2020 Social: Because Business is Social

Use Cases for Talent and Employee Communities

Posted on 13. Mar, 2010 by Gautam in How To Guides, Ideas

At 2020 Social we’ve been thinking hard about the various ways in which organizations can leverage different kinds of social tools and technologies to connect and build conversations.

One of the ways we’ve started to articulate it over the last few weeks is focusing on use cases.

So thinking about what organizations could do to build talent communities and employee communities we came up with this presentation

Today, I try and extend this framework to look at the various ways organizations and people communicate.

So if you look at the diagram above , communication can be from few to many, few to few, many to few and between many to many.

So the implications for Talent and Employee Communities are quite different

Take a look at the use cases given below

These can also be represented in the Employee Life Cycle – where an Alumni community also comes to the fore

What examples do you have to share on how your organization has utilized social technologies for cultivating Talent and Employee Communities?

Cross posted on my other blog Gautam on Organizations 2.0

Social Media News Stories 1st-5th March 2010

Posted on 08. Mar, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Media, Reviews

News stories for the past last week-

1)      Mail Today featured an article ‘Tata is the most trusted business brand in India’ on 3^rd March quoting Ratan Tata as the most trusted business man in India, seconding President A.P.J Abdul Kalam, as per magazine Readers Digest. The list of the 100 most public figures in the country includes business leaders, politicians, journalists, film actors, sportspersons and names people such as Prime Minister Manmohan  Singh, Infosys Narayan Murthy, Wipros Azeem Premji, Actor Amitabh Bachchan, Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan, Ambani Brothers, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Gandhi, HDFC’s Deepak Parekh amongst other esteemed names. In addition to this,  the article also reports Tata group firm Indian Hotels and auto major Mahindra & Mahindra as the only Indian brands in the list of 27 top ‘Great brands of Tomorrow’ by Credit Suisse. The article states, ‘According to the Credit Suisse Research Institute, the global brands figuring in the list would significantly outperform the market over the next three to five years as they build and leverage brand equity to grow in size, scale and equity’.

Comment- Tata Group has been one of the most recognized brand since its hay days and with the taking of the reins by Ratan Tata, the Tata Empire has grown manifold. With his hard work, dedication and vision, Ratan Tata ensures that by the time he steps-down the Empire will become the torchbearer of Industrial India, if it is not already. At the same time, it has now emerging as a large global conglomerate with interests across the world that ensures its long term growth plans.

2) Times of India featured an article ‘Water-cooler effect: Internet is reviving TV’ on 3^rd March that reported how TV ratings had shot up for big-ticket events such as Olympics and award show amongst others. The article states, ‘Blogs and social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook enable an online water-cooler conversation, encouraging people to split their time between the computer screen and the big-screen TV’.

Comment- Users discuss TV shows and big events the most in the online realm. Case in point being the twitter-verse being abuzz with Oscar mentions today. This way users stay attached to one another through chatting while watching a certain show. On many occasions, the online world also ‘informs’ users of TV shows through its ratings and reviews.  So the internet is definitely not an enemy of TV.

3)      Financial Chronicle featured an article ‘Nothing to say on Twitter? That might not be the point’ on 4^th March that elaborates on how Twitter has grown into  much more than just broadcasting personal thoughts. The article reports on the different reasons for using Twitter- ‘a medium to spread news, creating lists of people for a snapshot of the landscape of specific topic through unadulterated news, attend events like conferences virtually through their hash tags system, get the local news through trending topics, and ask questions you don’t know who to ask and get instant answers from around the globe’.

Comment- Twitter is allowing for increased collaborative interaction by bringing strangers together around a social object-passion, lifestyle or cause. This enables group activity in the form of discussions, opinions, Q&A and news.  Twitter has allowed for previously closed events or happenings to overcome physical barriers- time and distance- and become more public and thus driven their participation and engagement to an altogether different level.

4)      Deccan Chronicle featured an article ‘Enact Privacy Please’ by Deepak Kumar  on 4^th March that elaborated on increased round of phishing and hacking in the online domain. The article lists the last week of February witnessing hacking instances on micro-blogging site Twitter and chronicles the entire attempt on users of HSBC’s online service- First Direct. The article states, ‘with the advent and phenomenal popularity of  social networking sites, phishing has found an easy prey ground. The wide range of SNS applications  and the willingness of users to try out ever new applications have made it easier for attackers to increase the click-through rates for their poisoned links’.

