How to make e-commerce a social activity
Posted on 26. Feb, 2010 by Achintya in Reviews
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Background: Purchase has for long been considered a social activity and often leverages conversations. Recommendations and reviews by a friend or a third party are often very helpful in making purchase decisions. It is interesting to see how some online shopping and e-commerce platforms have leveraged social web into converting a whole shopping experience into a social activity.
Some of the interesting social features that I came upon can be categorized as below:
At the initial levels of these social engagements are websites having ratings & reviews features where users can review the product databases, rate the products which can be compared by the viewers using comparison engines. Then there are websites having comment sections for conversations regarding the products, other member’s review etc. People can also add products to their ‘wishlists’ so that they can remember and let other see what are they planning to buy next. Amazon makes very good use of these review and rating features for its vast product database.
Social Media Stories Last Week
Posted on 24. Feb, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Media, Reviews, Trends
Social Media News Stories This Past Week
So another week passes by and we bring to you a wrap-up of all the interesting tit-bits fron the Indian social media space.
1) Business Line featued an article by Anjali Prayag and Swetha Kannan on how corporates understand that ‘Social Networking is a serious business’ on 14th Feb. The article states how companies such as IBM and EMC are ‘using employees urge to keep in touch with people to their advantage by also creating their own networking tools, which they believe are useful to businesses’. The article further mentions IBM’s LotusConnections and EMC’s EMC One as social collaboration tools which carry features similar to social networking sites such as blogs, groups, user profiles, wikis, file sharing, photos and forum capabilities that enhance project collaboration for employees.
Comment- While the above trend is increasingly being incorporated amongst corporates, it is still in an exploratory mode in India. Quite a number of Indian firms are still apprehensive and struggling with the concept of social media and perceive social networking as a ‘waste activity’ that slows down the productivity factor of employees. What they fail to understand is that social networking can actually transcend into a tool for honest communication between employees and the firm as well as the employees themselves. Iit is precisely this open communication which sets the foundation for a globally forward firm that will ultimately realize its vision.
New Openings at 2020 Social: Consumer Practice Lead and Build Competency Lead
Posted on 21. Feb, 2010 by gaurav in Announcements
As 2020 Social’s suite of offerings have evolved, the senior team is increasingly getting stretched across our competency areas and practice areas.
So, Dave leads our business-to-consumer practice and the plan competency, Kaushal leads our business-to-business practice and the build competency and Gautam leads our employee and partner practice and the engage competency, while I help out across all three competencies and practices.
My target is to take Dave and myself off this grid so that 2020 Social can function even when we are away, let’s say, for speaking at conferences.
To get there, we will need to fill three key positions over the next three months: the business-to-consumer practice lead, the build competency lead and the engage competency lead.
Last week, we announced openings for the first two positions:
- Consultant (1): Ideally Mumbai, but also Delhi or Bangalore
Role: Develop the digital marketing strategy and define the business case for social applications and community platforms for consumer and media clients. Establish thought leadership in the domain of how Indian consumers engage with web, mobile and social technologies through blog posts, white papers and conference talks. Set up the Mumbai office for 2020 Social and establish and grow client relationships. Over a one year horizon, manage a team of 5-6 Associate Consultants and Analysts.
Define Your Sandbox Early, But Stay in Constant Beta
Posted on 21. Feb, 2010 by gaurav in Announcements
STAYING IN CONSTANT BETA WITHIN A SANDBOX
As an entrepreneur, you need to articulate your offering early in your startup’s life cycle, and still stay open to change, especially if you are in the fast-evolving social technologies space.
After nine months of running 2020 Social, I have learned that the key is to define a big enough sandbox early, then stay in constant beta, and play within that sandbox.
THE EVOLUTION OF 2020 SOCIAL
In June 2009, 2020 Social started off as an insights firm, focused on tracking conversations on the social web and identifying trends international clients could benefit from.
Within a hundred days, we realized that the social opportunity in India itself was big enough and reinvented ourselves as a consulting firm, focused on advising Indian and international clients on how social technologies are impacting their business strategy.
By October, we were ready to move beyond pure-play advisory services and offer full solutions to our clients. Since then, we have been working hard on building our BUILD and ENGAGE capabilities, apart from strengthening our already mature PLAN capabilities.
Social Media News Stories Last Week
Posted on 17. Feb, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Media, Reviews
Social Media News Stories
This past week has had its fair share of headlines. A quick wrap-up is given below.
1) Sakaal Times covered the launch of Buzz in its articele ‘Google takes on Facebook, Twitter with its new buzz’ on 9th Feb. Google in its attempt to match social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter launched Buzz that enables users to ‘quickly share messages, web links and photos with friends and colleagues directly from Gmail, the company’s popular email product’. The article also stated, ‘ status messages that users publish on Buzz and flag as viewable to everyone will be automatically indexed by Google’s search engine and available within Google’s recently launched real-time results. Users can also keep messages private by sharing only with customized groups of friends and colleagues and can share content from Google’s various online properties like Picasa and Youtube’.
Comment- Google has taken quite a leap forward by incorporating elements of social networking with its email product. With Orkut and now Buzz, Google exhibits it is prepared to battle it for the the popularity throne with any competition including Facebook and Twitter and other sites navigated via these social networking sites.Google demonstrates it is not content as the number one search engine. Rather, it aspires to be the one stop shop for everything online and this is evident in its move to incorporate Buzz into Gmail along with their mobile compatibility.
