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 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 Big Picture – Arrival of the Network Economy


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 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 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’


So what?


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


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


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”.


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”