Comment- The author of this blog has increasingly in the past few weeks come across reports of online hacking or identity theft. The above article, once again, touches upon the importance of exercising online discretion by the user himself.  With technology becoming more and more sophisticated, hackers are finding it easier to take advantage of gullible users who are not password savvy and mostly use the same password for all accounts, whether financial or personal. It is imperative that internet companies provide for some form of tutorial or guidance about online security while creating  user profiles.

5)      Financial Chronicle featured an article ‘Virtual Addiction’ by Ankita Sethi elaborating on the trend of virtual games like Mafia Wars, Fish World or Farmville that has led to users becoming addicts. This addiction coupled with the social gaming company Zenga setting up operations in India and the growth of the Indian animation industry itself will only serve to drive  social and mobile gaming as the next big thing in India.

Comment- Technology in India is much appreciated and there is a general drive in the Indian consumer to explore the latest in the mobile and the gaming arena. In a country that has over 70% of its population categorized as ‘Youth’, animation and virtual games have captured the imagination of the youth as can be seen by the growing fan following that the same have.

6)      The Economic Times featured an article ‘Brand-New Game’ by Writankar Mukherjee on 5^th March that reported how brands namely- Samsung, LG, Canon, Tata Teleservices, Philips, Sony Playstation, Adidas- are now taking the next step in social media and building online consumer communities to increase consumer bonding. The article quotes, ‘Marketers feel that besides increasing brand salience, online communities can emerge as a platform for cross-selling products, thanks to the ever increasing relevance of the internet as a medium to reach out to the consumers’.

Comment- The internet as a medium provides a great opportunity for brands to build credibility and trust.  Through social media and online communities, brands get an opportunity to directly ‘connect’ with consumers. Brands build online communities to create brand awareness through increased interaction. They address grievances and  product pitfalls, as well as gain insights and ideas and thereby improve general brand conduct while building a loyal fan base.

7)      Sakaal Times reported the inevitable in its article ‘Dalai Lama starts Tweeting’ on 5^th March. The article states, ‘The Dalai Lama started  tweeting after he met the social networking site founder Evan Williams in Los Angeles where he is travelling as a part of  his extended US tour  and meeting with the President Barack Obama’. The spiritual leader has already garnered about 140,000 followers within two weeks of joining.

Comment- The adoption of Twitter by the spiritual leader is in addition to Pope Benedict XVI and the Church of England reaching out to their followers online. These leaders have millions of followers the world over and their presence online is a validation of the power of social media.

8)      The Indian Express featured an article ‘Facebook CEO in no rush to launch IPO’ on 5^th March that reported that Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg intends to wait before launching the company’s initial public offering (IPO) as there is no immediate need for huge cash reserves and thus the motivations for going public are completely different and lacking currently.

Comment-As the world’s second  most popular online destinations, Facebook has had its share of offers from Microsoft and Yahoo amongst many others. Currently since November 2009, Facebook announced a dual-class stock structure to ensure voting control by existing owners. Recent Estimates by analysts say that Facebook has  a net worth of 2 billion dollars and this move shows that along with increasing popularity, it is also growing in size to join the league of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo as one of the biggest companies present in the online space.

What Are the Biggest Use Cases For Corporate Online Communities?

Posted on 07. Mar, 2010 by gaurav in Ideas, Reports

My post on the biggest Social CRM (SCRM) use cases set me thinking about the biggest use cases for corporate online communities.

A company can build and host ten different types of communities to serve different business objectives:

1. Communities of Interest: to connect customers and influencers around a lifestyle, an interest or a cause that is related to the company’s or brand’s values.

2. Communities of Practice: to connect customers and influencers around a profession, a skill or an industry that is related to the company’s offerings.

3. Evangelist Communities: to connect customers who are passionate about the company, its products or its brands and energize them to drive advocacy and referrals.

4. Employee Communities: to connect the company’s employees, in order to build an open culture, improve collaboration amongst distributed teams, or enable knowledge-sharing.

5. Partner Communities: to connect the company’s employees and partners, in order to build an open culture, improve collaboration amongst distributed teams, or enable knowledge-sharing.

6. Talent Communities: to showcase the company’s work culture and employees and attract prospective employees to the company.

7. Ideation Communities: to solicit and select product and process improvement ideas from employees, partners, customers and influencers.

8. Research Communities: to identify trends and user behavior related to the company’s industry or products to use in product and process innovation.

9. Social Marketplaces: so that customers can help each other select and purchase a product or service that is most appropriate for them, with some facilitation from company employees.

10. Support Communities: so that customers can help each other solve problems and use products or services in the best way, with some facilitation from company employees.

Each of these ten types of communities differ from each other not only in terms of the business objectives and the business function that owns them, but also in terms of the types and numbers of members, the type and frequency of editorial and user-created content, the functionality required in the community platform, the integration of the community platform with existing social networks and, finally, governance, reputation and reward systems.

