Social Dynamics

I took a class on Social Dynamics at Kellogg. The class was a lot about influentials, tipping points (in the context of viral marketing) and network structures. This blog explores a lot of research in the social network space.
http://social-dynamics.org/

Wish we had this in school? or maybe not?!

An interesting article that we came across! Would it be fun to learn this way or you prefer the traditional teaching method? In anyway, this really shows tech-savvy schools and teachers are getting students "interested" in doing their homework in a fun way.

Social Networking: TheirSpace

Perils of Having a Common Name! :S

The perils of having a common name are supposedly immense, especially in this age of social media. For instance, after our discussion in the SMS class, I thought it would be a great idea to search for my name on Google. Result? There are just not two “Richa Suri”s but multiple of them on the web. And what further complicates things is a few of us (yes, now we all “Richa Suri”s are “us”! :P ) are from the same home town - New Delhi. And the cherry on the top, it just turns out that one of my name twin also lives in the same locality and is supposedly my neighbor. *sigh * The saving grace is that our research guru ‘Google’ tells me that she is a great architect and not being chased by police! :P

I wonder if the first 3 pages of Google baffled me, then what about potential recruiters? I had to click on every link to check whether it is me or someone else. Would the recruiters have so much patience to connect these pieces of jigsaw puzzle and find the real “me” on these sites? Or is it going to provide a very distorted picture?

According to a study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers questioned are using social networks to screen job candidates. The study, which questioned 2,667 managers and human resource workers, found that 35 percent of employers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site. 

While most of these may seem like obvious stumbling blocks, what constitutes alarming behavior to a particular employer? Would photographs of a trip to Oktoberfest be considered inappropriate? What about a costume INSEAD party with the theme “Angels & Demons” or better still “Pimps and Hoes”? As Facebook continues to grow as an essential personal and business networking tool for most of the Web, these issues are only going to get thornier.

Well, I guess its too late to have a discussion with my parents on why they chose such a name, but would really like to know what all I can do, if I can do anything, to differentiate/tackle myself from my name twins. What if there is a really dangerous “Richa Suri” out there..? 

One way to look at it...

"Face to Facebook" - Social Media inspiring personal change

Here's the story of a woman who set out to meet all of her Facebook friends as a new year's resolution! http://www.odditycentral.com/news/woman-travels-the-world-to-meet-all-her-325-facebook-friends.html

McDonalds Social Media Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong

In case you haven't seen this yet, here's an interesting story about a campaign started by McDonalds that turns against it!

http://www.neowin.net/news/mcdonalds-twitter-campaign-goes-terribly-wrong

Dangers of Social Network Sites

Today it isn't difficult to understand that social media can be a threatening element to our privacy and personal lives. For me, I learned this lesson through actual experience rather early, back in 2004. Although the average Internet user in the U.S or Europe may think of Facebook, MySpace or Twitter when first hearing the term social network, the most dominant social network in my home-country is actually a locally-developed one called "Cyworld." Although its popularity is shrinking due to the Western giants headed by Facebook, more than 1/3 of Korea's 50 million population are users of Cyworld, with approximately 9 out of 10 people in their 20s owning accounts. The basic concept of Cyworld is not very different to Facebook - upon registration, you receive your own "Cyworld homepage" where you can upload pictures and posts while receiving comments from your friends. (Viewers of your homepage can also download your photos and re-post them on their homepage.) After completing my 2-year military service back in 2004, I also began to use Cyworld as a tool to "get back into the real world." Then I didn't really have a sense of how dangerous it might be to have personal information provided to the public. During the Athens Summer Olympics of 2004, a popular judo player of the same name as mine (Wonhee Lee) won Korea's first gold medal in Athens for the 66-73 kg division of Judo. Right after the winning match, people started logging on Cyworld to locate his personal homepage. Some were there to post congratulatory messages and some were there just to simply check out his personal life. Here more than 4,000 people random Cyworld users mistakenly swarmed over to my homepage and started downloading photographs of my family, my house, and my friends. I received more than 400 "friend" requests in just one day, and strangers started arguments on my homepage to confirm whether I was the right Wonhee Lee they were looking for. I called Cyworld corporate to complain, but did not receive a clear answer on how I was to cope with the situation. All I was told was that I should make sure to set my privacy settings from now on so that strangers couldn't view my personal information. Back then, the whole process seemed like a big hassle to me. Now that I look back, I realize how ignorant I had been. Although the whole culture of social media and the privacy issues that follow have developed to a stage where the users are now capable of controlling what goes onto the public and what not, I still believe that there are related issues that need to be dealt with on a company level. Social media is a tool that both the company and its users need to collaborate on in order to promote healthy growth. Although we are still going through many issues related to personal information and privacy issues, I'm just glad for the moment that the users of social media services are certain that their voices are heard. 

