The consumer was the king and we all seemed to know it.

According to the fifth annual PRWeek/Manning Selvage & Lee Marketing Management Survey, polling 279 U.S. chief marketing officers, VPs of marketing, and marketing directors and managers, and focussing on new media/CGM, integrated marketing and industry ethics, only about 12% respondents had CGM on their mind when considering marketing platforms.

Now why is this so?
CGM or consumer generated media is gaining imporatnce as the newly empowered consumers finds himself with a voice to express his opinions and post purchase emotions.

Organisations on one hand have a set of satisfied customers generating content about their positive experiences and influencing product adoptions by their friends and relatives, and on the other hand have to contend with unhappy customers sharing their woes with the threat of doing so in a technologically empowered digital environment capable of replicating the thoughts umpteen times, as people take to reading each others creations and linking to them.

As per the ADAGE article on the above subject, reasons for non-adoption of CGM as a promotion tool by several organisations stems from-

1. Fear of empowering a consumer to the point of no control.
2. No clear ROI on the subject yet.
However, the cost-effectiveness of this media over traditional media is bound to eventually let it get into vogue sooner or later.

Agreed that organisations are wary of embracing a medium where the echo of the consumer voice may be uncontrollable, but in an era where marketers are talking about
-Customer Relationship Management
-Customer Lifetime Values
-Increasing customer shares rather than market share
-Product Customisation
-Customer data warehousing and datamining and
-Using customers as brand evangelists,

will it not be contradictory to keep the consumer voice muffled?...After all, the consumer was the king...and we all seemed to know it.

Society concious corporates and the consumer

Coca-Cola recently entered into a tie-up with environmental group WWF. As part of a $ 20 m initiative, Coca-Cola is investing in 8 fresh water programmes overseen by WWF in regions where it has bottling operations.In return WWF will advise the drinks firm how to improve it's use of water , make it's bottling operations more efficient and reduce it's carbon footprint.As companies balance their objectives of profits, by focussing on the consumer, while also taking care of society's interests, the Societal Marketing approach to marketing is much in focus.

In an era of environmental problems, resource shortages, population growth, worldwide economic problems and neglected social services, there is a rising need of organisations which are sensitive to these issues to adopt the SOCIETAL MARKETING CONCEPT .

This concept of Marketing leads organisations to determine the needs and wants of target consumers and deliver desired levels of customer satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that maintains or improves the consumer's and society's wellbeing.

Responding to nutritional concerns across the world, the $11 billion Kellog's company has decided to phase out advertisments targetting younger children for most if their products in case they do not meet nutritional guidelines.Mc Donalds has started churning out advertisments for adults. As consumer advocacy groups fight against anorexia across the world, Uniliver has announced a set of guidelines barring subsidiaries from using excessively thin models in a bid not to promote unhealthy 'slimness' in their advertisements.

Approaches like the above showcase the dedication of the organisations towards consumer welfare and positively influence their credibility. As more and more corporates embrace the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility and consumer welfare, good corporate citizenship breeds not only consumer satisfaction, but also aids corporates in their efforts towards customer aquisition and retention.

Social networking and the collaborative environment

An interesting post by Eric Kintz, CMO, HP to take a look at Facebook's marketing potential.Early explorations for facebook's potential for marketing

How facebook's integrated collaboration environment could be a one-stop shopping avenue is described best in The Teenybopper Network by Andrew Mc Afee, Associate professor, Harvard Business School. His description of Facebook as collaborationware that spreads like wildfire and what exactly motivates people to get involved with this technology facilitated network building -"The desire to be popular and make friends" sums up the concept behind the ever increasing numbers on these social networks.
Also,
Facebook now open to enterprising developers talks about the innumerable applications being offered to developers to customise facebook to needs of the enterprise.

Another interesting post at the Gilbane Group Blog Facebook and enterprise 2.0 throws up kindof unexpected results. On a query on which collaboration technologies youngsters would use over the next 2 years in their jobs, email emerged at the top of the list. This was fairly acceptable considering that email is the primary source of interaction ad formal data communication in any enterprise today, but the tremendously low expected usage of blogs/wikis and a networking platform like facebook was a departure from the current picture emerging with the increased usage of these networking platforms.After all, appearances are deceptive!!