Some of these communities are native to B2B or B2C contexts, while others can work across business contexts. Some are public or private by default, while others can work anywhere on the public-private continuum. Some of these communities are built around one primary driver — insights, response, activation, or crowd-sourcing — while others incorporate elements from all four.

The State of Community Management report from the Community Roundtable touches upon some of these aspects in its strategy section, then goes on to discuss the hands-on aspects of community management, based on its Community Maturity Model:

A particularly insightful comment relates to the 1:9:90 rule –

Unlike a commonly held belief, all communities do not develop a 90-9-1 pattern – i.e. 90% lurkers, 9% contributors, 1% authors and they should not necessarily be built with that expectation. That profile is a good benchmark for large consumer brand communities and product support communities, but is not such a good profile for market research, employee, innovation, or customer advocacy communities.

While the report is thorough and packed with practical tips, here are three ways in which Rachel Happe and Jim Storer can make it even better:

- Include case studies from the Community Roundtable members to bring alive the tips.
- Provide a how-to-guide for the organization to move from the Hierarchy stage to the Emergent Community, Community and Network stages.
- Provide tips by type of community, starting with the ten types of communities I have listed above.

Here are some of my other favorite resources on online communities:

- The Art of Community by Jono Bacon
- The Tribalization of Business report by Beeline Labs
- Building and Sustaining Brand Communities by Radian6

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

What Are the Biggest Social CRM (SCRM) Use Cases and Market Opportunities?

Posted on 06. Mar, 2010 by gaurav in Ideas, Reports

Altimeter Group has recently released a white paper in which analysts Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang have identified 18 use cases for Social CRM, based on conversations with almost 100 users, influencers and vendors.

Roughly, most of these uses cases can be classified across five business areas (Marketing, Sales, Support, Innovation, Collaboration) and four dynamics (Insights, Response, Proactive, and Crowd-Sourcing). I like this simple action-oriented classification better that coming up with names for each use case combination.

Owyang and Wang have further classified these 18 use cases based on market demand and technology maturity. Market demand reflects the urgency by organizations to deploy a use case while technology maturity reflects the market readiness and maturity of the available solutions.

In this matrix, Evangelizables present the most immediate market opportunity, for both product and consulting company, while Early Movers presents the most important marketing opportunity for product companies.

- Evangelizables (high market demand and high technology maturity): Dominated by insights, response and proactive uses cases for sales, marketing and support.
- Near Tipping Points (low market demand and high technology maturity): Dominated by crowd-sourcing use cases in collaboration and innovation.
- Early Movers (high market demand and low technology maturity): Dominated by response uses cases in sales and marketing.
- Early Adoptions (low market demand and low technology maturity): Dominated by insights use cases in collaboration and innovation.

Finally, Owyang and Wang define the 5M’s, foundational processes that cut across all these uses cases:

- Monitoring: to track social media conversations.
- Mapping: to link up social graphs, including profiles and relationships.
- Management: to tie back systems to business processes and priorities.
- Middleware: to define workflows across social and enterprise platforms.
- Measurement: to analyze metrics related to business objectives.

Here’s the Altimeter report on Social CRM:

At 2020 Social, we spend a lot of time thinking about how the Social CRM toolkit is coming together and how it can help organizations design a talk-worthy experience ecosystem.

On one hand, we are trying to put together a toolkit for marketers who want to use social CRM, but we aren’t quite there yet, as the tools don’t quite connect with each other as seamlessly as they claim to.

On the other hand, we are speaking with the product teams of some Indian CRM solutions providers, to help them extend their CRM solutions by incorporating social and community elements in them.

The trick is that social is public, many-to-many and emergent, while traditional CRM is private, one-to-one and rule-based. Social CRM lies at the intersection of social and CRM worlds and I’m not quite sure if we have figured out how to use the best from both the worlds into Social CRM.

By the way, here’s a 70+ slide deck we use for workshops on Social CRM: Decoding the Social in Social CRM. Do share your feedback.

Here are some other useful perspectives on the Altimeter Social CRM report:

- John Lovett, Prem Kumar Aparanji and Brian Solis praise the report for its pragmatic and thorough approach.

- Clo Willaerts and Jacob Morgan point out that few, if any vendors, provide a solution that works across the 5Ms highlighted in the report.

