Forrester’s Social Technographics® classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation

The six participant types are the following:

• Creators – responsible for generating content on the web. They blog, tweet and create YouTube videos
• Critics – respond to what others post. They review products and services.
• Collectors – organizers of content for themselves and others. They might use sites like digg.com, RSS, tags, etc.
• Joiners – have profiles on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
• Spectators – don’t actively participate in the conversation but read blogs. Listen to podcasts. Read product reviews.
• Inactives – ignore it all! online interaction just isn’t their thing.

These profiles are important to note to make sure your message is getting heard. If the clients I wanted to serve for example didn’t actively use Facebook then setting up a Facebook fan page would not be a good strategy for my business. An email newsletter would probably be better to get my message to the right people.

Check out the tool below to create a consumer profile and to see if your strategy aligns with the research.

The categories they recognize that people are making great strides in are

• Nanotechnology
• Internet
• Biotechnology
• Energy
• Software
• Hardware
• Telecom

The Innovator of the Year is Kevin Fu, 33 whose work focuses on computer security. He is an assistant professor of computer science and a software engineer. His work is primarily focused on RFID - which is becoming increasing common in everything from credit cards to electronic keys.

A couple of the projects that stood out for me were:

Andrea Thomaz – an assistant professor of interactive computing, 33: She’s working on robots that learn the way people do. Her robot Simon is on the cover of Technology Review. Robots have potential to help in lots of areas like helping people with disabilities, in hospitals and the elderly.

Jeffrey Bigham – assistant professor in computer science, 28: He working on a free service Web­Anywhere to help blind people navigate the web.

José Gómez-Márquez, 32 – won the Humanitarian of the Year Award. His work is focused on creating medical devices for poor countries.

This year’s innovators are definitely working on some very fascinating projects. I’m amazed at some of the things people are working on. I can’t wait to hear more about these projects or read next year’s issue of Technology Review.