Measuring Customer Satisfaction

As the value of customer retention increases manifold and becomes as important as customer aquisition, measuring customer satisfaction has gained impetus 'coz the key to customer retention is customer satisfaction. A highly satisfied customer is likely not only to indulge in repeat purchases,recommend the company and it's products, have lesser problems with pricing fluctuations, gives feedback and may be easier to service.

Methodologies for Measuring customer satisfaction-

1.Complaint and suggestion systems.
2.Customer satisfaction surveys.
3.Ghost shopping.
4.Lost customer analysis.

As I studied a whitepaper on Customer satisfaction metrics from Netpromoter , the strategy corresponding to the second methodology of customer satisfaction survey was thoughtful. While collecting customer satisfaction data, it made sense to collect information corresponding to repurchase intentions and likelihood of a customer recommending the product and brand to another consumer.Analysing data for satisfied, dissatisfied customers and further taking a look at those dissatisfied customers who could pose as detractors and generate negative inputs about a company and it's products made thorough sense.

NPS-The Net Promoter Score
By simply querying consumers on
"How likely is it that you would recommend (Company X) to a friend or colleague? " the "Net Promoter Score" or NPS, can be calculated. The NPS is simply the percentage of customers whose answers identify them as promoters minus the percentage whose response indicates they are detractors.

Three Categories of Customers
NPS is based on the fundamental perspective that every company's customers can be divided into three categories. Customers can be categorized according to their answer to the above Question based on a 0-to-10 point rating scale with "0" representing the extreme negative and "10" representing the extreme positive end.

Promoters (those who answer 9 or 10) are loyal enthusiasts who keep buying from a company and urge their friends to do the same.
Passives (those who answer 7 or 8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who can be easily wooed by the competition
Detractors (those who answer 0 through 6) are unhappy customers trapped in a bad relationship.

A proactive approach towards collecting and analysing this data appears mandatory in an age where customer complaints no longer are an index of a company's customer relationships. More than 96 percent of dissatisfied customers do not complain, most just stop purchasing from a company.

Understanding that a customer is not dependant on an organisation, but the organisation is dependant on him, appears to be the fundamental goal of any organisation.After all, Managing Customer Relationships towards more satisfied customers is the order of the day...

Case study from Brandingwire

Interesting new blog containing case studies and having a set of bloggers solve them independently. The first case study from
Branding wire is about a fictitious coffee company and the objective is to work out a strategy for growth and expansion. Ideas of contributors range from branding strategies to expansion plans, to extensive market research with the current consumers, to managing customer relationships, developing web strategies for publicity, capitalising local strengths, employee training to kiosks etc. An exhaustive list of ideas..

The one that stuck a chord was the idea on using Coffee outlets for Social Networking by The Branding Blog
In the era of social and Business networking, using these premises for the same, would definitely act as motivation for the social groups and adding an image angle to the offer, can make way for elite/premium social groups to get associated with the coffee chain. This will automatically take care of the word of mouth/buzz marketing as interested groups would like to be part of the clique.The relationship equity can be built upon so that customer's tend to stick to the brand beyond subjective or objective assessments, so much so that sticking to that brand of coffee becomes a habit.
Using social media further, adding access to internet based social networking at such a hangout can further set the revenue registers ringing.

Adding further to Drew Mc Lellan's idea of collecting data to gauge a customer's point of view, maybe some online communities can be established to have people share their coffee experiences...rather than interviewing customers, maybe an online site where they could briefly document their experiences before leaving, and hence be part of the 'Coffee' community....

As suggested by Brand Impact
" go after influential bloggers; find a large number of bloggers inside and outside the coffee blogging arena, and send a complimentary 1/2 pound bag. Ask for their input, either privately or publicly (on their blogs). Bloggers like coffee (by and large), and have an outsized influence"

Having satisfied customers create content about their experiences is bound to set off a positive chain which is much more beneficial than any other marketing or brand building tool....After all, satisfied communities not only indulge in repeat purchases, but also are great customer advocates....

Can social media be used by corporates to manage customer satisfaction?

It is common place knowledge that
Customer Satisfaction=Customer Perception minus Customer Expectation.
If the client perception of the product delivered is lower than their exepectations, negative satisfaction is the result.
If however the client's perception of the product delivered exceeds their expectations a positive level of satisfaction is achieved.

