We at Resource have been educated in the concepts pertaining to The Open Brand for months now. One of the premises in the book is that there are four different types of “iCitizens”, divided based on their motivations behind their online activities. We’d done some internal activities involving self-assigning ourselves to one group or another, and it helped us all to understand the different motivations and how a company could appeal to particular groups. A few weeks ago, I tossed out the idea of surfacing this activity: creating an online survey that would allow users to self-assign into one group or another. Plenty of us have taken the time to figure out “what care bear we are” or “what american accent we have”. This would give us the opportunity to educate people on these different levels of iCitizenry, and perhaps personalize an experience for them, based precisely on the attributes that characterize them as one type or another (potentially offering tools, tips or the types of activities they were attracted to). And, of course, some cool swag (a widget or badge) to share elsewhere.

Today iKeif sent me a link to Groundswell, the new book out by Forrester about “winning in a world transformed by social technologies.” They use the metaphor of a ladder to describe six different levels of user engagement. And lo and behold, there is a tool to profile social computing behaviours.

It seemed this was similar to what I’d suggested, but my basic premise had been that an individual would self-assign by describing his own activities. And of course there was the badge, and the education as to the significance of the assignment.

Hm. Lookie what I found tonight: a quiz to Discover Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile

Just slightly too late :-/