- Stefano Maggi, like myself, tries to reclassify the use cases in a way that is more action oriented, by linking them to the five objectives in “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technology“, by Charlene Li (@charleneli, at Altimeter Group) and Josh Bernoff (@jbernoff, at Forrester Research): Listening, Talking, Energizing, Embracing and Supporting.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Social Media News Stories-Last Week of Feb

Posted on 03. Mar, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Media, Reviews, Trends

To begin with, a belated Happy Holi to all of you.Quite an interesting mix of  noise in the social media sphere in the last week ofFebruary.

1)      Business Standard featured an article ‘Turning a Digital Page’ by Neha Bhatt elaborating on the rising trend of digital books and the consequent increasing sales of e-readers. The article quotes Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020Social and a Kindle user, ‘I bought the Kindle last year. I was willing to leave behind my collection of 2000 books, since the e-reader could hold over 300 books. What I really like about my e-reader is the audio feature. The fact that the device is so light and easy to carry is another motivation’. The article elaborates that the device works for those who care about portability or those who want to appear chic to strangers or associates. However comparing to US and UK, the article considers e-readers  a relatively new concept in India due to lack of e-books, pricing issues and loss of wider entertainment options like blogging, gaming and e-magazines.

Comment- For sure, e-readers have a brighter future and can take the book market by storm if made available within the budget of the common man. And with increased entertainment options, the youth will take to it like fish to water.

2)      The Economic Times featured an interview of Harvard Business School Senior Associate Dean,  Professor David B Yoffie in its article ‘Indian IT Cos need global makeover’ by Peerzada Abrar on 23^rd Feb. The article quotes Professor Yoffie, ‘Many Indian IT cos are beginning to realize that offering simple BPO or outsourcing jobs is not going to be profitable as in the past. The long term challenge will be to develop newer services and find other areas in the value chain to operate’.

Comment- With the recession hitting the US and Europe markets, the entire business paradigm underwent a complete overhaul.  New challenges demand a fresher perspectives and offerings that have a tie-up with IT. Indian firms could have an upper hand here if they choose to couple their current offering-high quality talent at lower costs- with newer creative operatives for a wider scope of industries.

3)      The Economic Times reported its tie-up with Facebook  in its article ‘ET Facbook in tie-up for Budget’ on 23^rd Feb. The article elaborates on a tie-up between Facebook, Economic Times and ET, its television channel for users to interact with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for the annual budget released on Friday, the 26^th. The article states, ‘the new initiative- ET Facebook: talk to FM will give users an opportunity to post their views and suggestions on the budget by logging on www.economictimes.com. All opinions received  would be summarized and presented to the FM in addition to being displayed on the online edition of the paper’.

Comment- Such a move bridges the disconnect between politics and the Indian youth. It lends the youth a voice and have their say in the political matters pertaining to the nation, especially in the discussions preceding the annual Budget.

4)      Business Standard featured another article ‘Mobile internet usage on a roll in India’ by Bibhu Ranjan Mishra on 23^rd Feb that elaborated on the growing number of users utilizing the mobile Internet with figures doubling  since the beginning of 2009. A major reason for this is the low cost of a general packet radio service , also known as GPRS, ready mobile handsets along with innovative data usage plans being offered by telecom companies. Major usage being for email, messaging, social networking and entertainment.

Comment- Mobile internet trend in India is poised to growth, especially with the young Indian becoming increasingly tech-savvy and 3G services being launched.

5)      Business Standard reported ‘IPL catches the Twitter bug’ by Pradipta Mukherjee  on 25^th Feb.  The article states, ‘IPL commissioner Lalit Modi tweets not only to give updates, but also to comment on controversies. Using Twitter, Modi has also sought bids for the two new teams that will be included in IPL IV in 2011. All teams have Twitter accounts and some have registered on Facebook too’.

Comment- The social media platform can be utilized to its full advantage to reach out to fans with teams ensuring interaction and a wider scope of activities on its websites like video downloading, match replays,  special moments, interviews, wall papers, team songs, merchandise, ticket bookings etc.

6)      The Economic Times featured an article ‘MS topples Google from leading biz brand slot’ on 26^th Feb announcing Microsoft as the leading business-facing  brand, followed by Rolls-Royce with Google being pushed to number 5 in the annual Business Superbrands Top 500 survey by The Centre for Brand Analysis (TCBA). The article reports Handset manufacturer Blackberry as the newest entrant in the top 10 slot of the survey with other brands such as Sony, Virgin Atlantic, Nokia, BUPA, BP and Michelin completing the list.

Comment- The survey depicts mixed results  some brands losing ground-particularly the government supported agencies and financial institutions- and others climbing the charts speedily. However, the war between Microsoft and Google for the top spot reveals that both sides are continuing to deliver on their promises and thus proving their mettle.

