Facebook introduces internal business application named Workplace. How trustful is this service?

13

October

2016

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Facebook has from Monday the tenth of October on expanded their service called ‘Workplace’. Earlier only a thousand companies were allowed to use the system, but from Monday on all businesses can use it. This application is meant as an internal communication system for organizations. The service has to deal with competitors like Chatter from Salesforce and Yammer from Microsoft. Workplace has the same look as the Facebook homepage and many functions has been copied. The newsfeed, the chat, personalized pages and groups are available on the service.

Another feature on this service is the interactivity between organizations, called the ‘multi-company-function’. The biggest difference with Facebook is that the profiles on Workplace are not public. The software could be seen as an intranet, an internal network. Besides that, no adverts will be shown on the webpage. The revenue for Facebook consists of the subscription that have to be paid by the organization. Dependent on the size of the organization the subscription is one to three dollars per month.

I think that these costs are not the only costs businesses pay for the service. All information shared via the service will be saved on one of the Facebook servers. Facebook will know a lot more in the future about companies, employees, management and general information about the organization. Privacy will decrease and Facebook will earn more money on advertising on the right target, but how save is our data? And is it smart to share all this information with a company like Facebook?

There has been a trial the last twenty months, which is joined by around a thousand companies. The joining companies for the real version are for example Royal Bank of Scotland, Danone and Starbucks. I am curious about their ideas behind Workplace and what they expect in the future of the service. Why do they trust it with personal and sensitive information?

References:

http://nos.nl/artikel/2137056-facebook-lanceert-zakelijke-variant workplace.html

http://www.nu.nl/internet/4334273/facebook-brengt-zakelijke-dienst-workplace.html

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Will Donald or Hillary handle the explosion of new innovations?

12

October

2016

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Within a few weeks we know whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be elected as the new American President. A lot of opinions about the two are spread, which is in many cases a critique on both. Apparently, both of them have difficulties with telling the truth in the first debates. Approximately half of the facts Trump used in his debate were not true, which amazed me. How trustful are they?

Both of them have much experience in business or politics, but both of them are not grown up in a world like this. The question is, do they know what they are actually starting in a world and time in which the most significant technology expansions will take place. He or she must understand the new technologies and get the most benefit out of it for the United Stated, but for the rest of the world as well.

With the introduction of 5G internet, which will be rolled out in the next years, the world will change. Where earlier the technology industry focussed on connecting people with each other, 5G will begin connecting people with devices, and devices with other devices. This phenomenon is called the Internet of Things and exists already, but the upcoming years it will profoundly change the lives of many people.

Another innovation is the autonomous cars, which are also connected. The cars will deliver data, which helps to build smart cities. These innovations can cause a lot of trouble. Think of insurance companies with insurances for cars. Who is responsible when mistakes and damages appear? And what do you think of stopping hackers, when hacking becomes so easy? Data security will be more important then ever!

I have discussed two main problems for the upcoming years, but many more technology expansions will cause problems in society. Who would be the better president of US, Trump or Clinton? Eventually, the United States need a leader who understand how technology might help their constituents live better, more productive lives and craft the proper laws and rules to make that happen. I hope the US, as leader of the world, will handle this problem well and chose the right person as their president.

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Anti-social network

31

October

2014

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Creating a network, but using only social media. I don’t know if it is good development for the latest generation and therefor I post this video from Youtube about someone who disagree with it and brings up some strong and less strong arguments from his point of view.

Are the friends you have on platforms as Facebook also your real life friends and can you always trust them? I don’t think so, while the friends I have in real life will do anything for me, I think that Facebook is a place where everybody have hundreds of friends, but these aren’t always the best friends. The man in the video is clearly explaining that some people are friendless instead of having a long friend list on Facebook and think they are very popular.

I do not agree with everything he says, but I think that his main goal of this video is right. The youth of nowadays isn’t always aware of the effect of social media and that’s why this generation has to be warned for this effect. Do you agree?

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Social media influences the Business-to-Business market

30

October

2014

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We know that social media has a big impact on our dayly life and that businesses are trying to effect our behaviour. The minor was only focusing on this subject and how to connect with other people and the creation of a social network. The thing is, that we didn’t focus on the B2B market and that is what this blog is about. The B2B market is a big market and a lot money traveling through this market. That’s why I found it necessary to give some facts about this subject. Apparently there is more influence in this market than we think.