Companies have by far understood that by effectively managing the three elements of this formula, they can ensure client satisfaction and hence garner competitive advantages.
The question here is...Can social media be used to manipulate the above equation to garner positive differential between perception and expectation.

1. Can companies use this media to reduce customer expectations?
I guess yes, by being conservative and talking about their products with realistic expectations.
Customer expectations are typically based on past buying experiences,the opinions of friends, and marketer and competitor information and promises. However, reducing customer expectations too much can satisfy those who buy, but may attract few customers and can create a risk of competitors enticing the prospective customers with better products. So, for starters, this may not be the right approach.

2. Can companies use this media to increase customer perception of value?Definitely .
Social media can be used efficiently in 2 ways to achieve the above.
a)Companies can set up corporate blogs which are sophisticated brand building and product positioning approaches.By managing the customer's subjective and intangible assessment of the brand, they can increase the brand equity, hence adding to the customer's perception of value.
b)Companies can ride the CGM wave,and by suitably incorporating the same in the marketing mix,identify some evangelists. It is clear that a few influencers can generate a great number of product mentions if they decide to feature a particular product or service in their blogs. By building relationships with these individuals, companies can not only have positive media generated about them, but also increase the value equity of it's products in terms of quality, price and convenience.

Both the above strategies(a&b) can aim at increasing customer perception of value for the company and it's products. Agreed that customer perception is a final function of the quality of the product delivered, but considering an optimum condition where the product is of standard quality, an increased customer perception of value for a company's brand definitely helps in increasing the level of customer satisfaction.

The era of empowered consumers-why do consumers generate content?

At times, as customer expectations are met and desired level of customer satisfaction achieved, a company is left with a happy customer.
What is a happy customer most likely going to do?
He is going to-
1.Refer to the company's product happily whenever he engages in a conversation in that regard.
2.Influence other people to adopt the same product.
3.Indulge in a repeat purchase.
4.Create positive content about the company in case he is part of any web 2.0 social media components.
5.Provide Feedback and maybe product related ideas to the organisation.
point of view

So far so good.
An unhappy customer is most likely expected to work on opposite lines.

The question is-
Why does a consumer bother to create positive/negative content about a company based on the product that he has used?
1.Empowerment-
The feeling of empowerment is unique. It gives a consumer an immense sense of satisfaction to know that they have a tool to get back to the company they have bought a product from.
2.Helps a consumer augment his self-concept-
The thought that content generated by him may later be read and analysed by the concerned company gives a consumer a feeling that he has the ability to contribute to the customer management and feedback analysis systems of the company and becomes a primary motivator to make him create content.
3.Catharsis-
CGM has provided a medium to the common man to unload his thoughts and sentiments.
4.Conversation-
The ability to create a conversation tool to build a community of people using similar products and airing their views.People love to talk and share their experiences and when a tool is available, why not.
5.Project a public self image-Consumers also try to develop a personal brand through the content they generate.

As organisations strive to be more Consumer centric,it is the consumer who finds himself suddenly becoming powerful, with the ability to influence the reputations of organisations. Managing consumer relations and aiming at consumer satisfaction are no doubt important keywords for the success for any organisation.

The 4 C's of Marketing

Chris Brown on the Marketing and Branding Blog talks about the C's of marketing

In a customer-centric era where
1.organisations aim at gaining competitive advantage by creating and managing excellent customer relationships
2.The emphasis is as much on customer retention as customer aquisition,

marketing tools have also evolved from being product focussed and seller focussed to customer focussed.From a buyer's point of view, each marketing tool aims at delivering a customer benefit.

In the words of Philip Kotler, a parity can be established between how the 4 P's( of marketing deliver a customer benefit and can pave way for the 4 C's of marketing

Four P's vs Four C's
Product=Customer Solution
Price=Customer Cost
Place=Convenience
Promotion=Communication

Success will arrive at a company's doorstep when it uses the correct combination of the 4 C's and by developing products as per customer needs, provides economically viable options conveniently to it's customers through the appropriate means of communication.

