IWOM Glossary

Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) was coined by CIC several years ago and first defined publicly in 2007. Below is an IWOM glossary of key terms which we first published in 2007.

WOM: Abbreviation of "word of mouth". Passing of information by verbal means, especially recommendations, but also general information, in an informal, person-to-person manner, rather than by mass media, advertising, organized publication, or traditional marketing. Word of mouth is typically considered as spoken communication, although web dialogue, such as blogs, BBS and emails are often now included in the definition.

IWOM: Abbreviation of "Internet Word of Mouth". It stands for text and multimedia content related to companies, products or services shared by netizens, including brands and consumers, via online community platforms such as BBS (online message boards), blogs and video sites.

Buzz: Online discussion via online channels. The word originates from the "sound" of lots of people talking (also, the sound that a bee makes).

Efluencer: All the consumers who are discussing brands, products or services by posting content via online platforms like BBS, Blog and Video Sharing sites.

Online Opinion Leader: The most active efluencers who create, influence and participate.

E-community: E-community contains three key elements: platform, topics and members. Platforms indicate the communicating platforms such as BBS, comments, blog, Wikipedia, Instant Messaging and so on. Community topics are the messages which can meet the special needs of the community members or raise their common interests so as to join the community activities. Community members are those who gather and live in the community. All these elements form the real culture and environment of E-community.

L-K-P^TM: It stands for Listen-Know-Participate framework. It is the model that CIC offers to clients while doing IWOM research. "Listen" means listening to consumers' feedback and advice. "Know" means understanding the communities and cultures. "Participate" means to participate in consumers online conversation.

Post:The messages posted on online social media, including topic post and reply post.

Conversation:A conversation is a set of posts talking about one topic, it usually has one "Topic Post" and a couple of  "Reply Post".

Passion: refers to the Posting Rate(PR), or average number of posts (including topic posts and reply posts) per post, for each selected category.

Creativity: refers to the Topic Creation Factor(TCF) or the ratio between new conversations and all conversations for each selected category. Higher values typically indicate users are actively generating new topics around this specific category.

Influence:The other posters' replies to all the conversations initiated by the efluencer.

Network size:The other posters who have replied the conversations initiated by the efluencer.