listening to events, your work will benefit, and you’ll gain a sense of confidence because you know where you are and have good ideas of what lies ahead. You’ll clearly see how your market is unfolding and better understand what your customers and prospects are saying, and why.

And tell Google to bring back the Timeline!

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