Levels of social participation in Social Media

As per the Social technographics report published by Charlene Lee of Forrester Research, there are six levels of social participation in social media in the U.S.This comprises creators, critics, collectors,joiners, spectators and inactives.Interesting comparison of Apple and Dell users and relevant from the point of view of marketers who can identify their target market and which rung of the ladder they are on, thereby creating appropriate strategies towards using web 2.0 for onlime marketing and branding, developing customer relationships, and using customers from a CGM and customer evangelism point of view.
However, if we consider the case of a country like India, where the total population is something like 1,129,667,528 and 40,000,000 web users , with a .035% web usage, the majority of the population would be in the inactive segment.How relevant something like this would be in an Indian context is something for only the urban population to decide.

Leveraging CGM for understanding Consumer Behaviour

As consumer generated media reflects the voice of the consumer in a huge way, the study of Consumer Behaviour has now got a new source of information that can be tapped.
Wikipedia defines CGM as
"Consumer generated media (CGM) originated as a reference to posts made by consumers within online venues such as internet forums, blogs, wikis, discussion lists etc., on products that they have purchased. Shoppers who are researching products often use other consumers' opinions when making buying decisions."

As huge volumes of User generated content floats around, organisations need to sit up and take note of the voice of it's empowered consumers.As prospective consumers rely on the opinions of the already existing consumers, leveraging CGM and channelising it appropriately has become critical for organisations to understand and manage market performance.This creation of social media is now influencing consumer behaviour, affecting product positioning and driving brand reputations in such a big way, that the power of the ordinary content creator can no longer be ignored.

As per reports published by Nielson Buzzmetrics, there were as many as 25 million blogs, 90,000 Bulletin Boards & Online Review/Feedback sites, 45,000 Usenet newsgroups, in end 2006, and the huge volume of daily postage data( daily postings for blogs:1,500,000, the online sites: 3000,000 and the newsgroups: 225,000) generated by the above has made CGM a force to reckon with.

The message is clear-These new social media tools , by giving birth to CGM have changed company relationships with their consumers from a unidirectional "attract customer" strategy to a culture of participation and co-creation. As consumer voices start echoing, the need is to establish a meaningful interaction with them and use them as advocates for the company.

A miniature case study on Dell shows how CGM has started raising it's head...well the head can be ugly too at times....

Dell has a blog called Direct2Dell, which it claims is for one-to-one communications with DEll. With over 800 inbound links, the site can boast a respectable Alexa traffic rank of 72,529.

Further a Trend Result by the keyword "Dell" on Blogpulse indicates that in May'07, the word 'Dell' found place in almost 0.475 percent of total blogposts.
Also, a technorati search reveals that the total no. of blog posts about Dell is 688,024 and 3025 blogs have already written about Dell.

Sounds interesting. But is it?

Consider what this dissatisfied user posted on the Dell blog-

"I use other social networking sites with a much broader reach than most blogs... the videos, discussion groups and online postings are just as anti-dell as ever and this is creating an impression (negative at the moment) on the entire generation of purchasers dell needs to win over. Dell needs to watch carefully what is going on in those areas of the internet as well.
Me? If I am unhappy with dell and shop elsewhere, Dell will miss selling me probably 5 more computers in my lifetime, add in 5 for my wife too... (we won't calculate friends who learn of our nightmares and also choose not to shop Dell, the figures are too hard to quantify here), so no big deal in the grand scheme of things, BUT if they also lose (for example) my daughter, her friends, their friends, etc. they stand to lose a further 12 sales (for each person based on a purchase of one computer every 5 years) in their lifetime! On Facebook alone she has 162 friends! This should be setting off alarm bells across the board."

...And if this was not enough, the concerned gentleman maintains a blog called Dell Hell revisited....A quick read tells you that it is clearly a 'I Hate Dell' Blog.

To further take a look at Dell's woes, courtesy CGM, A video on Youtube, supposedly called the 'My PC is on Fire-Dell Laptop Tribute Video( Numa Numa Song) which is apparently a parody of a pop song, and is aimed at Dell has as of now attracted 229,076 views. It has 463 comments and has been favourited over 1200 times. The power of replication of data and how it travels virally across the internet is better left unsaid.

