Corridor Conversations

A presentation i am giving early next week on Reputation & Risk Management from a perspective of a Social Media Practitioner.

My presentation focuses on these areas.

Guest Post by Euan Wilcox (Regional Managing Partner - The Upper Storey )

There is a lot of talk, and honestly a lot of contradictory information, about Social Commerce. No wonder some brands might approach the whole opportunity with some trepidation and caution. Fortunately for me, my agency The Upper Storey, and Dell, we jumped headlong into Group Buying at the end of 2008 way before the over-hype made the picture significantly more complex.

Some people might question if group buying is a significant part of social commerce. I would agree, I think its true relevance to the potential field is probably minor. But it certainly fits under the broader definition of social commerce and is one of the most talked about today. For me there is no point arguing definitions and I find the Wikipedia definition more than satisfactory: Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services.

The success of facebook and the astronomical growth in its user base has brought with it, its fair share of criticism around its privacy and content ownership policies. I have been closely following the debates and developments and even keeping a tab on start-ups that claim to rival facebook on the same issues. Let me tell you honestly I feel the same pangs about privacy and concerns of content ownership. And I am quite positive people in my age group and older groups feel the same way as well. But the truth here  is that it doesn’t matter what we think but what the younger users think and like, because the last i checked they are our future. And if I can make some bold predictions I would say that we wouldn’t be debating this as passionately many years from now, because the coming generation doesn’t give a shit about privacy or monetization for their IP. They will be intelligent enough to know how to adapt their lives around open networks. (Sorry I had to put it in the way they would). It’s probably something that will be relegated to government agencies to rally with networks but not because of outrage from the users but more from a perspective of protecting its citizens and keeping the peace.

Here are some of the reasons why I think the younger generation doesn’t really care

With the end of 2010 approaching us in few days , it’s a good opportunity to look back and check all that has transpired in the technology space, some of them have arguably made a big impact in our lives. There are no surprises that most of these breakthroughs are related to mobility and it’s based on the need for technology to entertain us and make us productive ‘on the go’. Some of these breakthroughs are innovative technologies that are completely changing the way we do things, but some have been ideas that have been brewing for a while and have taken flight in 2010.

Here is a list of some of the tech products and services which saw most of the action in 2010

Recently i was asked to put together my views on channel and reseller online communities and so i thought it would a good idea to share the overview slides with the readers of ‘Corridor Conversations. The enterprise community space is definitely hotting up with many organizations looking at linking up their partners and channel customers online in the form of communities or social networks. A simple but structured strategy is needed to make sure we understand what we as principal companies want out of this, and also how the channel can benefit from these communities. I hope that the simple concepts highlighted in the slide set helps you build out your own online channel community plans better. Click the ‘Read more’ button to see the slide show.

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