Automakers and Facebook???

Well, I have been thinking about this (I explain in a second) and my brain is short of ideas.

How can Renault leverage Facebook???

First, I don't think Facebook has caught up in France at the same level of other parts of the world yet. I couldn't find any information that links Renault to Facebook besides the obvious fans pages.

However, I didn't find if any of the US automakers are using Facebook either.

Renault, as well as Peugeot and Citroen, has entered in the digital media world. I guess the idea is to create brand loyalty and provide customers with a more inside view of what the company does.

The only "innovative" way I could think of any automaker leveraging Facebook is to create an app that let you customers retrieve data from his/her car, such as number of miles, when is the next change of oil, tire pressure, and other services. However, you don't really need facebook for this. This could be very well hosted in the company site.

Is there anyway you could think of Renault linking the two (Facebook and Personalize Service Site) in order to take advantage of the Facebook user community and, maybe, incentivize sales??

HELP!

Back to the smart roads discussion

So, a couple of weeks ago I was reading this article in the WSJ about smart roads, smart bridges, smart grids. 

It seems like the future is not too far away and technology already exists. I guess the question now is how are we (they) going to commercialize and monetize this technology.

For those of you that don't want to read the article you can get a sense by watching this short video.

Beyond Facebook: The Micro-sociology of Networks

I am glad to see posts on how companies can leverage Facebook. Please continue blogging on that.
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Here is a good presentation that lays out some of the broader trends that we will focus on after the spring break.
It is worth reviewing.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

View more presentations from David Armano. (tags: behavior human)

What shoud Your Company Do with Facebook? -- Can you help NPR?

During our Wednesday class, we asked--'what should your company do with Facebook?' It turns out to be the same question that NPR is asking its listeners..

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if any of you had any thoughts on what else NPR should be doing on Facebook. We've got a lot of people who've signed up as fans to our official NPR page, which is really great, and we probably could be doing even more activities than what we've got posted here. For example, would you want to see more of our content appearing automatically and available for your profile pages? Should we use the discussions to host chats with NPR personalities? Are there any tools you think we should develop?

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how NPR can improve its Facebook presence. You can use the following link to tell us what you think:

Thanks in advance,

Andy Carvin
NPR social media desk

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As you think about the question for your company, if you have some good ideas for NPR, please do tell NPR. A good public service!
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We may revisit the issue when we get to the media and entertainment sector after the sbreak. Cheers.

Facebook changing its home page..

Facebook is comming up with a changed interface for the homepage. Instead of pushing it on to the users they decide to put a small note on every ones profile that the home page is going to change. They also put a link to preview the new homepage. 

This fosters discussions in the facebook blogs by the users. The facebook executives can then have a first cut view of users reactions on it.

"Changes to the Home page are coming soon

Learn about the new features ahead of time. This is happening soon; check out the home page tour now."

http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/homepage_tour.php

I guess this is why face book wins over other social networking webportals. --
I just added the photo of the forthcoming changes to the blogpost (Venkat)

Thoughts about Technology at Shaw's Supermarkets

As I considered a memo to a company CEO I wanted to find something that is comparatively low tech vs. most of the high tech companies we discuss in class.  Shaw's supermarkets jumped out at me because Shaw's (or another supermarket) is an experience that almost everyone has at some time or another, and the experience is largely unchanged from many years ago.  Yes there are now 60 types of crackers on the shelves instead of 4 (for more on the concept of too many products and choices I recommend "The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More" or a video summary here), and we have some self checkout lanes, but you still show up with your grocery list, go through the isles, pick what you want, checkout, load it into your car, drive home, and unload your groceries.

Looking at the industry, what differentiates stores and chains?  In my opinion two aspects, price and quality, decide where people shop.  I live less than a mile from a Shaw's and another

 grocer store, yet I shop at Shaw's because the quality is essentially close enough between the two and prices are lower at my Shaw's.  The brand name means very little to me however.  The slogan seen above "crazy about food" means even less to me. If Shaw's were to raise their prices, I'd take a left turn instead of a right and bring my business elsewhere.

Technology now in place at grocery stores is pretty limited to the ubiquitous discount cards where you scan your card and get products at a "discount" for having the card.  However, usage of these cards is generally limited to sending out some discounts when you reach a certain dollar amount spent - hardly a worthwhile usage of all the data they could be collecting.