And the impact Dell is facing courtesy this negative CGM drive is eventually something that Dell needs to measure and understand. In a business universe where Customer Collaboration and Advocacy are the new found norms, it is time Dell wakes up to these new challenges to face its 'EMPOWERED CONSUMERS'.

Employee communities in the web 2.0 space

Sandeep Dadlani's post on Linked-in across the extended flat world enterprise reiterates the need of an information structure within an organisation wherein the offerings of Web 2.0 can be leveraged to gain access to an employee database with personal information and probably employee photographs to get a personal feel of the entire setup. He sites geopgraphical locations as the primary cause for organisations to feel the need of sucha set up. This is very relevant with respect to developing an employee community where employees can communicate and collaborate with others with si,ilar skillsets and objectives and at the same time giving them a forum to voice their views. Communities are important not only as they provide employees a sense of belonging, but also an opportunity to showcase their achievements. Networking helps them develop affinity with other members at the workplace while simultaneously increasing the approachability of the members at the higher level.The ease of access provided by this model definitely makes it a viable option for organisations.Several organisations have already developed such communication models-The Sun Microsystem blog system is a case in point and the site statistics are impressive-
Total weblogs: 3200
Total users: 3557
Total entries: 67200
Total comments: 63417
The ideology behind floating the blog is aptly reflected in the fine print on the first page:
"This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything."
Well, employee opinions matter...don't they...and as the 67200 entries show, it looks like...employees do have a lot to say!!!!

Infosys Blogs...contd....

Mohan Babu, who blogs at the 'Managing Offshore IT Blog ' at Infosys tells me that Infosys has several more blogs. Thanx for the info Mohan.
The other blogs are
IT Matters:A blog for IT professionals interested in improving corporate IT performance and making IT needs evolve to support the business in a flattening world.
Livewire: An infosys blog for the emerging communications industry.
Infosys-Microsoft Alliance
Managing Offshore IT-Offshore Management Framework: The key to managing projects across time, distance and cultures
SOA–Snake Oil Applied?: An infosys blog on the application of SOA.
Think Flat
Web 2.0:Web 2.0 is about harnessing the potential of the Internet in a more collaborative and peer-to-peer manner with emphasis on social interaction.

As i ventured into the Web 2.0 blog, the archives made interesting reading. However the number of posts are few. Started in October 2006, the blog can boast of only 7 posts. Ain't that too less for a company the stature of Infosys?

The posts obviously are impressive. I like the post on
Dimensions of differentiation in Web 2.0 Business Models". The dimensions drawn include Differentiated User Interfaces, Differentiated peer-to-peer interactions and collaboration mechanisms, Differentiated Network participation,Differentiated collective intelligence creation and Differentiated aggregation mechanisms...Interesting.

Corporate Blogs and their objectives

Corporate Blogs are now becoming authoritative sources of information regarding a company. There value and importance can be gauged when a simple technorati search on the word ' Corporate Blogging ' yeilds more than 19000 results. Considering the amount of buzz generated by the same, their importance with respect to leveraging consumer intelligence and magnifying success stories is now undeniable.

As Linkedin launched its corporate blog , the objective they stated was interesting-
"Linkedin was started with the goal of helping you manage your professional relationships better, and today we’re launching our corporate blog to not only help you leverage LinkedIn more effectively but also to provide you a sounding board for all things LinkedIn. So, if you’re looking for a singular information source on LinkedIn with regular updates on upcoming product features, tips-and-tricks, and events or if you’d just like to hear about all the fun stuff associated with working at LinkedIn, you have reached the right place."

A query on the objective behind the Corporate Blog of Bill Marriott, CEO , Marriott Hotels states the following blog objective-
"The purpose of the blog is to create a forum for people to interact with Bill Marriott. We're proud of our culture, history, service excellence, and especially our 143,000 associates whose Spirit to Serve makes us so successful. Part of what makes us great is our belief in service to the customer and Success is Never Final.This blog allows us to hear from you and build on the community that we've nurtured for 80 years."

The DellBlog-
"Our goal is to build Direct2Dell into a community that’s driven by direct communication. We hope to provide you insights into Dell and the employees that drive the company forward."

