The current system for “crowd work” leads to diminishing pay and skills for simply completing small, homogenous tasks:
A better system would draw on knowledge of organizational principles and distributed computing to support complex, creative and interdependent work:
“Product testing is moving out of the lab and into the home.”
Study of Consumer Electronics Purchase Decisions in the Engagement Era by Weber Shandwick. A survey of US consumer electronics buyers finds people are paying more attention to reviews by peers than those by professional journalists.
To help address skepticism about authenticity, companies should adopt, and publicly announce, a policy restricting employees from commenting or contributing to customer reviews. Infographic
Ogilvy Social Media combines network behavioral economics (what makes people care to share?) and network science to model “social design.”
In the past, Omron Europe, a global leader in the field of industrial automation, functioned as a multilocal firm, but with globalization customers are more likely to do business across country borders. So first the company needed to remove geographic obstacles to become a Pan-European organization. Second, Omron Europe was split into two divisions, with separate sales and marketing teams serving many of the same customers. Better communications and collaboration across divisions would help ensure that customers recognized the company as “one Omron.” And a social business network could enable salespeople to share leads and information about common customers, leading to better opportunities for all.
“We are much more than the sum of our parts,” says Michel Min, strategic communication and e-marketing manager, Omron Europe. “That was the driving force behind creating a portal and social business network to better share knowledge and experience and to strengthen the flow of information across all departments and geographies. Our ultimate goal was not just knowledge transfer from one employee to another but to transfer organizational knowledge and expertise to the customer as quickly as possible.”
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How Africa is embracing “the cloud” on its own terms. Landline, Internet and electricity challenges make Africa an increasingly attractive proving ground for cloud computing. Out of the one billion people in Africa, only an estimated 140 million use the Internet, but over 600 million use mobile phones. And given the lack of reliable power grids, rechargeable mobile devices are a more practical way of accessing Internet-based applications than PCs. Broad use of mobile application services in Africa is already the norm, and adoption of some types of mobile applications already dwarfs their usage in the US.
For example, Safaricom’s M-PESA mobile payment system, which allows customers to transfer money to each other via mobile phones, has largely replaced cash transactions in Kenya. Users are sticking to content within apps without realizing they’re Web-based at all. Technology development is now focused on this mobile market and serving the “un-webbed,” including ways to get applications distributed to customers using their non-Web, real-world social networks. Via Ars Technica
Social media becoming an increasingly important law enforcement tool. Local police in a Kenosha, Wisconsin, describe their use of social media in solving crimes: “Our use of social networking is creating what can ultimately be a vast crime fighting network by connecting people (witnesses) to the locations, dates, times, and photographs that are instrumental in solving crimes. In some investigations, police have to obtain a search warrant to access the information; other times, it is openly posted for anyone to see.” Via KenoWi
New decision management software from IBM includes social analytics. “Entity analytics” combines and analyzes big data from diverse data sets so that insights can be embedded into business decisions in a matter of seconds, Additionally, the software measures the impact of social networking channels and factors this information into organizational decision making. This social network analytics takes sentiment analysis a step further by analyzing who the influencers are around any given topic, who exactly is listening, and why people should care. This feature makes it possible to factor in how customers behave, what they say, and how big their sphere of influence is in a social network. The ability to incorporate social network analytics into the predictive models used in Analytical Decision Management helps organisations identify social leaders who can influence behaviour. via Biztech2.com Image source
Companies have bought in to social media and online community to the extent that they think it’s important and have put some resources into funding community management positions and tools to enable community. But there is still a lot of uncertainty about what to expect of both the roles and the tools. This framework can guide organizations in developing community management capabilities. Via The Community Roundtable’s Community Maturity Model
Collaboration happens around some kind of plan or structure, while cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate. Cooperation is a driver of creativity. It is based on sharing rather than working together toward a specified goal.
What are the implications of this distinction? Via Harold Jarche
Crowdfunding: Fundraising with a social twist Crowdfunding is being used successfully by many types of people and groups for a broad range of projects and causes including creative projects, entrepreneurial products or technologies, artists, bands, or independent filmmakers seeking support, humanitarian aid, political campaigns, charities, and microlending. Via - IBM Social Business Insights Blog - Image source