So, I have a few thoughts on technology and supermarkets.

1) Discount cards - why is there not greater mining of the data there? This is a no brainer for most online companies.  Why am I not getting emailed recipes utilizing things I buy regularly, or suggestions of meals based on what I purchase, or suggestions for sides that go along with my purchases?  How about dietary tips based  on my purchases?  Where is the next level of analysis that I would actually find worthwhile and might lead me to shop at one store over another?

2) What else could they be doing with technology?  Lots.  How about meal recommendations based on what I purchase?  How about weekly menu suggestions tied into the delivery service where I don't even have to go to the store but my weekly groceries are delivered to my house.  Why not give me suggestions based on a diet I'm currently on and allow me to have those automatically delivered as well.  Where is my weekly list of suggestions for healthy meals or suggestions for beef based meals, or seafood meals, etc.  Why is there no connection between what I order and telling me how to best prepare meals with it?  If I'm planning to have friends for a dinner party, why can't we go onto the Shaw's facebook app and plan meals together while scheduling delivery of the ingredients?  Where is the option to deliver my 

"super bowl pack" of goodies and foods for the big game.  Why are these things not automated so that when I start to think about Thanksgiving dinner, I've already had an email from Shaw's with a list of ingredients I can one-click to order? Again I wonder, where are the extra value added services that would make it worthwhile for me to bring my business to one store over another? 

In short, what I'm really talking about is grocery stores moving beyond pure commodities to provide services.  We've discussed how it can be difficult for a product company to branch into services, but grocery stores aren't quite pure product companies and I think it could work.  Just a sampling of thoughts I'm having regarding Shaw's...comments welcome.

Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media

From our conversation today on facebook, I thought this article on how Mars is using social networking to provide the content and buzz on Skittles was interesting. Though the article uses twitter as its example of social networking, you can easily replace it with facebook.

-Scott

WSJ
MARCH 3, 2009
Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media
Candy's Site Is Built on Consumer-Created Content From Twitter, Facebook
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604377921415283.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

By EMILY STEEL
For years, Skittles has encouraged consumers to "Taste the Rainbow." Now, the candy brand wants people to "Chat the Rainbow."
Mars Snackfood, maker of the chewy, multicolored candies, launched a new homepage at Skittles.com on Thursday that may represent the closest embrace of social media yet by a mainstream marketer. Instead of a typical product site that highlights information about or videos and games related to a product, Skittles.com features content created by consumers -- most of it gleaned from other Web sites.

Posted on the site last week was the Skittles article from Wikipedia, the user-created Web encyclopedia. On Monday, Skittles.com featured postings from the social-messaging site Twitter that include the word "skittles."
Mars Snackfood says it redesigned the site to better connect with its core teenage audience, which spends a lot of time using social media. "The teen audience relies heavily on their peers for advice on products. This is a unique, unexpected way to engage and to be a part of the conversation," says spokesman Ryan Bowling.
More
Digits: What Are You Doing? (#Skittles)
"It is a very bold campaign in the sense that they are letting consumers speak on behalf of the brand," says Chad Stoller, executive director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital-marketing firm owned by Omnicom Group, whose digital-ad shop Agency.com created the site.
Most brands don't dare go so far, says Charlene Li, founder of digital-media consulting firm Altimeter Group. "They are getting so much buzz on it, it is unbelievable. ... They are really showing people, this is redefining the way you think about brands."
On Monday, the term "Skittles" was among the most popular topics discussed on Twitter, according to Twitter Search. Nielsen Online also noted a sharp increase in online buzz related to Skittles since the new site's launch.
Other marketers have experimented with featuring consumer-created content on their Web sites. Online retailer Zappos spotlights its Twitter mentions on a section of its site. The Web site for Chrysler's Jeep brand features user-generated photos from Flickr or video from Google's YouTube online video site. But few marketers have built their homepages around messages, videos and other content created by consumers.

