The much anticipated Forrester Wave Report was released today. Jeremiah Owyang has invested much time in gathering, evaluating & reporting on companies that offer community platforms.

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I appreciate that the focus was on more than just technology. Building a community requires a strategy combined with an integration of resources (including people!).

… applied over 60% of our weighted criteria based on what our clients tell us they want, a solutions partner that delivers strategy, education, services, community management, analytics and support.

Nine companies were chosen for the Wave Report. They are Jive Software, Telligent Systems, KickApps, Pluck, Awareness, Lithium Technologies, Mzinga, LiveWorld & Leverage Software.

Over the past year I’ve gotten to know people from these companies. How? Many of them are providing great resources.

Lithium has some great whitepapers. And Scott Dodds commented on my blog enough times so that I sought him out in person at Defrag & we had a great chat!

Awareness offers great webinars & whitepapers! Check out their archive of webinars . Dave Carter, CTO has been a great friend & mentor. He gave me insight into the vendor’s side of this process. Robin Hopper is another great resource there.

I met Mzinga folks at the Social Media Strategies & DeFrag conferences. I have their book here. And I met Mike Walsh from Leverage at Social Media Strategies conference too. Lawrence Liu of Telligent & I had a great chat at DeFrag! (His intensity reminded me of Jeremiah’s!). And George Dearing, also from Telligent & I have crossed paths online.

And last but certainly not least, I’ve had the good fortune to get to know Bryan Person, Community Evangelist, for Live World. In my opinion every community platform company should have one – so take note guys! Bryan is doing a great job of defining that role.

Tom Humbarger had asked if these companies are – Walking the “Social Media Walk”.? I spent time outlining all of the ways that these companies are contributing to establishing community best practices. I’m a huge proponent of education & many of these companies are contributing to the conversations in addition to participating on social networking sites.

Thanks to these companies for setting the bar for community building & I look forward to your contributions in 2009!

(I’ll let each company link to their resources in the comments & I’ll put them in the post. Thanks!)

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