Procter & Gamble turned to social media, not soap operas, to really connect to its customers. The Vocalpoint P&G community enlisted 850,000 stay-at-home moms to create new products and new services, such as Dawn Direct Foam.

Barry Libert, a social media visionary and the founder of Shared Insights (now Mzinga), knows how to use technology to harness the power of what he calls the crowd. Mzinga provides software as a service solutions for online communities. It currently manages about 14,000 communities, and services more than one billion monthly page requests from 27 million users in 160 countries worldwide. Libert is currently chairman of the board of Mzinga. He and his co-authors set up a community and enlisted members to contribute to a book called, We are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business. In fact, this is the first book on the subject that actually used an online community, based on a Web 2.0 technology from Mzinga, to help create the book. About 4,000 qualified members joined the online community and helped shape the final product. By using the same social networking tools and techniques that their book covers, Libert and his co-authors could provide practical and unique look at online community building.

He says that building communities isn't all about tools and technologies. "The task requires good facilitation, moderation, and services that go along with them. Remember, people at ebay and amazon make sure their respective communities work. You need a community manager. The same goes for customer communities and employee communities. Mzinga is the online equivalent to the community Sherpa."

In this podcast, Libert talks about the power of communities, the differences between the community and business, and the changes businesses must make if they want to build communities. Now let's join Barry Libert, author and chairman of the board of Mzinga.

Bio
Before founding Shared Insights, Libert was a senior partner at Arthur Andersen and John Hancock. He began his career with McKinsey & Company. He has also co-founded and sold two successful businesses. He graduated from Tufts University and has an MBA from Columbia University.

Resources
FT Press - If We Build It, We Will Come
Safari Books Online - Interview with Barry Libert
One Degree - Interview with Barry Libert

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
AlarmMusic.com Production Music Library for Broadcast, Film, Video & Post Production