INFORMATION

SYSTEMS
Supporting and
Transforming
Business
Fourth Canadian Edition
RAINER  PRINCE  SPLETTSTOESSER 
SÁNCHEZ-RODRÍGUEZ
 CHAPTER 9
Social Computing
 CHAPTER OUTLINE

9.1 Web 2.0

9.2 Fundamentals of Social Computing in Business
9.3 Social Computing in Business: Shopping
9.4 Social Computing in Business: Marketing
9.5 Social Computing in Business: Customer
Relationship Management
9.6 Social Computing in Business: Human Resource
Management
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Describe five Web 2.0 tools and three major types of

Web 2.0 sites.
2. Describe the benefits and risks of social commerce to
companies.
3. Identify the methods used for shopping socially.
4. Discuss innovative ways to use social networking
sites for advertising and market research.
5. Describe how social computing improves customer
service.
6. Discuss different ways in which human resource
managers make use of social computing.
 OPENING CASE 9.1:
DISAPPEARING IMAGES

The Problems:
• Snapchat provides users with “disappearing
image” services so cannot earn revenue from
customer behaviour data
• Individuals may not want to use permanent photo-
storing sites since indiscriminate use of photos
could affect future jobs
 OPENING CASE 9.1:
DISAPPEARING IMAGES

The Solutions
• Snapchat is experimenting with a variety of
revenue-earning strategies by having
organizations such as video-game companies,
advertise
• Snapchat is also starting to offer services where
the user can select longer storage times for their
photos, so users can either have the “disappearing
images” or stored images
 OPENING CASE 9.1:
DISAPPEARING IMAGES

Questions:
1. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of
Snapchat to its users. Provide specific examples
of both to support your answer.
2. Do you think that Snapchat can become profitable
(i.e. survive) in the marketplace? Why or why not?
Support your answer with specific examples.
 9.1 WEB 2.0
Web 2.0
Is a loose collection of information technologies and
applications, plus the websites that use them
(source: Tim O’Reilly, a noted blogger), which:
• Encourage user participation, social interaction
and collaboration
• Facilitate information sharing, user-centered
design and collaboration
• Harness collective intelligence
• Deliver functionality as services and feature
remixable applications and data
 WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES AND
APPLICATIONS
Web 2.0

• Tagging
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
• Blogs
• Microblogs
• Wikis
• Social Networking Websites
• Enterprise Social Networks
• Mashups
 TAGGING

• Tagging is a keyword or term that describes a

piece of information (e.g., blog, picture, article,
video clip)
• Tagging is the basis of folksonomies, which are
user-generated classifications that use tags to
categorize and retrieve web pages, photos,
videos, and other web content.
• Geotagging is a specific form of tagging that
involves tagging information on maps. (example:
Google maps)
 REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION (RSS)

• Really simple syndication (RSS) allows you to

receive the information you want (customized
information), when you want it, without having to
surf thousands of websites.
• Users must subscribe to receive the RSS feed
• Example: CBC.ca provides RSS feeds for each of
its main topic areas, such as world news, sports
news, technology news, and entertainment news.
 BLOGS

• Weblog (blog for short): personal website, open to

the public, in which the site creator expresses his or
her feelings or opinions via a series of chronological
entries.
• Blogger: people who create and maintain blogs—
write stories, convey news, and provide links to other
articles and websites that are of interest to them.
• Blogosphere: term for the millions of blogs on the
web.
• Watch a video on how to create a blog.
 BLOGS (CONTINUED)

• Companies use blogs for:

• Input into their processes and products
• Marketing purposes
• Listen to consumers who express views on the
companies’ products
• Provide information for their clients. For example,
IT’s About Business 9.1 explains how Brian Krebs
tells his customers about recent viruses and other
security issues.
• Detect false rumours
• Gauge marketing push or popularity of new products
 MICROBLOGGING
• Allows users to publish short messages, images or
videos
• Messages are submitted by text messaging, instant
messaging, email or over the web.
• Content is usually limited to 140 characters