Digital Straight Talk is a blog produced by Cox Communications. It's a source of views and news on the many issues affecting broadband providers and consumers.
"High-speed Internet, cable telephony, HDTV and a whole host of related innovations and issues in the digital space have created intense competition among providers. And, where there’s competition, there’s no doubt info overload for consumers and others trying to make sense of it all. With Digital Straight Talk, we want to make sure those in the industry, consumers and others who care have a clear understanding of our vision, direction and opinion."

Corporate Blogs are set up by companies to-
1.Build Product Brands.
2.Create a customer-centric approach for the company.
3.To give people a contact point by attaching a face or name they can interact with, hence catering to the concept of relationship building.
4.Create a buzz about New product/project launches.
5.Act as a source of consumer redressal.
6.Act as a source of viral marketing. Its a place where people chat about the company and the products and if they talk well, well you've got a word of mouth campaign already started.
7.Create communities for communication, collaboration,customer-interaction.
8.Image building purposes by showcasing any good work done by the company.
9.Showcase any achievements by the company and any recent successes...

At the end of the day it all boils down to securing more customers and retaining already existing ones....broadly....add to the value perception of a company's customers!!
Don't you think Customer Relationship Management is the ultimate goal of any corporate blog?

Internet etiquette_How to practise listening while communicating online

Effective use of interpersonal skills in communicating online is an essential component in making and keeping the internet a positive and useful force, as technology ushers in newer features with each passing day.

Online communication is limited in its capacity to convey non-verbal meanings and relies on symbols, acronyms, abbreviations and formatting styles instead.

Active listening-
Listening is the process of receiving and constructing meaning from and responding to verbal, non-verbal or online communication.

In a typical imterpersonal interaction, Social Psychologists state that usually 40-50% of meaning is lost in the transmission of messages from sender to receivers.While Language, noise related issues, misinterpretation of body language, ineterpersonal issues along with receiver distortion, defensiveness and distorted perceptions can be identified as the common barriers to listening, the same multiply in the context of online communication in the absence of face to face contact.
Hence it becomes important to be very careful in communicating online and the first step in this direction can be identified as Effective Listening.

1.Paraphrase and summarise comments made by others.Simply responding to other people's messages by an 'i agree' creates a feeling that reading or listening in this context has not transpired.
2.If you need to quote from the sender's message for clarity, select only the most relevant statements foloowed by your comments.
3.Ask questions. Empathise.
4. Do not immediately interject your own thoughts and feelings, while listening to(reading) thoughts and opinions of others.
5.Use online abbreviations , contractions, emoticons and acronyms sparingly.While a smiley may soften a comment, too many are a clutter.
6. Avoid perceptual biasisand stereotyping.

Hence to be able to communicate effectively online , one must do away with self fulfilling prophecies and concentrate on seeking intent, focussing and trying to analyse the written matter-Because at the end of the day 'the most basic human need is to understand and be understood.The best way to understand people is to listen to them.'

Indian Firms enter the Blogosphere

Abhijit Bhaduri at the Frito Lay Blog sent me an interesting link on an article on Blogging which appeared in Asia Times in HongKong.Indian Firms enter the BlogosphereThanx Abhijit...

Eric Kintz's response to Corporate Blogging and CRM

As i pursued my quest on Corporate Blogs as a tool for CRM, I decided to query a few writers behind these blogs...Response from Eric Kintz, CMO, Hewlette Packard, to my query on Corporate blogging as a tool for CRM

“As HP is substantially into corporate blogging (am an avid reader of these blogs), do u think it has been successfully able to levearage these blogs from a CRM point of view?Vandana”

“I think that blogging is still unproven, but is a great way to provide a personalized dialogue with customers. The vast majority of my readers are HP customers and they have through my blog a personal interaction and personal dialogue about what HP is trying to accomplish in the marketing space. Eric”

Corporate Blogging and Infosys

Infosys has a corporate blog, “ Think Flat’ launched in 2006, after CEO Nandan Nilekani had discussions with Stephen Pratt, Head of its Consulting unit. Contributors include infosys board members, unit heads and executives.