Gaining more hands-on in business during MBA

http://www.businessweek.com/business-schools/mba-electives-offer-handson-learning-01112012.html

Voila

Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up

January 23, 2012, 4:53 pm

By Nick DeSantis

The Stanford University professor who taught an online artificial intelligence course to more than 160,000 students has abandoned his tenured position to aim for an even bigger audience.

Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he has departed the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes. He made the surprising announcement during apresentation at the Digital – Life – Design conference in Munich, Germany. The development was first reported earlier today by Reuters.

During his talk, Mr. Thrun explored the origins of his popular online course at Stanford, which initially featured videos produced with nothing more than “a camera, a pen and a napkin.” Despite the low production quality, many of the 200 Stanford students taking the course in the classroom flocked to the videos because they could absorb the lectures at their own pace. Eventually, the 200 students taking the course in person dwindled to a group of 30. Meanwhile, the course’s popularity exploded online, drawing students from around the world. The experience taught the professor that he could craft a course with the interactive tools of the Web that recreated the intimacy of one-on-one tutoring, he said.

Mr. Thrun told the crowd his move was motivated in part by teaching practices that evolved too slowly to be effective. During the era when universities were born, “the lecture was the most effective way to convey information. We had the industrialization, we had the invention of celluloid, of digitial media, and, miraculously, professors today teach exactly the same way they taught a thousand years ago,” he said.

He concluded by telling the crowd that he couldn’t continue teaching in a traditional setting. “Having done this, I can’t teach at Stanford again,” he said.

One of Udacity’s first offerings will be a seven-week course called “Building a Search Engine.” It will be taught by David Evans, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Virginia and a Udacity partner. Mr. Thrun said it is designed to teach students with no prior programming experience how to build a search engine like Google. He hopes 500,000 students will enroll.

Teaching the course at Stanford, Mr. Thrun said, showed him the potential of digital education, which turned out to be a drug that he could not ignore.

“I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill,” he said. “And you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.”

This entry was posted in Startups, Teaching. Bookmark the permalink.

Private is no longer DEFAULT!

This is in continuation with our discussion in class on the 'We googled you' case. As mentioned by Professor Dutta in class, there has been a paradigm shift in the nature of information: from private by default moving to now, public by default. For many of us in fast track careers where finding free time is a challenge, managing our online profile is like adding another 'must-do' irritant to the never ending list. For example till that day I have never googled myself or in fact anyone else with whom I engaged in a professional relationship where I was on the advantaged side. For example, I googled people who were taking my interview but NEVER candidates I had to interview for recruitment. However this case and the discussion in class thereafter opened my eyes to two realities:
1. Anyone might be googled. Hence it is important to be conscious and aware of what your own online profile states about you, your political preferences, religious views etc.
2. Googling perhaps is not a bad idea especially when positions are important to the organizations, in markets which are not as stable, or geaographies which are not familiar.
While I firmly believe that everyone has skeletons in their closets and it is best to judge someone professionally, I also would not suggest that she be hired for that role. Not because there was anything negative about her on the internet (afterall it would be true for most of us), but because the negative news was very relevant to the position she was being considered for.

With time, I think there will be a rise of professional services akin to SEO, SEM for organizations doing this for individuals like us. Those with high powered careers, and very little time. I am not aware of such a service already existing for individuals, perhaps they do. But these will be becoming more widespread, pervasive and frequent.

SOPA

With SOPA, i am really worried about the changes it will bring to our online content.

Am i trying view the impact of SOPA and its intended design to stop the publishing of freely available content on the web.People have talking about the Privacy and Right to Freedom act.