Twitter – the most popular microblogging service that

sends “tweets”, is a useful business tool to:
• quickly share product information
• Gather real-time customer feedback and market
intelligence
 WIKIS
• A Wiki is a website on which anyone can post material and
make changes to already posted material. They have an
“edit” link on each page that allows anyone to add, change,
or delete material, fostering easy collaboration
• Example: Wikipedia https://www.wikipedia.org/
• Wikis:
• harness the collective intelligence of Internet users,
combining the input of many individuals
• provide a central repository for capturing constantly
updated product features and specifications, tracking
issues, resolving problems, and maintaining project
histories
• enable companies to collaborate with customers,
suppliers, and other business partners on projects.
 SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
• Social networking sites allow users to upload
their content to the web in the form of text (for
example, blogs), voice (for example podcasts),
images and videos (for example, videocasts)
• Categories of sites (Table 9.1)
• Well-known social networking sites include:
• Facebook
• Flickr
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
 ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKS

• Business oriented social networks that can be:

• Public: 3rd party owned and managed
• Private (in-house, behind the firewall):
• for employees, former employees, business partners
and/or customers
• Used for many processes, including:
• Network and community building – eg. employees can
interact with coworkers, making social and business
oriented connections
• Social collaboration, publishing, views and feedback
• Social intelligence and analytics
• Example: IBM connects 426,000 employees in 170
countries for work and social interaction
 MASHUPS

• A Mashup is a website that takes different types of

content from other websites and mixes them
together to create a new kind of content.
Example: Google Maps, credited with providing
the start for mashups:
• User can display their own data on a Google
Map, on their own website. Examples:
Store locations, available apartments, etc.
 9.2 Fundamentals of Social
Computing in Business

• Potential Benefits of Social Commerce are shown

in Table 9.2, p. 253
Benefits to Customers
Benefits to Businesses
 Benefits of social commerce to consumers

 Better and faster vendor responses to complaints,

because customers can air their complaints in public
(on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube)
 Customers can assist other customers (e.g., in online
forums)
 Customers’ expectations can be met more fully and
quickly
 Customers can easily search, link, chat, and buy
while staying on a social network’s page
 RISKS OF COMPUTING

• Customers’ negative posts

• Need to monitor and respond promptly and
effectively
• Other risks:
• Invasion of privacy
• Violation of intellectual property and copyright
• Employees’ reluctance to participate
• Data leakage of personal information or corporate
strategic information
• Poor or biased quality of users’ generated content
• Cyberbullying/cyberstalking and employee
harassment
9.3 Social Computing in Business: Shopping

Social shopping: a method of electronic commerce that

takes all of the key aspects of social networks – friends,
groups, voting, comments, discussions, reviews etc. –
and focuses them on shopping. It includes:
• Ratings, Reviews, and Recommendations
• Group Shopping
• Shopping Communities and Clubs
• Social Marketplaces and Direct Sales
• Peer-to-Peer Shopping Models
• Person-to-Person sharing
• Business-to-business sharing
Fig. 9.3, EPINIONS (www.epinions.com) p. 255
Fig. 9.4, LIVINGSOCIAL (www.livingsocial.com),
p. 256
IT’s About
Business 9.2
Social
Commerce
with Groupon
tells us how
Groupon has
enabled
group
discount
buying
9.4 Social Computing in Business: Marketing

Marketing: Building profitable customer relationships

by creating value for customers and capturing value
in return

Components of a marketing campaign include

1. Defining your target audience
2. Developing your message (how you will solve their
problem)
3. Decide on how you will deliver your message
4. Follow up with the customers/audience
 Social Computing in Business: Marketing

• Advertising
Social advertising: makes use of the social context of the
user viewing the ad. It is the first form of advertising that
leverages forms of social influence such as peer
pressure, friend recommendations and likes
• Conducting Market Research Using Social Networks is
used to develop social intelligence.
• Conversational marketing is the process of using social
computing to obtain feedback.
• Tools for conversational marketing and social networks
market research include: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin
IT’s About Business 9.3 YouTube versus Television explains
how YouTube is used to gather market research data
Figure 9.6 Customer feedback to Dell via IdeaStorm
 9.5 Social Computing in Business: Customer
Relationship Management

• How Social Computing Improves Customer

Service, e.g. using Twitter
http://www.Needls.com
@FreshAirFarmer

IT’s About Business 9.4 Morton’s Steakhouse

Surprises a Customer shows how a joked Tweet
became a viral success for Morton’s Steakhouse
 9.6 Social Computing in Business:
Human Resource Management

• Recruiting
• Training
• Employee Development

IT’s About Business 9.5 LinkedIn to Expand to

Professional Development explains how LinkedIn
helps both employers and employees
9.6 Social Computing in Business:
Human Resource Management

So You Want to Find a Job

 CLOSING CASE

Can Anyone Succeed with Local, Online Advertising?

• The Problem
• The Potential Solution
• The Results