The strategy involves plenty of risks, digital-marketing executives say. Skittles has little control over who participates and what they say.
Other experts say Skittles is taking the wrong approach to social media. Instead of encouraging teens to have a conversation about Skittles, it is encouraging false conversations about the brand, says Shiv Singh, vice president and global social-media lead at Razorfish, a digital-marketing firm owned by Microsoft. "Everyone is having a field day and writing 'Skittles' on Twitter just to get attention," he says.
Sure enough, the site became the target of Internet pranks on Monday. The way the "Chatter" portion of the Skittles.com site is built, any Twitter user who mentions the word "Skittles" is featured on the homepage.
At least one Web site has been launched by pranksters encouraging Web users to post negative comments about the candy. The comments range from the thoughtful to the outlandish. "Skittles taste terrible. If you eat Skittles you support killing kittens and puppies," wrote a Twitter user named kingshane.
The new site design has sparked controversy on the candy's Wikipedia page, among users who are concerned that marketers will destroy the integrity of the site "If every corporation does this, Wikipedia will be just a collection of advertising pages 'controlled' by corporate employees, who can monitor their pages 24/7 and edit out what they don't 'approve,'" wrote a Wikipedia user with the handle ConcernedCitizenry.
Skittles.com acts as a filter on top of a slew of other social-media sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The brand says it is monitoring its site but not changing any of the content.
The type of content featured on the new Skittles.com homepage varies according to what's generating buzz. For example, if Skittles launches a new TV commercial, the homepage that day might be Skittles's page on YouTube.
Whether Skittles has reached its target audience remains to be seen, digital-marketing executives say. The Skittles.com site doesn't usually generate much traffic. In January, Skittles.com attracted 20,000 unique U.S. visitors, according to comScore.
Moreover, the Twitter audience is still small. The messaging site had 2.6 million unique U.S. visitors in January. Much of the conversation Monday about the new Skittles site appeared to be coming from ad-industry insiders.
"We live in an echo chamber where we think Twitter is the biggest thing. But the reality of the situation is it is not yet. It is an experiment," says Ian Schafer, chief executive of Deep Focus, an independent New York digital-ad firm.
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I just added what I thought was an important graph from the WSJ article.. (Venkat)

Facebook use in a public school district

I think there are many ways that a school district could use facebook. Much in the same way we use this blog to extend the class discussion outside of the classroom, facebook could be used for the same purpose. Classes, sports teams, or teachers (3rd grade teachers, or science teachers, etc.) could all form groups. Many of these groups already exist for the school district I am looking at.

So I guess after thinking about this further, the question may not be how to use facebook but how to not over-use facebook. With groups popping up for every student organization, the school district may want to limit it's role and be selective about what presence it has. Else the students could be subject to information overload and ignore attempts by teachers to extend classroom learning, sports teams to provide infomation, and teachers to form groups and gain access to and learn from each other.

Facebook for Thermo

Facebook provides many interesting points of analysis for a company like ThermoFisher. Being a scientific company where intellectual property and also the process of innovation must be balance and leveraged in order to create and protect value, a thin line must be walked between open collaboration and also control over the limits of collaboration. Facebook's open style and ability to be data mined both directly and indirectly through intelligent spidering, provide serious threats to the intellectual property that the firm possesses (http://charlenecroft.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/facebook-privacy-and-data-mining/). Therefore having a social networking "strategy" would be important to the firm in order to ensure that the technology did not create too many unprotected information leakage points. It also provides many potential uses for collaboration including science research groups, the ability to create their own subnetworks of customers and researchers within the network, and also the ability to evaluate more macro-trends based upon user demographics in order to predict possibly where the entire research world might be moving through the use of their own intelligent agents. 

How Starbucks is Leveraging Facebook

Starbucks is using Facebook not only as a way to build their online community and create an environment for feedback and discussion amongst members, but also as a way to communicate with the public, much like companies do with their corporate web sites. The Starbucks Facebook page contains copies of their advertisements, company information, promotions, an events calendar, and links to other applicable content, which is what you might find at their corporate web site. It's just presented in a more web 2.0 friendly way. Starbucks also has its own Facebook app for "Starbucks Pledge 5" which is their campaign to promote volunteerism amongst its customer base. The idea behind the promotion is that you commit to volunteering 5 hours to a local non-profit/charity and you recieve a free cup of brewed coffee at a Starbucks location. Overall, I thinkStarbucks is using Facebook as a way to reach a younger audience that might not be its core customer base, but perhaps will be in the near future.