Gartner Joins the Conversation I'm going to preface this post by saying that I think Gartner is an extremely smart company. They consistently put out great research, they hold world class conferences and their brand name is unparalleled in the analyst/technology space. With all that said, up until recently, Gartner has done a miserable job participating in social media. They didn't blog. They didn't Twitter. They didn't attend non-Gartner conferences (at least not to my knowledge) yet they have an analyst, Nikos Drakos, that covers the space.
So I'm here to tell you that that has all changed. Ironically, the way I found out about Gartner's social media activities was through my friend and Forrester Analyst, Jeremiah Owyang's Twitter stream today. Needless to say that I was thrilled to see that Gartner is now on Twitter. Upon checking out Gartner's Twitter account I also learned that some of their analysts are now blogging. It looks like they just got started but I'm hoping that there is more to come.
One of the things that Gartner should be grateful for is that Forrester has been blogging for a while now. Jeremiah was the one that really set the tone when he joined Forrester a little over a year ago. He's made some waves due to his "openess" but many social media folks, like myself, are pulling for Jeremiah, Josh Bernoff and now Nikos Drakos to succeed. Obviously the Gartners and Forresters of the world need to be careful about how much information they give out but these analysts are privy to such much great data, it's been a shame in the past that most of it falls to the floor.
What do you think? Are analysts doing enough to share? Should they be more active in the conversation? As always, your comments are welcome.
Tue, Oct 07 2008
Comments
Jeremiah - thanks for commenting. You do a nice job "serving" your market. Hopefully others will follow your lead! ----- Aaron Strout | @astrout
Thanks Aaron, I believe analysts should serve the market they cover, as a result, the market will give back to the analyst, with information, news, and help research activities.