doing better with less

Doing better with less

> Why is the social networks phenomenon relevant to business?

London, 22nd October 2003

The Business of Community, March 2009

Agenda

> Context, purpose, objectives> Why is the social networks phenomenon

relevant to business?> What does this mean for you?> Discussion, Q&A

The Business of Community, March 2009

The law firm group

> History> Recently worked on

• Metrotwin – social utility> British Airways> Recommendation engine

• Carphone Warehouse> Social, eCommerce strategy

> Working on• User generated viral video

> Food brand• Web syndication engine

> Transactions in the ‘long tail’> Insurance industry

The Business of Community, March 2009

The Big Picture – Arrival of the Network Economy

The Business of Community, March 2009

The Big Picture – Hierarchy to Network

> Open Source• Slime mould, Swarms &

Emergent behaviour• Peer production proven

to outperform conventional command & control organisation

• SourceForge: 180k projects, 1.9m users

• Yochai Benkler – Linux and the nature of the firm

> Open Source Census• Europe shows the highest

usage with the United States lagging behind

• US Law: Open Source mandated for IT healthcare systems

• The rise of Ubuntu (& the fall of Microsoft?)

The Business of Community, March 2009

The Big Picture – Social software changes behaviour > The Social Software

Revolution• 300m+ individuals in social

networks and online communities (internet users just passed 1bn mark)

• YouTube grew from 1 to 100 million users in 18 months; Google took 72 months

• At December 2007, there were 50m virtual world users, led by Second Life with 11m

• Facebook> More than 150 million

active users> More than 800 million

photos uploaded to the site each month

> More than 20 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each month

> More than 20 million active user groups exist on the site

The Business of Community, March 2009

The Big Picture – Markets are conversations> The year of Twitter

• 2000 new users per day• Approaching 5m users• Celebrity take up

> Stephen Fry> Jonathan Ross> Comedians> Obama has the highest

number of followers on Twitter

• Serious business use> News gathering> Market intelligence> Product announcements

• Dell, Ford, Kodak, Samsung, Starbucks

• New ways of story telling> Japan

> The year of monetizing data

• ‘Sentiment engines’

The Business of Community, March 2009

So what?

The Business of Community, March 2009

So what?Classes of Business Benefit

Intangible Tangible

Source of contribution

Customer Loyalty & Brand

Awareness

Direct Revenue

Lower Operational Expense

Comment

Customer/Member profile √   √

Customer intelligence & extending market reach at low cost

Advocacy/pass through revenue √ √ √

Sales channel for complimentary products/services

Group Discounts √ √   Special offers to subscribers

Affiliation √ √   Viral sales

Member-Member commerce √ √  

Packaging brand products to serve customer's own network

Offline events √ √   Forms deeper relationships

Competitive research √ √ √Access to opinions using polls/surveys

Product development & feedback √ √ √

Lower service development costs

Peer-to-peer self-help √ √ √ Reduces contact centre traffic

Membership √ √ √

Friends invitations. Member get member

The Business of Community, March 2009

How?> The implications of the end

user supplying itself are far reaching

> Small pieces loosely joined> Simple, lightweight tools

(‘doing better with less’)> Mashups, widgets> Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0

• 1.0 Centralised. People come to you (pull)

• 2.0 De-centralised. Go to where people are (push)

> Imaginative use of ‘Cloud Web services’

> Smarter organisation• Re-use of excess capacity• ‘Bioteams’

> Swarm behaviour• From Intranets to social

networks

The Business of Community, March 2009

Network statistics

> “People have figured out they get far better information and support from one another than the companies that are supposed to serve them”.

The Business of Community, March 2009

Discovery of unmet needs

Discuss, Q&A

• L’Oreal – Write a priceless ad• McDonald’s Global Casting • Nokia – Share your idea• Muji “make and send us an object for a place in your home we don’t have a product for”