7)      Economic Times journalist Rajiv Banerjee reported ‘You Tube ropes in HSBC as lead sponsor’ on 27^th Feb, stating that the  sponsorship will be utilized for live streaming of IPL matches. HSBC joins the likes of HP and Samsung through its sponsorship with You Tube that has acquired a two-year rights to host IPL matches live for an undisclosed sum.

Comment- With cricket being more than a passion in India and IPL symbolizing its craze peak, any association with it presents  a big opportunity for any brand to reach out to a huge target audience. And using the more engaging online platform, that is predicted to only grow bigger, ensures more innovative brand exposure at half the price of TV sponsorship.

8)      The Times of India featured an article ‘Facebook patents user news feed’ on 28^th Feb that elaborates on how Facebook has won an American patent on its News Feed feature. The article states, ‘The patent summarizes the invention as a method for displaying a news feed in a social network  environment. The method was described as US Patent and Trade Office Paperwork as including  comments and links posted by social network users for sharing with other members of the online community’.

Comment- This comes freshly after Google’s Buzz launch. With social networking being an important trend, Facebook seems to be taking on Twitter, MySpace, Buzz and all other social networking services. Facebook has got itself a really strong weapon that it can use against other networks.

9)      The Hindu featured an article ‘Changes in Cyber Space’ by Sevanti Ninan on 28^th Feb reporting that the net is becoming more of a marketing platform and less of a medium for personal expression.  The article elaborates, ‘Sharing is the operative word in social media.  Some of the uses  of social media are for companies who are advised how to sneak into their marketing into this world of sharing. Marketers found their way through niche blogs and advertisers tie-up with blogs. Marketing tends to inveigle itself into all kinds of communication spaces, including social media, which is all the rage on the Internet’.

Comment-  Marketing incorporates selling to its target audience on platforms they inhabit and channels they use. With social media becoming a rage all over, it is to be expected that marketers would soon swamp the medium to exercise it to their advantage whether selling or gathering data. The Internet is a constantly evolving medium that reaches out to more people than any other and marketers tend to use such a medium which is dynamic enough to suit to their nature and needs. Another reason is that both the Internet and Marketing have a strong similarity i.e your tactics depend largely upon your target audience and thereby nothing is constant.

10)   In a similar vein on marketing, Hindustan Times featured an article ‘Riding the info mouse’ by Rachit Vats on 1^st March that predicts Information management as the next big marketing opportunity for brand owners. The article states, ‘A lot of marketers are beginning to wake up to the promise, looking at social media, consumer review sites, product reviews, consumer guidance or blogs as interactive knowledge and influence opportunities. They are monitoring content as well as seeding in content to generate the right kind of buzz around their brands’.

Comment- Today’s consumers are an intelligent lot who do not mind spending their money but only after they are convinced on quality. As more and more Indians blog and post product reviews online,  brands have realized that monitoring and listening to them works to their benefit through first hand consumer feedback and also build relationships. Both the consumer and the brand benefits through this.

11)   The Financial Express featured an article ‘Google Rolls out ad plan for Buzz social network’ on 2^nd March that reveals Google’s move to invite brands  to run personalized ads around Buzz. The article reports, ‘ The commercial model for Buzz is based on the ad system it uses for Gmail. It works by detecting the subject matter of email conversations and targeting the user with relevant messages. Media buyers say that Google is asking brands to run ads on Buzz to test their effectiveness’.

Comment- Buzz seems to be going all the way to establish itself as a strong competitor to other social networking sites, particularly Facebook and enjoy some of its success.  If brands  advertise on  Buzz, then they automatically reach out to a massive user base of Gmail. And Google gets a taste of the effectiveness of Buzz through this.

Decoding Social: How Are Social Technologies Changing Business, Media and Society?

Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by gaurav in Announcements, Ideas, Media

At 2020 Social, we understand that the nature of knowledge is changing from stock to flow and knowledge will become redundant in the blink of an eye, if not shared with others. On the other hand, if we share knowledge with other, often for free, they repay us with attention, and we create more opportunities for ourselves to learn and share more.

In this spirit, we will be sharing all our research, point of view, conference and workshop decks with the community of social media practitioners and enthusiasts we have learned so much from.

We speak at almost a dozen events every month, and sometimes use the same ideas across talks. For instance, I have given several related talks on “how to scale passion?” or “what can entrepreneurs learn from activists?” at BITS Pilani, IIT Roorkee, TEDIndia, Startup Saturday Delhi, Social Media Club Mumbai, IIT Delhi and Pecha Kucha Bangalore. Each talk is a work-in-progress artifact and I have seen these ideas evolve, each time I talk about them. While individual slide decks for each talk are interesting as artifacts, I’m beginning to think that it’s better to share a master slide deck (that’s in constant beta) so that people can easily refer to the latest iteration of our thinking.