Designing Organizational Learning for the Social Business
Posted on 16. Feb, 2010 by Gautam in How To Guides, Ideas
Adults learn by social processes. David Kolb’s Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (1984) theorized that four combinations of perceiving and processing determine four learning styles that make up a learning cycle. According to Kolb, the learning cycle involves four processes that must be present for learning to occur:
- Activist – Active Experimentation (simulations, case study, homework). What’s new? I’m game for anything. Training approach – Problem solving, small group discussions, peer feedback, and homework all helpful; trainer should be a model of a professional, leaving the learner to determine her own criteria for relevance of materials.
- Reflector – Reflective Observation (logs, journals, brainstorming). I’d like time to think about this. Training approach – Lectures are helpful; trainer should provide expert interpretation (taskmaster/guide); judge performance by external criteria.
- Theorist – Abstract Conceptualization (lecture, papers, analogies). How does this relate to that? Training approach – Case studies, theory readings and thinking alone helps; almost everything else, including talking with experts, is not helpful.
- Pragmatist – Concrete Experience (laboratories, field work, observations). How can I apply this in practice? Training approach – Peer feedback is helpful; activities should apply skills; trainer is coach/helper for a self-directed autonomous learner.
Book Review: The Social Media Marketing Book from O’Reily
Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by Divya Uttam in Blog, Reviews
Dan Zarrella with his book “The Social Media Marketing Book” introduces social media and guides on how best to use this media for the marketing of your business. Almost anyone can practice the workable solutions provided in the book, and make sense of the complicated social media environment.
For anybody who is new to social media marketing Zarrella introduces each basic building blocks of social media, including blogs; multi-media; microblogging; social networking; social news and bookmarking, in different sections. Within each section, Zarrella introduces a tool, talks about its history, and describes the protocols, features and functionality with the help of screenshots, graphs, and visual explanations.
The book is lean and with 224 pages of which half of them are screenshots and images, it is indeed a highly-tactical guide of significant value to any individual or organization looking to get into social media. The book also does a good job of showing the difference between different social media sites, such as pure networking (LinkedIn, Facebook), media sharing (YouTube, Flickr), blogs, microblogging, and bookmarking (Reddit, Delicious, Digg) and more.
Employee’s Participation in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives
Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by Gautam in How To Guides, Ideas
I can see whatever the issues that were there during Knowledge Management
During the turn of the century – when KM – and the dream to let employees share what they know – was directed , the KM advocates (like me!) suggested that knowledge sharing should be given rewards. The thought was that if a person does not see a benefit for himself why would he share his knowledge with the behavior.
I have changed my belief – in part due to analysing my own behaviour on the social web.
Behaviours like sharing and collaboration are Organizational Citizenship Behaviors – and are a product of Employee’s Engagement with the organization. This discretionary effort is not like one’s work behavior – and needs to be rewarded not monetarily – but psychologically.
Psychological rewards will impact only a very few of employees, and that is okay.
Highly engaged employees who would indulge in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors follows the Power Law – much like social networks’ law. In that a minority will create and curate the majority of the content.
Social Media News Stories Last Week
Posted on 09. Feb, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Media, Reports, Reviews
It’s been a super-busy first week of February in the Indian social media space. A wrap-up of the news stories that made headlines is given below.
1) Business Line carried an article ‘Websense unveils security application for Facebook users’ on 3rd Feb that brings a sigh of relief to Facebookers. The article quotes Mr Surendra Singh, Regional Director (SAARC and India), Websense, ‘While other security offerings are designed to clean users’ computer after it has been infected, we worked with Facebook to create Defensio so customers are protected from emerging threats and malicious content before they spread beyond the social Web and become a broader security concern’. The article describes the mechanics of the application, ‘Defensio would analyze the links on the social web before users try to access them and gather intelligence of the site as well as the content and embedded links on it.’
Comment- This is surely a good sign for all Facebookers. With more and more people using Facebook, the site is increasingly posing a security risk and the application helps protect Facebook users. The application would also lessen the occurrence of online crimes such as hacking, phishing, credit card frauds. Truly, it would prove to be a boon.
Social Media Last week
Posted on 04. Feb, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Media, Reviews
News Stories covering social media space this past week
1) On 24th Jan 2010, DNA Mumbai carried an article by R.Krishna on the topic ’This social networking website helps you meet friends online’. The article talks about the utility and the growing popularity of Foursquare-a location-based networking site in India, starting with Mumbai. The article sums the benefits by quoting a Mumbai user, Shakti Salgaokar, using the Foursquare application on her iPhone, “The moment I start the application, Foursquare pinpoints my location using the GPS on my iPhone. Using my location, it tells me about various places nearby. It also gives me a to-do list recommended by other users. If I were in Dadar TT, it can list places like D Damodar, Pritam da Dhaba, or the Mumbai-Pune bus-stand. For someone new to the city, this can be of real help”. The article then wraps up prophesying Foursquare to be in 2010 what Twitter was in 2009.
Comment- While the site is a rage in the west, particularly the US, in India it is still in its nascent stage. Abroad the site has tied-up with restaurants, gyms and other establishments to offer deals and discounts to users, in India this is yet to happen. However, location-based networking has the potential to become a huge rage in a country like India,
2020 Social builds and nurtures online communities for Indian and international clients, connects their customers, partners and employees, and helps them achieve their business objectives.
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