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Stamped is an application which records and shares all of user’s favorite things such as restaurants, books, movies and music and so on. Usually, people check the recommendations and reviews of the places or things they are going to go and do; however, it might be a little bit unsure for people who left those comments are stranger for us and their preferences may terribly different from us. Sometimes, even if we want to ask for the opinion from our friends, we cannot just find them on the spot. Therefore, Stamped is created to solve this problem. It allows users to see what are the favorite restaurants, movies, music, bars and books of your friends.

Stamped first arrived on iOS in November 2011, as an alternative way to show and share the things we like in real world. It is far from a rating system, instead of giving stars in rating, user just “stamp” it, meaning you approve. We can like, comment or even add items our friends share to our personal to-do lists on the app. Afterwards, Stamped even expands to the web version and try to attract more people by inviting some celebrities like Justin Biber, Ellen Degeneres to use the app.
Last week, Stamped was acquired by Yahoo in a deal whose terms were not disclosed.

The video below is the brief concept of Stamped.

 

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When I am searching some information for my case write-up, I find a website which is similar to Wikipedia, providing information for users’ questions, however in conversation format, Quora.

Quora was co-founded by two former Facebook employees in 2009 and known as a question-and –answer website. Users can cooperate with each other by editing questions and suggesting to other users’ answers, much resembling Wikipedia.  However, what makes the two different is that Quora combines more social feature. Users can comment and share good answers that they find on certain question and also vote for the best answer. The website answers people’s questions through “conversation” instead of directory format. And the sequent Q&A may even leads to new questions and vise versa. I see Quora as crowdsourcing; it utilities collective intelligence from the public, allowing questions to be solved faster, cheaper with diverse and rich discussion. Since everyone can share his or her opinion and open for discussion, the answer concluded should be the most approved and credible one. Namely, Quora functions in a collaborative and interactive way, gaining more credibility and socialization.

( Interface of Quora-http://www.quora.com/about)

Though Wikipedia is really helpful when searching for some information, I find Quora really interesting because it makes me feel that I am chatting with others instead of searching for information.  Users can enjoy the process of exploring answers and also offering some answers based on personal experiences and thoughts. Quora is defined as social question website; it asks users to log in with either Twitter or Facebook account. By embedding social networking, Quora can recommend some professional people from your friends list to answer your questions or even customize the answer for you. This may rely on the fact that people tend to help friends; so, our questions will be solved as soon as possible once our friends have noticed and the answers will be more personalized and catered to our preferences.

The video is briefly introduction about Quora. Take a look and browse through the website

 

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Online social networks is the topic of this week. First I will summarize the articles assigned this week and afterwards I will take Facebook and Google+ as my two examples to show their features and challenges respectively and at the end make a short comparison.

The first article, Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, was written by Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison. It defines social networks as web-services that allow individuals to build a public profile within a highly connected system, express personal thoughts and share information with who share a connection. Authors use three Friendster, MySpace and Facebook as examples to illustrate the pros and cons of social network sites. Also, it claims the experts are facing the problem of limited understanding to social networks.

In Network Analysis in the Social Sciences, Stephen P. Borgati, Ajay Mehra, Daniel J. Brass and Giuseppe Labianca try to look into the different emphasis between social and physical science. Also, they talk about the attributes of networks such as the relation between structure and communication speed as well as accuracy. Moreover, other concepts, for instance, six degree of separation and the idea of social- economic value are also stated to support the network phenomena.

Written by Robert J. Kauffman, Ting Li and Eric can Heck, Business Network-Based Value Creation in Electronic Commerce discuss how IT development influences the economic activities in firms and how it leads to business network. It begins with clear concept of business network- to combine the abilities of multiple firms, participants in a certain business network can produce economically and fill the demand of the market. Also, the article concludes the business network forms due to the cost reduction and efficiency addition; the improved informedness of both firms and customers bring about the demand-driven market, in which the business network succeeds through being flexible in production and also providing tailored service or products to fill specific customers’ need. Last, the stability of the network depends on the fair value sharing and the monitoring system to make sure value-maximization and equality.

I choose Facebook and Google+ as two examples, exploring their features and challenges respectively. Facebook is the largest social network site now with around one billion users by this year. Not only individuals can benefit from the site via social activities such as photos sharing and virtual games, but also businesses can do branding and advertising through Facebook. By taking advantage of users data, businesses can target at right customers to increase the ads effectiveness. As for Google+, it grows rapidly and aims to compete with Facebook head to head; besides equipped with similar social functions as Facebook, Google+ also has some distinguished features, for example, Google+ Sparks, Google+ Hangout and Google+ Local. Both of them become crucial roles in social networks, but they have to face the challenge of mobile marketplace from now since more people are using smartphone instead of PC. How to monetize the social network through mobile device and how to make progress to launch better social service are all issues needed to be emphasized.

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Social commerce is definitely a trend that both business and customers cannot ignore. I was an intern in a Taiwan-based public relation company and my team was in charge of the market development of Taiwan Rakuten. Rakuten, the giant and leader of Janpanese Internet industry, explored the first oversea market in Taiwan in 2008. It positions itself as the direct competitor with Amazon and eBay in terms of e-commerce. Therefore, due to the contact with the company, I had chances to know about the concepts and ideas of its business model and the optimization of e-commerce. Recently, Rakuten has engaged social commerce into its business.  So, it will be my pleasure to share something I know about the company with you. First, I will shortly introduce Rakuten Ichiba and then share some of its novel technologies regarding social media and social commerce to correspond to the topic the week.