With that background, let me share the latest version of our 100+ slide workshop deck titled “Decoding Social: How Are Social Technologies Changing Business, Media and Society?”

I used a version of this deck earlier today as the first of my three guest lectures at Mudra Institute of Commuications, Ahmedabad on how social technologies are changing business. I intend to use this deck next in the introductory session of my NASSCOM Foundation workshop on “how to scale passion”.

Here are the three key mantras the deck builds upon –

- The future has already arrived; it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

- The tools are transient; the values embedded in them are persistent.

- To understand how social technologies are changing media and business, begin by asking how they are changing people and society.

Here are the five key questions the deck seeks to answer –

- What are social technologies and why are they important?

- How are social technologies changing people?

- How are social technologies changing society?

- How are social technologies changing media?

- How are social technologies changing business?

If you want one of the 2020 Social experts (Gaurav, Dave, Gautam, Kaushal) to speak at your event, write to us at contact@2020social.com.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

How to make e-commerce a social activity

Posted on 26. Feb, 2010 by Achintya in Reviews

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.

On the next level of social engagement architecture are product aggregation websites where the focus is on aggregating products from various sources and getting the members to recommend or review the product. These websites can cater to niche segments like shopstyle which aggregates fashion products from various sources and  lets its members curate the aggregated products. There are also social commerce websites like thisnext where the members themselves submit products from various other e-commerce websites and others curate ( rate, vote, review it) them. Hence such platform give people the opportunity to discuss products belonging to e-commerce websites which do not use such social applications. To add to this list, there are platforms like deals plus where instead of best products, the best deals and offers are featured.

Moving forward there are social commerce platforms with a special focus on community features. So social commerce communities like Kaboodle have people submitting products from various sources but then there are also profile, relationships and interactions among these members resulting in better social engagement. Similarly crowdstorm is architectured to let the community choose product for its members. Wishpot is a social commerce community focused on members and wishlists. So you can see what your friends are buying, help them out with their wishlists, see the most wished products. etc. Ebay has created product neighborhood groups ( like art, video games etc.) and leveraged these evangelist groups to drive purchases.

Then there are communities like product wiki, which is a wiki for product information and ratings. In Zlio members can get their own online store, showcase articles from zlio directory, promote products and earn purchase commission.Many social commerce platform also run periodic UGC campaigns and tactical programs to generate buzz and traffic. Woot for instance keeps doing such contests and campaigns.

Many of these platforms also have good integrations with social networks like facebook, twitter etc to carry the feed activity to their user’s friends and social network. Wishpot, productwiki have some good facebook and twitter integration. Ebay has an application for showcasing your favorite items on ebay to your network.

Acknowledgments: Special thanks to mohit for making all the research easy

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 14^th 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.

2)     Times of India chronicled the trend of youngsters from towns and cities across using  internet  and mobile phone to profess love this Valentine’s day. The article ‘Enter Cupid: Love Blooms in Towns & Tehsils’ by Insiya Amir featured on 14^th Feb states, ‘New media such as mobile phone and internet is a godsend for young couples in several parts of middle India where public displays of affection are frowned upon’.

Comment- Even though in different contest, yet here we see social media doing what it does best i.e connecting people across boundaries albeit  here they are societal rather than geographical. Another reason why social networking is massively popular amongst youngsters.

3)    In a somewhat similar tone to the above article, Economic Times featured an article ‘Tapping into Love @ work’ by Ishani Duttagupta on 14^th Feb. The article looks at the role of social networking and social commerce in connecting to  the younger audience and their needs. The article states, ‘There’s a huge surge in online buying, gifting  and internet searches around festivals and  events such as Valentine’s Day. For small mom and pop kind of businesses, it makes a lot of sense to advertise around social networking space- even bigger brands are now looking into the space to tap into the youth market in India. In the case of events such as Valentine’s Day which most youth would like to play out in the physical space, the online media is typically an awareness major, an interest aggregator and desire generator’.

Comment- Social media has changed the very dynamics of communications and the consequent marketing and advertising strategies. The fact that most of the younger audience is almost always connected online in some form or the other is changing the way relationships are conducted. Today it does not matter whether your sweetheart is in another city or country. The internet makes it possible to celebrate special occasions, video chat  and voice chat. And it is precisely this youth connect that marketers and communicators are looking to utilize.