In the words of Nandan M. Nilekani, “ You can’t run companies the old fashioned way anymore.The new challenge facing companies is a combination of demographics, emerging economies, globalization, technology, flat world and regulation” With this thought in mind, Infosys launched Think Flat( Source:http://thinkflat.infosys.com)

Infosys exceedingly believes that there existed a role for a trusted partner who could provide advice, guidance, consultation to help customers make a transition. Hence there existed a huge potential for commencing a dialogue with the clients, instead of simply sharing the perspectives of several of its senior executives, thereby lending greater credence to the thoughts behind Infosys.This thought process gave birth to the Corporate Blog- Think Flat

The blog increasingly talks about the concept of a flat world and discusses strategies on winning in a Flat world. Thomas. L. Friedman's paper on 'The World is Flat' made interesting reading. as he focussed on how a series of technological developments have contributed to globalisation and hence the concept of a flat world, his take on Globalisation 3.0 highlighted how the collaborative web had allowed individual's to work on a global scale.

As he talked about 'Flattening Technologies' , a couple of them were very relevant in changing the workplace climate and contributing to the evolution of workplace habits and relationships. Flattening Technology no.6 where he talks about Uploading and the impact of Open Sourcing, Blogging and finally Podcasting, is indicative of how web 2.0 has affected the typical corporate ambience.

His take on Flattener no. 10 where he says that VoiP, file Sharing and Wireless have put all the collaborative technologies on steroids is very true as these new technologies have provided such an ease to data-sharing that it has clearly changed workplace relationships from exclusive vertical ones to horizontal inclusive ones.

Truly web 2.0 has changed the environment in a typical workplace and also contributed to newer virtual relationships, between employees, between organisations and prospective clients, between organisations and current clients, between employees and management etc. etc. etc.

Web 2.0 Datasharing applications

The File Sharing Applications of the Collaborative Web have emerged as very important tools by creating synergistic atmosphere at workplaces and enhancing performance through transparency of data. In fact, as everybody moves forward to share their work, they have gradually emerged as resource pools of information, which can be tapped to improve productivity levels.

Youtube- Upload, view and share user generated videos

Flickr- Store, search, share and sort photographs

Slideshare- Host and share slideshows

Web 2.0 and politics

Web2.0 has proved itself as an excellent communication tool. If it's being used for marketing, then how can politics be far behind....if we take a macro view of the situation, politics to some extent is a form of marketing...marketing the candidate, marketing the political party etc.

Interesting evidence is available from overseas about the usage of this communication tool in politics...India of course cannot claim to be part of this...why would the Indian politicians bother... their vote banks lie in those lands where web 2.0 is of no consequence.

An interesting case in point is that of Barack Obama, a presidential candidate in the U.S elections. He started his own network My.BarackObama.com. Such networks help in-

1.Giving Visibility
2.Showcasing the entire campaign
3.Highlighting all good work towards social causes
4.Can generate online contributions and hence be part of the entire fundraising activity.

Hillary Clinton posted a message on Yahoo Groups -"What do you think we should do to improve health care in America"and got thousands of responses. She thus opened a new avenue to showcase her commitment to the welfare of the people, while at the same time opened up a discussion giving her own cause substantial visibility.
These tactics may not help a candidate win an election in totality, but they definitely open up a new avenue to reach the end-customer, who is the voter in this case.As more and more people join an online political network , courtesy the social causes they talk about, the volume of people a prospective political candidate can reach out to, at the click of a single button is amazing.

With Hillary already experimenting with online advertising, the time is not far when advertising on blogs,community sites and other high traffic websites will become the norm every election season.....

Web2.0, Networking and Image Building

Sat through a very interesting lecture by Bethany Cheney, the Marketing head, U.S.A. of Techtribe-an online community established courtesy Web 2.0. She spoke on
" Building the Brand of a Leader" and brought out how increasing visibility, networking appropriately and developing charisma were the key ingredients to a successful image building exercise, which inturn would be very useful for individual growth and success.

Her interesting observation that 'there are only six degrees of separation' highlighted the power of networking and how connectivity can be established between total strangers to accrue benefits for the others. Web2.0 in turn has opened a plethora of options to leverage this understanding of networking to build relationships.

These online communities have been setup for developing contacts with other people as well as sharing information and knowledge for growth,as also forge vital business associations. A valuable outcome of this new phenomenon is that senior corporate honchos, who could be well established names in their respective domains can service the community by functioning as mentors to the youth.The youth in turn can have the dual advantage of developing rapport with established industry names, as well as gain vital information through participation...