(source: http://twitter.com/RakutenTW; http://global.rakuten.com/careers/business/global/strategy.html)

Rakuten Ichiba is a Japenses-based Internet company who focus on online shopping. So far, it has expanded to over 13 e-commerve markets ranged from Asia, America to Europe. These years, Rakuten has aggressively expand its global market, acquiring and cooperating with many companies related to e-commerce and social media. For instance,last year it acquired the bigggest Canadian E-reader company, Kobo, to broaden the market, competing with Amazon. Moreover, this year, Rakuten invested the popular social sharing website- Pinterest- with 100 million dollars to integrate its e-commerce business with social media; in June, the company acquired the Spanish online video service- Wuaki.tv- in the purpose of incorporating videos with its e-reader device, extending its digital goods eco-system. What makes Rakuten this successful is its unique business model: B2B with its two core values-empowerment and entertainment. The company provides a platform where merchants can sell products and service. Rakuten has EC consultant to support each merchant to run the business by online marketing; also, Rakuten University offers courses teaching new merchants the know-how of e-commerce. Empowerments means merchants can decide the way to present on the platform, compared to regular online shopping website, merchants in Rakuten can design their own images to express the personality, to be compelling. Furthermore, “ shopping is entertainment” the slogan of Rakuten, emphasizes each customer can enjoy the shopping process by browsing special webpage and at the same interact with others shoppers.

Speaking of Rakuten’s social commerce strategy, lately, Rakuten Ichiba has launched Super Social Shop Service (S4) to first integrate e-commerce and Facebook into a social commerce, helping merchants to build the online stores on Facebook, gaining more exposure and visitors. S4 is an application, which can help merchants to upload their latest products on both Rakuten Online store and Facebook; users can see the information much easier with the high exposure. Within social media, once one of fans shares or likes the products, his or her friends can also browse through the pages and discuss the product at once. Similar to the viral marketing, S4 make Facebook users can shop more efficiently and interesting. From the website, http://global.rakuten.com/newsrelease/2011/1006.html, you can know more about the social commerce strategy of Rakuten.

Besides, Rakuten Ichiba has actively developed new technologies to socially engage users. For instance, a similar technique that  Professor showed today about using big screen to match the clothes-KiTeMiROOM. After matching right clothes, users can even share the snapshot with friends to involve socializations and conversations. The following video is a tutorial film of the technique that got the Interaction Paper Award 2012.

(source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iAUhiJWfaY)

The other interesting novelty is the AR Hitoke, which is a shopping support system that visualizes crowds with their ratings/comments so users can tell which product is the most popular one and view the comments before purchasing. We can see the crowds really line up for certain item, just as what people do in real world and this also show the demographic analysis from the different color and size of the human-shaped figures. This innovation can truly engage users due to its highly entertaining and vivid features.
(source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73J1YNxTgC8&feature=related)

The new technologies really change our live in many aspects and its influence with the thriving social media. For me , it is quite exciting to witness this process of evolving to another shopping behavior-traditional door-to door shopping to online/ social shopping. How do you think about the applications that showed above? Don’t you think it is interesting? Share your feedback here! 🙂

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Today we talked about the Octopus card system in Hong Kong and this reminds me of the Easycard in Taiwan.

(http://www.easycard.com.tw/english/easycard/index.asp)

Easycard has been launched in 2002 and its applications are still expanding. In Taiwan, people can use easycard for various transportations such as metro, ferry, railway, taxi and high-speed railway. Moreover, Easycard began accepting payments for small transactions in 2010; a approximate total of 90 million transactions have been processed. These small transaction payments range from parking, bike rental, entrance fee to zoo to even city hospital.

Recent years, the Easycard corporation has worked together with several financial companies and banks to launch credit cards with Easycard functions ( Co-branded Easycard credit cards.) This allows consumers to pay fees easily and at the same time accumulate bonus. As for educational aspect, some schools combine student ID cards with Easycard functions, benefiting students in terms of student discount.

Nowadays, Easycard has been embedded to mobile chips, enabling transactions by phone. For example, HTC TATTOO became the first Android cell phone with Easycard functions. What’s more interesting, as mentioned in the class, Easycard functions are not limited to the card form but different ones like watches, rings and bracelets. The same idea happened to London Oyster cards.

(source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2011/08/01/oyster-cards-get-cute/)

Having used Easycard for many years in Taiwan, I find the best thing of it is the integration with the biggest chain convenience stores, 7-11. People can buy groceries; pay bills as well as various fees and purchase movie tickets through Easycard in the stores. You can finish almost every small transactions with a card in hand! This gradually forms a small ecosystem of Easycard in my country and truly bring many positive impacts on our lives.

To sum up, Octopus card had revolutionized the payment way of transportation, from traditional papers form to smart cards. So far, many countries have followed this trend and even surpassed it. To answer the question that Professor addressed today-if the Netherlands can optimize the smart card mechanism nationwide -I think it will be much harder due to cultural and geographical factors. Dutch people are used to riding bikes; the demand for taking public transportation is comparably low. In addition, the routes and stations are more separated, scattered than Hong Kong and Taiwan. That is riding bikes has more mobility than taking public transportation.

Since I am an exchange student and only been here for two weeks, I may not fully understand the Dutch lifestyle and thoughts.What do you think of the potential of Dutch transportation in terms of smart card?

Share your thoughts with us!