I am actually viewing this as a Right to Information act".I cannot imagine a world where Wikipedia or other digital content is not freely accessible.Some people might say that this is USA specific law,however with the US still influencing and impacting foreign governments (MEGAUPLOAD arrests in New Zealand) this has truly become a global issue.

I am an entrepreneur and today if i want to i can collect information and build a business practically at zero cost because of the information available on the internet.This flow of information either through crowd sourcing or file sharing has helped many entrepreneurs in developing economies build businesses,Underprivileged  children gain access to quality education and nations emerge as global powerhouses.

This now brings us to the second point.The Economic impact of SOPA specially for developing economies.Governments all around the world should be looking to evaluate the economic impact of rights like SOPA,and the impact it will have either through lost revenues or gain in revenues in Industries which stand to gain (such as Media.TV.Movie et al).

Is this a deliberate attempt by the US government to stimulate economic growth or a result of powerful lobbying by the media companies?In any case this is  serious concern for us as business managers and future leaders.

A new approach to IT Recruiting. An idea to develop CIOs for the future?

An interesting approach to recruitment for packaged food giants ConAgra's IT internship program. They value a degree in journalism or biology as much as one in computer science.

Perhaps the liberal arts majors will be better suited to communicate the 'common language' that we all need to speak.

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/16/145309326/liberal-arts-degrees-an-asset-at-some-companies

The Joy of Quiet....until we get to Singularity

Today's class discussion on Singualrity was thought provoking for me. It's amazing how much we look forward to even a few minutes when we're not Connected and constantly receiving information!  Being not connected is becoming a 'luxury good' - due to its scarcity. Good read in the NYTimes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Two million good reasons- and a really bad one

Continuing the class discussion on losenning control while not losing it, here's a recent example from Israel on how something that has worked once, in this case a social media campaign for a leading bank, might kick back when duplicated in a new consumer environment.

In 2010, Bank Leumi of Israel launched the "1 million good reasons" facebook campaign, asking NGOs in need to produce 2 minute videos and upload them to the bank's Facebook page. The clip that got most "likes" was promised a 1 million Israeli Shekels prize to help promoting its cause. Despite minor criticism for the bank using the socially needed sector for self-promotion whileat the same time charging the highest tranfer and commission rates from the very same population, the campaign was considered a phenomenal social media marketing success.

Encouraged by its success, Leumi has decided to continue the project and double its investment in it; launching the "2 milliom good reasons" campaign and increasing the prize to two million NIS.

The beginning was optiimistic with almost 140 organizations registering for the contest and uploading clips to the bank's facebook page. And then came trouble.

"Im Tirzu", an NGO with the agenda of "promoting love for Israel" has uploaded its clip to the page. Content wise, it spoke of the need for national solidarity in the country with messages inside Israeli concensus. However, "Im Tirzu" was a political organization affiliated with the right wing in Israeli politics.

This has generated public outrage and the opening of a Facebook group calling on clients to close their Leumi accounts in protest of the bank allegedly allowing a political organization participate in the contest. Unfortunately, Leumi could not find the legal basis to disqualify "Im Tirzu" and the public storm has spiraled up in the next days with heavy media coverage and hundreds of account closure requests.

On December 12, 2011, in an open letter to the public, Leumi's management announced the freezing of the campaign. "Despite our good intentions, we found ourselves at the center of public controversy, which also harmed the organizations. A number of participating organizations contacted us to say that the atmosphere surrounding the campaign was discouraging and even damaging for them. As a corporation sensitive to the public, we concluded that at the present time, the model we had adopted was not achieving its intended aim. It was therefore decided that at this stage it would be best to halt the campaign, and later on to assess the best way to attain our goals."

Commentators mentioned that despite the fact that this campaign seemed to be in line with the overall social trend that has swept the Israeli public since the wave of social protest that started in July 2012, Leumi did not anticipate the increasing willingness of the Israeli customer to use his purchasing power as a weapon to punish corporations. For marketers, this was bad news.

Marketing managers cannot help asking whether any initiative is worth the risk at this time and atmosphere. The answer is yet to be found.

