More New Social Network Opportunities

In my last post, I wrote about salesforce.com’s plans to provide social networks for employees, customers, and products.  Now it seems that I can’t pick up a newspaper or magazine or my laptop without seeing a wide range of potential applications, especially around social networks for products.  Here are some examples:

Social nets for products:  Look to medicine and the wisdom of cars

Reading the online edition of MIT’s Technology Review is as much a part of my daily routine as enjoying a cup or two of coffee.   Over the last few weeks, TR has published several pieces on emerging medical innovations that one day may be a critical part of our health care.  For example, there was a piece this morning on a new tumor monitoring system that can be implanted in the body to measure blood oxygen levels.  The data would be fed wirelessly to your doctor.

Other articles have discussed sensors that can monitor blood pressure and glucose levels.  Both TR and The New York Times have published pieces on sensors/monitors embedded into temporary tattoos.  These “epidermal electronics” might one day replace the maze of wires attached to a patient’s body.

As I write this, I am wondering how this gets commercialized.  Does my doctor’s office sign me up for a modest fee or will it be advertising-supported?  Can I use Chatter to talk to my doctor and with other patients with similar diagnoses?

As for vehicles, I’m a sucker for an article promising me “personalized directions” based on traffic, weather, and my own driving habits.  In late August, TR published an article on a study conducted by Microsoft Research in China.   Apparently, researchers tracked the GPS movements of 33,000 taxi drivers to figure out the optimal route based on the day’s conditions.   

What about road safety?  Last week, TR described some new work being performed on vehicle-to-vehicle, and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications.  It quoted the U.S. Department of Transportation as estimating that “80% of serious accidents could be avoided” if we could tap the wisdom of cars.

In the vehicle examples, there would be no shortage of potential providers.  A quick list would include car companies, insurance firms, SiriusXM satellite radio, and quick serve restaurants – “Today’s traffic is brought to you by McDonald’s.  Hey, the highway is backed up for eight miles thanks to the rain.  There’s a McDonald’s at the next exit.  Come on in for an Egg McMuffin and wait out the storm.”

Social nets for customers:  Cars, tires, and newspapers

In his August 31 keynote, Marc Benioff talked about the conceptual social network he designed for Toyota.  On that same day, The New York Times wrote about how Ford was teaming with Zipcar to reach young drivers.  Ford will be supplying the car sharing service with vehicles on 250 college and university campuses in the United States.  You can already imagine the Chatter stream on recommendations for car preferences, restaurants, lodging, and tourist attractions aimed at this demographic.

Keeping with the focus on vehicles, in mid-July Bloomberg Businessweek wrote about Continental’s efforts to reach the “tire guy” at local car repair shops and garages around the U.S.  During the course of the year, the world’s fourth largest tire manufacturer will invite 950 independent reps out to its south Texas track to test drive its products.  This is big business as the local guys influence 80% of the purchase decisions in the $13 billion retail market  for new tires. 

Again, you can imagine Chatter streams with video clips featuring squealing tires (and corresponding ring-tones).  Watch how Continental’s tires handle adverse conditions.  Check out their traction and braking.  View how the company differentiates from its competitive positioning.  Oh, and feel free to do some merchandising.

As for newspapers, this morning The Boston Globe introduced its first pay site – www.bostonglobe.com.  The big technological innovation is the new “responsive web design.”  Basically, the paper automatically renders to the traits of the viewing device, be it smart-phone, iPad, or PC.

I looked to see if the new version offers a Chatter-like feature.  The website said only that a “comments” section is planned.  I suspect that this will be more of an internal political/cultural issue than a technical development. 

Social nets for employees:  Don’t forget your alums

Last month TR had a short piece on Infosys’ iEngage, an internal network designed to link its 130,000 employees who are spread across the planet.  It has also opened up the site to an estimated 20,000 former workers.  If you’re planning a social network for employees, you may also want to figure out how to include support for former workers.  They can be an important source for new business or may be interested in part-time work.

What do you think?

As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas.

Bruce

A Closer Look at Salesforce.com’s “Social Enterprise” Strategy

At the annual Dreamforce conference last week, salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff unveiled his company’s “Social Enterprise” initiative before a very crowded and highly enthusiastic audience.  In the first of his two keynotes, Mr. Benioff described his plans for social networks for employees, customers, and products.   This post looks specifically at those offerings.  Look for other Dreamforce analysis to follow.

In my view, the company’s collective genius comes in delivering brand-new-to-the-market-software while simultaneously providing dramatic improvements on existing concepts.  For example, any one who built an intranet portal using Plumtree or worked on the internal team that created IBM’s BluePages, could argue that they were ahead of the curve on employee social networks.  Likewise, Communispace would claim that it has a 12-year head start developing digital communities around consumer brands.

The difference, though, is in salesforce’s ability to seamlessly integrate/embed all of the new software into its existing platform.  It then leverages its user experience to create strong, favorable buzz, stimulate global demand, and execute on a broad scale. 

If you’re thinking that my view may have been altered by standing too close to the stage while Metallica performed at the opening night soiree, then you don’t understand the rapport that Mr. Benioff and team have with their customers.  It’s very Apple-like.

 Here’s a closer look at the three new social networks, and some speculation on what could come next.

Employee social networks:  What does your company use to help speed information-sharing? 

How do you find out about the status of a development project or a large $MM deal?  Do you subscribe to those teams or do you email/call friends involved?  Tools like Yammer are OK if you want people to know what you’re doing, but they were not designed for real-time collaboration. 