4)    Following last week’s footsteps, this week saw another mention of Buzz. This time around Economic Times featured an article ‘Google fixing bugs to make the Buzz beep louder’ by Debjoy Sengupta and Harsimran Singh. As the title suggests, the article touches upon the flaws of Buzz that Google is working hard to fix. Buzz users have been complaining about flaws such as privacy concerns including auto-follow, Geo-location and Buzz spam thus leading to some amount of backlash.

Comment- Google is eager to see Buzz become popular enough. Its favourable point is that its entwined with Gmail- the email product of Google. What remains to be seen is how Google will play Buzz strategically to gain market share in the social networking space.

5)    Financial Chronicle featured an article ‘Small Blessing’ by Ipshita Kumar on 16^th Feb reporting the blessing social media has proved to be for small restaurants. The author states, ‘Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have definitely been a blessing for small businesses like small independent restaurants to even compete with big chain restaurants. The main advantage of a networking site’s ad to the restaurant is targeted advertising’.

Comment- Social networking allows businesses to build a strong presence across target audience. The advantage of social media is that anybody with a small marketing budget can utilize the social networking sites to reach out to customers within one’s vicinity.  

6)    DNA featured an article chronicling the user experience of Venkatesan Vembu of a new online service ChatRoulette started by a 17 year old boy from Moscow in its 17^th Feb edition. In the article ‘We are all strangers in a strange world’, Mr. Vembu states, ‘On the website, visitors use a webcam to chat with a succession of perfect strangers from anywhere in the world, pulled out randomly from among the thousands online at any given time. Since there’s no registration or filtering involved and you don’t get to choose whom you’ll get to chat with, it makes for a surreal social encounter for both parties. For all its utter pointlessness, ChatRoulette has an oddly mesmeric quality to it partly arising from the oddball nature of the characters you encounter, even if only fleetingly ’.

Comment- The world is already fitting into the palm of your hand and considering the social media space, social interactions are evolving with every passing minute and more so defined by youth culture. The popularity of the above online service ChatRoulette brings to light a new genre of social interactions.

7)    DNA featured the case of an online identity theft instance of notable Bollywood director Madhur Bhandarkar in its article ‘Who’s the imposter on Madhur’s social networking site?’ on 18^th Feb. The article reveals ‘The person who is using Madhur’s photo as the profile picture, has written several things including hailing Shah Rukh Khan and his recently released movie’.

Comment- Such instances are increasingly becoming common place along with online death hoaxes. Truly , a scary thing considering the  huge fan following and the trouble and confusion it could create for the ‘real person’ and the people following him/her.

8)    Time for a film on social networking sites like Facebook? Well so thinks director Roshan Abbas.  DNA reports in its article ‘Facebook..time for a film about it’on how the debutant director is making a film on how youth today connect through social networking sites. All of Roshan Abbas’s friends on Facebook get regular updates about his film Always Kabhi Kabhi and also provide regular inputs to him via the same.   

Comment- It was inevitable. The youth of today spend most of their time online and any director who wants to capture the true mindset of youth has to bring in his/her’s social networking profiles on these sites into the picture. Case in point being the latest youth oriented Bollywood film Love Aaj Kal where the young protagonists are presented to explore each other’s  social networking profiles to know more about each other’s personalities.

9)    The Financial Express featured an article ‘Facebook offers more payment options for items in games’ on 20^th Feb that elaborated on Facebook Inc’s new service Facebook Credits that gives it 30% cut off from sales of items sold in virtual games on Facebook.  The article reports, ‘ The company will make the service available on many more games ahead of its annual developer conference this April’.

Comment- It is a superb tactic by Facebook to earn some revenue considering its popularity as a social networking site as well as gaming platform. Presently gamers pay for virtual items to Zynga Inc and Electronic Arts  Inc. Advertisers will also be able to purchase ads on Facebook through Paypal, a unit of E-Bay Inc.

10)    Times of India published an article ‘New Media has disrupted marketing’ elaborating on the recently held CII Brand Summit 2010 in its 20^th Feb issue. The article elaborates on how marketers are finding it increasingly difficult to grab attention of consumers and new media can actually help with better connect with consumers who are spending a lot of time and having conversations on social media. The article quotes Dave Evans, Consulting Director at 2020Social, ‘Brands need to become part of social networks, become part of the conversations’.

Comment- Most of today’s youth spend their time on platforms like internet, mobile devices and are increasingly choosing to hold all interactions on the online platform. This makes it an imperative medium to understand and utilize for every marketer.

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.

Skills: Consumer marketing, digital marketing, business consulting, business development.

Background: IIM or equivalent with 4-6 years of experience.