2014_B2_B_social_media_landscape_infographic_b2b

An infographic, made by a website about B2B marketing, tells me this:

  • The most used social platform is LinkedIn and this is not a big surprise for me
  • We see that LinkedIn is also generating most revenue, so it isn’t strange that this platform is used the most.
  • A bigger surprise is the use of video to contact other businesses. I would expect that written information would be used much more than video.
  • Besides, after we saw that LinkedIn is the most used platform, for brand awareness Twitter is the best social platform to act on. I expected that Twitter is a helpful platform in the B2C market, but I didn’t think that it is also very important in the B2B market.
  • More than half of the questioned businesses think that social is not very important in the B2B market.
  • The last surprising fact is that only 27% of the experts in a company place posts on social channels. I think that these people, who know the most of the company, will be better in reaching other companies than other and that they must post more. They have a lot of experience with the company and they are involved with almost everything that happens.

Apparently, social media has a lot of influence in this market too. What I’m wondering is the informality of social media and the connection with the B2B market. Isn’t it better to communicate only using more formal ways, like mail or via phone conversations?

References:

– http://www.b2bmarketing.net/knowledgebank/social-media-marketing/features/infographic-2014-b2b-social-media-landscape, 29 October 2014

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Anonymous chat app ‘Rooms’

25

October

2014

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Social media as Facebook is improving its use for users, but also for advertising companies, all the time. New features and new lay-outs are added by the organizations, to provide an easier use and give the users more possibilities. I think that sometimes these organizations just have to keep their social media as it is and it’s not always necessary to change.

On the website appleinsider.com I found an article about a new feature of Facebook. The feature is called ‘Rooms’, which combines the idea of traditional chatrooms with modern smartphones conveniences. The idea is to create rooms where people can communicate with others about a given subject. The rooms can be open, but also invite-only. The host of the group is able to change the lay-out and all other things in this particular room, so it’s a website of its own and you can compare it with a website as wordpress.com.

This new idea of Facebook is that you’re able to sign in for this feature without having an account on Facebook, so that it is really anonymous. But the article also said that if you use the same email account for Facebook and ‘Rooms’, Facebook is able to connect these two, which makes it less anonymous I think.

‘Rooms’cannot be called a social media. It is a place where you can connect with others, but without creating a network, because you have no idea to whom you are talking about a given subject. I would call this a forum and it hasn’t anything to do with the normal activities of Facebook.

The question is: Is it really necessary to change? The organizations can also satisfy people with keeping the same for a while.

References:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/23/facebook-introduces-anonymous-chat-app-rooms, 24 October 2014

http://www.nutech.nl/apps/3910969/facebook-introduceert-anonieme-chat-app-rooms.html, 24 October 2014

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Do brands engage their customers through social media?

25

September

2014

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Consumers spent their time on social networking nowadays for almost one out of five minutes. It represents an audience of nearly 1.2 billion internet users. Brands know this things and are competing on social media to increase their reach of campaigns and create engagement with their customers. It’s a new thing which is very complicated, but many researches try to make it easier to find the best way playing on these platforms. In an article I read they said: When the 1950s-era criminal Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he allegedly replied, “That’s where the money is.” For any salesperson wondering why she should use social media, the answer is similarly obvious: That’s where the buyers are. (Giamanco, B., and Gregoire, K., 2012)

Four articles connected to the subject described many ways in different social platforms to choose your best strategy for joining social media. The first one was about how to use the brands employees in communicating with the customers. According to the writers, brands would have to use all their employees so not only the sales and marketing department. I disagree, because these are the people who are trained and educated to do these jobs.

The second article was about different Twitter channels and its effect on corporate reputation. The researches tried different Twitter channels to see if, for example, the design factors influence the brand’s engagement.

The third article was about increasing the reach of your campaigns. For example, do not focus on quantity and just post especially funny and creative advertisements. It’s better to use photos and text, because customers don’t have the time see all videos appearing on their timeline and external links aren’t very attractive.

The last article is from The Guardian and it says that companies miss 80% of customer engagement opportunities. Because of this very high percentage, the writers gave away three principles to use and to use the opportunities which normally have been missed. These three are: engage and empower your workforce, get personal with your customers and create advocates.

To see how brands are using the social media and to see if it’s effective in creating engagement, I found two cases. The first one is Coca-Cola. The creation of its Facebook page was strange, because it is created by two big fans who were allowed to keep the page. This means that Coca-Cola didn’t have any influences in how the page will be used. The brand chose to connect their customers with each other and tried to create this word-of-mouth promotion which is succesfull.

The second case was about Starbucks. The brand is very active on social media and especially on Twitter. The creation of an extra Twitter channel, where customers are ably to apply new ideas, became a big success. The normal channels are used to give suggestions, ask question and complain. Many employees are working on this and that’s why these one-to-one conversations became so successful.

 

References

 

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