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As crowdsourcing was one of the recent topics in our course, I realised how important social media can be, not only in everyday social activities, but also in professional and business fields.

Houzz is one the platforms that also create opportunities for professionals. The website allows house owners to get inspiration for their households by sharing pictures, articles and ideas. Moreover, the website is a place for architects, designers and furniture manufacturers who can directly communicate with clients and be able to see what they expect and what they need and what their taste is. A project of a house is created together with a designer and a client. It is also based on other users’ ideas and designs. The platform simply links professionals with customers who can find unique products or interior designers who will understand their vision.

The professionals say that it makes their job much easier after seeing what their customers like. Additionally, they can directly communicate with them and share potential inspiration for their new homes.

However the main advantage of the platform is the ability for designers and creators to have a great reach for free. With more than 25 million entries per day, Houzz creates a chance for small entrepreneurs to be noticed by many potential clients. They are able to establish contracts online in various locations. The platform was a great change for many smaller businesses and their operations thanks to online facilities.

Do you think communication on the platform between designers and their clients can be effective? Do you like the idea of hiring an architect whose works you are able to look up? Is it possible that in the future we will not have architect offices because projects will be entirely run online?

References:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/10/16/for-2-7-million-home-designers-houzz-is-a-mighty-door-opener/

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This week’s topic involves benefits, issues and opportunities created by peer production and open source.

Peer production and open source have become popular practices in business environment and social media. With opportunities that are created by development of numerous networks and softwares, we are able to share ideas and knowledge.

All three articles relate to open innovation. An interview with Marten Mickos from Management Review discusses the relevance of open source innovation from business perspective of MySQL, world’s leading database vendor. The interviewer argues that innovation should not only be open-source based. Initially, product creation shuld not originate from contributors because they do not possess enough experience and knowledge. However, many ideas and tips from contributors generally result in great improvements or motives for creating products.

The second journal written by M. Zhang and F. Zhu, investigates motivation and incentives of free contributors. The authors conducted a research at Chinese Wikipedia from which they concluded that contributors are driven by social needs.

Eric von Happen and Georg von Krogh propose a “private-collective” model of innovation. It combines two commonly used models: private investment and collective contribution and their most beneficial attributes. In addition, if the size of a group decreases, so does the general performance of participants. Yet, it might be argued that we cannot simply assume that that the primary objective of all contributors is the need for socializing. Since the research is limited to online public services, the generalization is not valid for business environment as a whole. In case of scientific or technological research, the objective of innovation is driven by curiosity or personal goals rather than social needs. Moreover, the authors admit that the idea of “social effects” is too complex to precisely identify researchers’ motives.

Open innovation can be implemented more easily in technology or product creation. However, the real challenge for organisations arises in industries related to services. Nowadays, it has become less problematic to innovate a product thanks to social media channels and networks. How can services use open innovation in order to increase their capabilities? Therefore I decided to find a joournal that would elaborate on effective ways of implementing open innovation in the service sector. There are three ways to promote open innovation in the service sector:

• services should work closely with their customers in order to create solutions to problems
• organisations should focus on utility rather than product itself
• companies should become more engaged in customer’s organisation and processes through serving an entire process a customer is undertaking.

My two mini-case examples were about Unilever and LEGO. Both companies managed to incorporate open innovation in their business models and benefit from the changes to a great extent.

In concluson, in order to encourage innovation, maintain high performance and discourage freelancing, companies need to make contributors feel awarded and appreciated. The companies should collaborate with customers in order to solve problems, gain an insight in their needs and expectations that should be the vital concern of every firm that is willing to effectively use peer production and open sourcing.

References:

Chesbrough, H. 2009. Bringing Open Innovation to Services. MIT Sloan Management Review 52(2) 85-90.

Hyatt, J. 2008. The oh-so-practical magic of open-source innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review 50(1) 15-19.

von Hippel, E., and von Krogh, G. 2003. Open source software and the “private-collective” innovation model: Issues for organization science. Organization Science 14(2) 209-223.

Zhang, M. and Zhu, F. 2011. Group size and incentives to contribute: A natural experiment at Chinese Wikipedia. American Economic Review 101(4) 1601-1615.

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In one of the recent lectures, we discussed a very interesting issue – is there any alternative to Facebook? Many of us agreed that we are concerned about our privacy. Facebook has no qualms about selling our personal data to companies and overloading users with tones of advertisements. However, here comes the problem: if you don’t have a Facebook account, you practically don’t exist. According to Social Media specialists, an alternative to Facebook has just been born. Ello is a ‘simple, beautiful, and ad-free’ social network that aims at people who are tired of having their profiles ‘tracked, recorded and converted into data’.

Ello has been created this year by a group of artists and designers. Initially the platform was only private, however due to a great public interest the website has recently become public. Ello is currently invitation-only. To join Ello, you need to know someone that is already on the network. Alternatively, you can request an invitation by visiting the Ello Home Page. Since Ello does not allow advertisements,users can “choose to pay a very small amount of money” to add a favourite feature to their account on a permanent basis. The profiles itself can be described as a combination of Facebook and Twitter.

In my opinion, even though the interface looks very appealing, the company is not user-friendly. It seems to be problematic to identify certain features and option. However, the founders of Ello claim that the platform is constantely being improved.

To be honest, I am highly concerned about my privacy. Even though, I never use the ‘login-in with Facebook’ option, I clearly have been tracked by numerous companies that attack me with their adverts every day. My first impression of the website was so positive that I immediately requested invitation after looking at one public profile and reading the Manifesto. Unfortunately, it takes a while to create a profile, since the invitation does not come directly.

While I am impatiently waiting for my invitation, I was wondering what you think about the idea? Would you be willing to create a profile on Ello? Do you think it is a good alternative for Facebook users who are concerned about their privacy but still want to be a part of online Social Communities? Does Ello have a chance to become as successul as Facebook?

References:

Kaplan, A. M., and Haenlein, M. 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons 53(1) 59–68

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/11121502/Is-Ello-the-hip-new-Facebook.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/06/12/privacy-experts-say-facebook-changes-open-up-unprecedented-data-collection/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/12/facebook-ad-profiles_n_5487372.html

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Since Apple’s latest launch of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, there has probably been no single newspaper, magazine or TV news that would not mention Apple’s newest products. Apple as world’s most valuable company and second most valuable brand does not exist in Social Media. The company has no official profile of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Google or Pinterest. Yet, everyone talks about Apple! As we have already read in various course materials, businesses become more and more customer-centred and their interaction with cusotmers increases dramatically through Social Media (Li and Soonius, 2012). Therefore even Apple has finally decided to develop digital strategies. The company wishes to engage itself in discussions with customers through social networking sites. Moreover, it claims that traditional advertising is not as effective as it used to be. Currently, the main challenge for Apple is how to enter the world of Social Media and Social Media Advertising.

Do you also think that it is high time for Apple to enter the world of digital advertising and stay in direct contact with customers ? Is brand image and cusotmers’ reputation enough to achieve such great success? Has Social Media and Social Commerce really become such vital parts of business strategy that even Apple cannot avoid “being online”?

References:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/09/09/is-apple-getting-over-its-allergy-to-social-media/

Is Apple Anti-Social?