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91.514-Internet and Web systems II,Term Paper II,Spring 2010
Social Computing: A Shift from Personal networking to Business networking
Shruthi B. Rajegowda, Dr. Haim Levkowitz, Term Paper II -91.514-Internet and Web systems II,University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Abstract—In both professional and personal life, human beings naturally form groups and always tend to widen their network. Social computingsometimes also referred to as Social Mediarefers to the ability for people to interact, share and contribute on the web, often within networks of network. Social technologies in a community/teams working together creates a greater output than as individuals.It touches both our personal and professional environments. It may be interesting to examine how Social Computing impacts social, economic, knowledge, reputation values of a business organization. In this paper, how some of major social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn can be adapted into Business and impact Business Organisations are studied and anlaysed in brief. Some of the challenges in social Computing are also addressed.
I.INTRODUCTION
S
oCIALComputing can be defined in many ways. According to Wikipedia-“it is a general term for an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It has become an important concept for use in business”. Online social networking has been in limelight for many years now and has attracted huge population around the globe.It is simply a collaboration paradigm moving from collaboration with those we know, to any whom we can reach or can reach us.
Social Computing affects the way organizations do business and communicate externally and internally. Social Computing tools open up for rethinkingBusiness value in new innovative ways.
Fortune 2000 companies are adopting social computing at a record pace to reap benefits including enhanced collaboration, improved knowledge management, better innovation, and increased productivity. In fact, social networking software is the top enterprise spending category among Web 2.0 technologies
Social media applications encourage meaningful interaction and knowledge sharing processes between employees across departments within the organization. It can also contribute to strengthen corporate identity. Social Computing impacts social, economic, knowledge, reputation values of a business organization.
Some of the Top 25 Social Networks are given below
II.Business IMPACT
According to some research, it is estimated that human beings, I mean each person can maintain around 150 stable relationships. Social web can increase this number and widen the network of each person. Social Networking is a constantly changing area where applications integrate with eachother and new features are regularly launched.Some of the General benefits of Social Networking are it can lead to increased reputation , increase sales, reduce costs, create new products and advertise those products, get customer feedback to improve new products. Companies can also provide online support and care to fix issues and answer common issues through online chat/blogs/wikis/ forums. The other advantage being it develops trust among customers on products making them feel part of the product development.Social Computing can also act as a self-development tool for employees where people connected to their network locally or internationally tend to gain greater depth of knowledge in their specific area of interest while having multiple mentors across the network. As employees increase their visibility and make their expertise availableto communities, inside or outside their organizations, they will be morefrequently solicited. This kind of networking can increase employee mobility and also lead to employee excellence.
The conversion of direct marketing (physical presence) and ads from static to dynamic and online marketing will develop better targeting prospects for the company. This way, enterprise will be more visible and accessible toits market, expand its contact. It also helps in retention of important information for future use.
Social Computing can also enhance customer experience and thus improve the sales.
Fig. 1. Social Business- Web2.0 and social media as applied to operating a business is called as Social Business
Image src: ebizq.net
Some of the challenges also need to be addressed by organizations while adopting social computing. As the business intranet opens to internet where more people can access the information, it immediately leads to security concerns. The enterprise has to draw the line as how much and what kind of information can be posted on social networking sites. Authentication also becomes an issue when displaying confidential business information. There can also be risk of information leakage as there might be competitors in the network contact list. Web 2.0 developments are increasing every day and the corporate world needs to keep up with this speed if they opt for social computing. Limited storage and bandwidth can also be a major challenge which affects customer experience.
III.USE CASES
The Obama effect can be seen as an interesting example of how social media was used in a variety of (all together 16) ways to involve different groups of people, all represented by tools recognized with subjective narratives from Obama to the people, speaking directly to them. “What Obama did so successfully is that he went to where his customer base was” (Blogger Rich Brooks). By using a range of different social media applications (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube,a personal blog, but also by addressing specific ethnic communities as Black Planet (African- Americans) and more ), Barack Obama used personal storytelling to accomplish involvement of users by distributing a message of hope. Another recent example is about X-box. Some of the latest features for X-box 360 are that the player can easily share scores and snap shots from his game to other social media applications and in this way communicate with his network as he plays. Other features are to sync with user music account at last.fm so user can listen to favorite music while playing or watching a film
There are several ongoing research projects about social media in Norway and on an international basis, especially about the citizen’s perspective of democracy, digital childhood, privacy and more. Research done on non-profit organizations states that social media has become an important part of these organization’s communication strategies, and states that they “have found a new and exciting way to win the hearts (and maybe dollars) of potential donors (Barnes and Mattson 2009:9)”. The Norwegian companyStormberg experience broad media coverage these days on how they use people’s response to improve their services, and especially how they’re use of social media strategically. PaidContent.org created a
500-person social networkfor their “ContentNext”mixer in New York City,enabling attendees tovirtually “meet” each other prior to the event. UNICOM uses socialnetworking to provide anongoing connection betweenthe delegates who attendits conferences. More use cases with the real-time social networking tools are discussed in the next section.
