Summer+2009+Section+09-PJ+Week+12

__**Participation & Collective Action**__ - new forms of cooperation driven by technology. Gradual move from: * engineering orientation (early 20th century) * sales orientation (post-war) * market orientation (late 20th century) * participation orientation (21st century) Forrester’s Social Technographics Ladder -Groundswell – Catch the pulse //**Shift in thinking power**// -Increase in user generated content - collective intelligence -Decrease in Published content //**Shift in talking power**// -Traditional information source has changed -- Web 1.0 (read-only) to Web 2.0 (collaboration) -Centering Resonance Analysis (CRA) - Influence of words -Rise of blogs -- information, commentary, community, feedback //**Shift in listening power**// -Content pull -- feeds allow for aggregation of information in novel ways -Shifted expert power: traditional areas of power (e.g., mainstream media) shifting to a more distributed model (e.g., blogs) **//Shift in production power//** -Open vs. closed (blogs--mass media) -Communication vs. collaboration (viral video--crowdsourcing) -Crowdsourcing: peer production, collaboration, distributed/collective intelligences -Examples: * Dell Computer's IdeaStorm ("where your ideas reign") * Starbucks' MyIdea ("help shape the future of Starbucks with your ideas") * GM's Driving Change ("where we live online") //**Shift in political power**// -Obama Campaign - Obama successfully used the internet to his advantage ("listening, listening, listening, listening is the #1 tool"), whereas four years prior, the process was still nascent, as with the John Kerry campaign. -MyBarackObama.com - grass-roots activism, tied into Facebook for organization. Mozilla example: * Trying to build customer participation * Getting customers to "own" the product (e.g., become "emotionally committed") * Creating a "scaffold" for innovation The Starfish and the Spider metaphor: spiders cannot grow a new leg but a starfish can grow a new arm -- **example of a decentralized, distributed system being more resilient than a top-down organized system.** Smart Mobs example: amplification of human talent through coopoeration, communication, and computing technologies. "Intelligient" behavior -- the wisdom of crowds, network links Takeaway Points * Influence Instead of Control * Branding Based on Trust--symbolic construct in the minds of customers * Invest in Relationships NOT Transactions * Risk is in NOT Participating Communications overall are experiencing a dramatic shift to the world of online social networking and collaborative influence. It appears that organizations and people who fail to engage in these modes of communication seeking to influence and control their own "buzz" will quickly learn that others are defining them as politicians, businesses, non-profit organizations, and even on an individual basis (ie. leaders, movie stars, sports stars, media personalities, etc.).

A GREAT article on mass internal collaboration []

__**Case Study: Bzzzz Agent**__



**Team Frowny Turkey** - To bee or not to bee? The team wants to keep the company blog open and use it to its advantage. They wanted to continue the transparency of the blog, but to a point: an enforceable policy on what is presented to the public would be beneficial and provide safeguards against disgruntled employees and improper dissemination of company records and data. Correct filtering could, in effect, create a "leaner and meaner" blog with salient news for its customer base and reduce potential crises for its PR department. It was pointed out that there are many avenues of potential use for a blog, but airing the company's dirty laundry and internal business practices for general consumption isn''t a particularly beneficial use.

Team Frowny Turkey found four primary reasons to keep the blog. First, to maintain corporate reasonability and transparency through the blog and allowing customers to comment. Transparency for the company comes in the form of responding to comments left by consumers. Second, traffic and activity will help improve search engine optimization. Link backs to relevant and interesting information provided by the company, will help boost the rankings in relevant search engine. This becomes very important in the world of social participation. The goal of a blog or any other form of social participation activity is to help boost SEO and help establish the context of Thought leadership in a particular industry or field. We believe the blog should be left open to help establish dominance in these two areas. In order to improve the effectiveness of the campaigns, a step by step social media seeding plan will prove helpful.



**Team AsATeamWeThoughtThat** saw value in the blogs as potential communications tools and as an "ideas environment" for Bzz Agents. We proposed that three separate blogs be considered rather than one that combines all BzzAgent constituencies into one blog. One blog would be for agents alone and would, primarily, be a place for sharing ideas for creating "buzz" about products in serving as an agent. We would consider creating incentives of some sort for participation and perhaps for the development of successful ideas in this environment. We would also propose the creation of a separate blog for employees that would be a conduit for communications on topics of interest to the BzzAgent employees (ie. benefit change announcements, new policies, memos, etc.). The blog would be monitored and filtered to ensure that constructive dialog is what gets posted and to keep the discussion strings on the issue at hand. All beginning content would be determined by management, which could include questions posted by employees. Communications would be maintained with those whose comments do not get through the filter so they understand why. The idea would be to improve overall communications. Employees often have the same questions and it's easier to answer them one time. There would not be anonymity in the employee blog. The requirements/standards of posting would be clearly identified. As for clients, we would also create a separate blog that is controlled that serves as a conduit for questions about the service provided by BzzAgent. In addition, we thought that there should be some investigation into the hiring process of BzzAgents. We were worried that the type of people in these positions might not be the trend setters they thought they were. This unpaid position seemed dangerously appealing to unpopular people who love to talk. Seriously, what kind of person wants to be a Bzz agent for sausage when the only payment for doing so is sausage. That's just weird. This could really hurt a brand and the image of BzzAgent. 
 * Team Top Gun...** We felt that continuing the blog did not increase the the customer experience sufficiently to justify maintaining it. We believe there are other less costly methods such as Twitter and Facebook that could acheive the desired results at a cheaper cost while still delivering value to the customer. There was also considerable concern about presenting divided and unprofessional face to the customer. We actually went on the old bee blog to see what was being said and the discussion included topics like, "what would it like to drive on the moon?" and "we left because we were fired." If the Bzz was to continue, we suggested adding a massive filter which helped focus on the core of the subject. The problem becomes that too many bloggers can become off subject making the discussion meaningless. But the main concern as mentioned above is sites like Facebook and Twitter are free. Why use BzzAgent when tools like this are already available? Also many of our current employees will continue to do what they can to put the company name out as well as maintain the unofficial BzzAgent blogsite.

It was interesting that after the BeeLog was closed, staff and users opened their own forum site at bzzz.heavenforum.com where the conversation continues. This is interesting in that it obviously served a meaningful purpose to those who have continued with the forum. It is also interesting that the BeeLog is still accessible to the public on the Bzz Agent website. This fact sort of supports the plan we presented in class, this being that many different free, user rather than staff driven social networking presences can provide users with their desired involvement as well as lead users back to the websites content, without taking up staff time (and company money) and letting the user guide how the tool is used.



**Team The Known Unknowns...** We suggested Bzzz continue with the blog feature. One of many ideas was to create a login system where users login and blog regarding the Bzzz products they are sampling. Each user receives points for their participation on the blog and gets rated by the Bzzz "Specialist" who has designed the site and monitors its success. Users who continue to add value to the site get accolades for doing so, such as prices and online recognition. We wanted to expand the blogs to include the clients and agents in order to increase the popularity of the company's blogs.