Reporting to: Gaurav

- Consultant (1): Ideally Delhi or Bangalore, but also Mumbai

Role: Define the functional requirements for social applications and community platforms for clients. Work with internal account managers/ project managers and external design firms/ development firms to ensure that projects are delivered in cost and on time. Simultaneously, find opportunities to productize these social applications and community platforms as proprietary white label solutions that can be re-used across multiple clients. Over a one year horizon, manage a team of 5-6 Associate Consultants, Analysts and Designers.

Skills: User experience design, product management, project management, familiarity with Drupal and Facebook/ LinkedIn/ Twitter/ OpenSocial APIs.

Background: IIT/ NID or equivalent with 6-8 years of experience.

Reporting to: Gaurav

We are also looking for interns to work with us on a part-time basis:

- Interns (4), Delhi or Bangalore, Rs. 5000 monthly stipend

Role: Research how digital and social technologies are changing business and marketing. Identify best practices and case studies for developing social media strategy and creating campaigns for clients. Part time role for 2 to 6 months with a commitment of 20 hours a week.

Skills: Good communications skills, ability to work in teams, eagerness to learn, familiarity with blogs, forums, and social networking platforms like Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

Background: BBA or MBA students.

Reporting to: Gautam (Delhi) or Kaushal (Bangalore)

Working at 2020 Social combines the best of both worlds: you enjoy the open and collaborative work environment of a web 2.0 startup, the steep learning curve of a strategy consulting firm and the benefits of being part of an established organization (we are related to 20:20 Media, one of India’s largest independent PR firms).

Send your CVs to careers@2020social.com: it might be your lucky day.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

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.

Now, 2020 Social builds and nurtures online communities for Indian and international clients, to connect their customers, partners and employees, catalyze innovation and collaboration, and drive loyalty and advocacy.

2020 SOCIAL COMPETENCY AREAS

As of now, we have three “competency areas”:

- PLAN: which involves doing primary and secondary research on the social web, advising clients on how social technologies are impacting their business strategy, and conducting workshops for senior management.
- BUILD: which involves building online community platforms and social applications, and integrating them with existing platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter using social APIs.
- ENGAGE: which involves creating compelling content for the community platforms we build, tracking and participating in conversations on the community platforms and the broader social web, and increasing participation in these communities through social media contests.

Dave leads our PLAN competencies, Kaushal leads our BUILD competencies and Gautam leads our ENGAGE competencies.

2020 SOCIAL PARTNERS

In some of our engagements, we focus only on the PLAN piece, while the BUILD and ENGAGE pieces are handled by another full-service digital agency. In such cases, we usually work from the client side to define detailed functional requirements and campaign calenders, select the agency and closely work with them through the BUILD and ENGAGE pieces. We have worked with Experience Commerce and Interakt on such engagements and look forward to working with other full-service digital agencies.

In other engagements, we work across the PLAN, BUILD and ENGAGE pieces and partner with design and development firms to offer the full solution. We have worked with Design For Use and Tekriti Software on such engagements and look forward to working with them again.

Lithium (for external communities) and SocialText (for internal communities) are our preferred white label platforms. Drupal is our preferred platform for building custom community platforms.

2020 SOCIAL PRACTICE AREAS

As of now, we have three practice areas:

- BUSINESS TO CONSUMER: which involves building communities of interest, around lifestyles and causes.
- BUSINESS TO BUSINESS: which involves building communities of practice, around professions and industries.
- EMPLOYEES and PARTNERS: which involves building collaboration platforms.

Dave leads our business-to-consumer practice, Kaushal leads our business-to-business practice and Gautam leads our employees and partners practice.

2020 SOCIAL OFFERINGS

So, 2020 Social’s suite of offerings is essentially a matrix of our competency areas and practice areas –

NEXT FOR 2020 SOCIAL

Over a one year horizon, I expect 2020 Social to build offerings beyond pure-play services.

We are working on building some lightweight white label platforms of our own. The first of these platforms will be an ideation-cum-contest platform called 2020 Social Ideas.

We are also working on building some niche communities of our own. The first of these communities will be a private research community for young, urban, Indian trendsetters called Yuvaah.

Stay tuned to hear more about these initiatives soon.

THE 2020 SOCIAL SANDBOX

I am sure that our offerings will continue to evolve, but I am sure that we will play within the broad sandbox we started with:

- We believe that social technologies are changing business and society and we want to play an active role in fulfilling the promise of this movement.

- We will differentiate ourselves based on our insights and do work that extends the boundaries of how organizations use social technologies to connect with their constituents.

- We will build deep competencies in some areas and partner with experts in other areas who share our vision to bring together effective solutions for our clients.

Ask us how we can help you or partner with you.

Cross-posted on Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.