IV.Business addaptions of Twitter, FAcebook, LInkedIn, Youtube, JiVe SPACES
Twitter is a Free, public/transparent micro-blogging social networking site where users post updates known as tweets on the profile page. Users can provide their tweets to circle of friends or allow access to everyone. There are various ways one can tweet-websites, SMS, mobile devices and other applications. Many companies are already in the tweeting network establishing contacts with partners and customers.. Twitter can help to promote interest and build brand awareness or increase product popularity. It can also be a form of Customer support service like JetBlue and Comcast which offers customer service on twitter. Organizations can post job on twitter to hire new employees and also obtain employee previous experience and record on twitter. Twitter can be considered as real-time collaboration tool eg: Every conference.
Facebook is a social website where users initially participate in a group organized by city, workplace, region and/or school. User also has an option to a news feed or RSS feed and can integrate with enterprise sites using Facebook connect. Facebook has the same advantages as Twitter. Enterprise units can build a profile or fan page where customers can join and participate in any desired conversation. One can also develop Facebook applications that can promote the brand/product and improve the sales as well as offer customer support and discuss on some common issues. Through Facebook Connect, organizations can integrate their content and can learn more about the fans or customers and develop products which are in demand. CNBC telecasts some of its news based on its Facebook discussions and also conducts polls/surveys/votes for chosen topic. FedEx has a Facebook app from where we can print the envelopes or address stickers and also describes the various price ranges. This has decreased the number of general enquiries at FedEx office
LinkedIn is aBusiness oriented social networking site where online resumes and recommendations are posted. This is one of the major job posting site and an expert locator. Through LinkedIn apps, it helps companies to promote, sell, or create interest via groups or networks. A recruiterfor an organization navigates a network of known individuals (e.g. currentmembers of the organization) in order to find potential applicants (eithercontacts of those individuals, or contacts-of-contacts) who have the skillsand experience needed to fill a job opening within the organization.These kind of social sites are beneficial to organizations, especially to professionalrecruiters.
- YouTube
YouTube is a video publishing social platform. YouTube finder Chad Hurley in an interview (TechCrunch) reports that YouTube is ingesting 15 hours of video per min! This huge number not only comprises personal videos, songs but also product training videos and sale promotion videos. Many companies advertise their product and conduct product training through YouTube. Video has been best and easy way to learn and promote things. Companies are taking advantage of these and promoting products through online advertisements. This not only saves money for the organizations but also helps them to keep an account of how many people viewed their product. They can upload any number of new advertisements according to popularity of products. One of the recent example is that the news about X-Box 360’s new features was posted on YouTube and was viewed by 37 170 people and had 1021comments in less than two weeks13. This shows the popularity of the product and the customer interest.
V.Conclusion
Social Networking will change the way people communicate and collaborate in a corporate world. Social Computing impacts knowledge, reputation values of a business organization by enabling exceptional online customer support that goes beyond the basics, allowing customers to connect with experts in an organization who have deep knowledge in a particular area. It also enables experts within an organization to be alerted when a problem that requires their knowledge comes into the customer support queue, and facilitates the creation of strong communities in the form of valuable user groups and member networks. By creating a strong network with business partner providers with similar philosophies and business practices, a single service provider can deliver better product to customers, increase sales and has direct economic impact on the business organization.As there is shift of Social computing from Personal to Business Networking, there are various other social computing sites emerging in the business enterprise world. Jive ClearSpaces now called as SBS is one such example of an emerging social tool which is widely used in business organizations.
References
[1]JoanDi Micco, David R. Millen, Werner Geyer, Casey Dugan, Beth Brownholtz, Michael Muller, “Motivations for Social Networking at Work”, IBM Research, Cambridge, USA
[2]Cerado-Haystack.”Social Networking for Business Organisations and Associations”, Executive Briefing,2009
[3]social-media-for-business-2639972
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