Salesforce.com’s Chatter changes all of that.  During the opening keynote, I sat next to one of the company’s top executives.  Pointing to his iPad, he showed me how he used it to keep track of specific deals, customers, sales teams, and documents.  The new release of Chatter adds support for presence, chat, sharing, workflow, and approvals.  There is also an API for third party vendors so that their apps can “talk” to Chatter.  Chatter also allows customers and partners to be linked in to the conversation.

The only pieces missing seemed to be a template for actually creating an employee profile and a framework for talent management.  While you could use your LinkedIn profile as a base, that’s really designed to attract attention outside of your company.  In addition, there’s a lot of proprietary information that you would not put into that network.  (Note:  Many customers use Force.com to create these employee-centric applets/applications.)

Customer social networks:  Extending your brand

The best argument for customer social networks came when Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts joined Mr. Benioff on stage.  Ms. Ahrendts had a slide of the napkin that Mr. Benioff had used to draw all of the links between her company’s goals and the various constituencies that her company serves, and the various ways that his company could help hers.  She then described how Mr. Benioff had whipped out his iPhone to snap a photo of the results of their impromptu brainstorming session and then emailed it to his team to solicit input for how they could best help the $2B fashion leader.  Immediately, ideas come in from around the globe via Chatter.

Burberry’s employees tend to be young – more than 70% are under 30.  This Facebook generation is a natural for collaboration tools like Chatter.  Its employee social network appears to be tightly linked to the new product launch of Burberry Body fragrance.  Combining the two networks creates a high level of transparency around the campaign and results.

There’s more to customer social nets than Chatter and a cool website.  There’s also the ability to monitor and respond to all of the comments that consumers are making about your brand.  As Mr. Benioff noted, there’s a lot of social traffic to navigate.  Every day more than 200 million tweets traverse the globe.  Meanwhile, you and your peers are updating your Facebook page to the tune of 1.5 billion posts a day.

Again, there have been tools like Umbria that provide sentiment analysis.  Let me remind you though that the salesforce difference is that everything is seamlessly integrated into the core.  There’s no jumping in and out of disconnected apps or multiple log-ins and windows.  It’s all right there on your laptop, iPad, or smart-phone.

One last point, I see customer social networks (and the product version, too) as creating a whole new sales channel in the creative community, especially the interactive agencies who want to leverage their research capabilities and creative skills.  This has enormous potential.

Product social networks:  Linking to the Internet of Things

Four years ago Mr. Benioff used the Dreamforce stage to unveil Ideas, a website designed to gather customer likes /dislikes on products, services, and policies.  This started as an internal tool and quickly spread to Dell and Starbucks.  Thanks to one customer’s post on MyStarbucksIdeas.com, coffee drinkers now have the option of putting a “splash stick” in the hole on the lid to keep the contents in the cup.

While Ideas seems to have receded into the archives, I was really intrigued by the concept of a product social network.  The idea came from discussions that Mr. Benioff had had with Toyota. Instead of friending the car company, your BFF could be your Prius.

Personally, I couldn’t imagine being a frequent visitor to a car company’s website.  But, if I was a Prius owner, I might be interesting in improving my mileage or extending the life of the vehicle.  In the future, after your commute home, your Prius could connect to salesforce.com and report the number of miles driven, the average speed, and details about fuel consumption.  In the morning a message could be pushed to your iPhone offering a graph on how you did yesterday against your peers and offering suggestions for improvement.

There are already tools like that in use today.  Nike and Adidas have designed software for runners that track distances, speed, and performance relative to goals.  Wait until this expands to other exercise equipment, medical devices, and prescription drugs.

The product social network has already extended into routers from Enterasys.  While I’m not sure what kind of conversation you could have with a piece of networking gear, I can envision a world where sensors and the physical plant can provide status reports and alerts over Chatter.

Where will salesforce go next with social networks?

Given my background as a long-time supply chain analyst, I would assume that someone inside salesforce.com is already thinking about social networks for suppliers, trading partners, logistics, and distribution. 

Product lifecycle management is another area ripe for information sharing and collaboration.  I remember the bewildered looks on the faces of PTC executives when I suggested that they add market-related information to Windchill. 

I would also look for social networks geared around the public sector – whether something like an Open311 initiative for a municipality or a campus-wide offering for your alma mater covering everything from curricula to intramural sports or a hub for your favorite cultural activity or charity.  All could benefit from getting closer to constituents. 

I could also make the case for social networks built around your favorite sport/sports team or hobby.  Think of the opportunities for highly targeted marketing.

And lastly, what about the home version?  Forget about emailing or texting your spouse and kids.  Set up Chatter streams to track activities, projects, vacations, family obligations, homework, and the like.

What do you think?

OK, OK, so maybe I’ve gotten way ahead of where salesforce.com is headed.  I did want you to get a sense for why I think the social enterprise/social economy is such a Big Idea.

As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas.  Please add your thoughts to the conversation.

Bruce

Welcome to Circumnavigating the Social Economy!

Just wanted to let you know that I'm starting a new weekly blog that looks at the nascent world of the "Social Economy."  While salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff has labeled this as the "Social Enterprise," it's more than the activities at individual companies.  It's how all of this in the aggregate will combine to change the way we engage with our employees, customers, suppliers, and even our products and the "Internet of Things."

Please join me on this journey.  As always, I welcome your feedback and advice.

All aboard!

Bruce