Here is a video that gives an overview of what the whole PIPA/SOPA bill is all about that is being introduced in the US Congress: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa

SOPA (soup in spanish)

Related to the discussion we had on Monday about Wikileaks, you can see in the news that the US Congress is considering legislation that would allow the US attorney general to seek a court order against "rogue sites" (or websites that infringe copyrights in the US and are located outside the US). This includes not only well known copyright infringements such as movies and music but also prescription drugs, which are bought online from countries where you can find them for a lower price (and which are very popular in the US).

I definitely see a parallel with Wikileaks in the way the people supporting this initiative portray these rogue sites, linking them openly to child pornography and cybersecurity, for example. Is this really the main reason why they want to close these websites?

And why do organizations such as Wikipedia and companies such as Google oppose it so strongly? After all, this is already in place for websites in the US:

My take on this is that the technology required to enforce this law will open the door to a lot more control of the internet by government agencies, which might result on people becoming scared about their online lives and a reduction in the use of Internet. Am I a cynical? What do you think?

Social Media Marketing Tools

If you're putting together a social media marketing campaign, then having some useful tools that allow you to get ideas on what to focus on and find inspiration towards creating your campaign is a must. Here's a list of some that I think are helpful:

• HootSuite allows you to monitor, manage and post to multiple social networks including: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and WordPress. In addition, the service allows you to auto schedule your posts and keep your customers engaged with your social profiles even when you are in a meeting or asleep.
• Topsy is a real-time search engine that indexes and ranks search results based upon the most influential conversations millions of people are having every day about each specific term, topic, page or domain queried.
• Quora is a collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. It is primarily used by tech savvies and professionals who are the first adapters of new technologies (if you need invited, please let me know as I have some).
• Monitter, a service that monitors Twitter mentions in real-time in a multi-column interface reminiscent of TweetDeck. Simply input a search term into a column, add or remove columns as desired, and get an automatically-refreshing picture of what people are saying about your brand or competing brands in your space.
• MailChimp offers list management, tracking and analysis, and custom HTML templates for up to 500 subscribers and 3000 emails a month for free.
• Get Satisfaction provides a forum where your customers can get answers to questions, solutions to problems, and submit feature and new product requests. Those answers and solutions are stored and searchable over time, cutting down on support costs and building trust with your userbase.
• Facebook Insights provides Facebook Page owners with metrics around their content. Facebook Insights specifically analyzes trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content.

There's a lot more tools scattered over the internet, but the ones listed above are good starting points.

A Social Media Ad Campaign That Worked On Me

A couple of years ago, I saw what I thought was one of the funniest, most random commercials I've seen in a while.  It was Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like."  In case you aren't familiar with the brand, Old Spice is a brand of men's deodorants, and I've only seen it in the U.S.  If you still aren't familiar with what kind of product I am talking about, you're probably French.  (just kidding!)
 I first saw the ad during the 2010 Superbowl, and soon after I headed to YouTube so I could share it with friends.  I was kind of surprised to find that Old Spice actually had their own official channel, but I shrugged that off and continued to forward the link to anyone I met over the next several months who hadn't seen the commercial.  (My life was really mundane working on Wall Street...)

What was crazy is that after a fairly short time, Old Spice's YouTube channel started having more and more uploaded videos - short ads that weren't all aired on TV.  Then in 2011, Old Spice had some dedicated YouTube campaigns, including a Fabio vs. the old Old Spice man series, and MANta Clause more recently.

Anyway, I am a dedicated user of Old Spice now and stocked up on my supply before coming to Fonty.  Here's the original video if you're interested (38.6 million views):

The YouTube campaign was seen as a success, and within five months after the original ad was aired during the Superbowl, Old Spice's monthly sales more than doubled.

Another link:  5 Marketing Lessons from Old Spice

Out of control

In the view of numerous online and street protests against the results of Parliamentary elections in Russia in November 2011, Putin decided to "Go Social Media" and opened people's opinion page on his Presidential Campaign 2012 website where anyone can type up his mind. The first day tens of thousands people suggested Putin has to retire. . .

It is worth saying that for 30 days after the elections, the Putin's administration did not react to protests in any way; protests of this scale had not happened in Russia since 1993. To give you an idea of how big the crowd is, one of the Moscow protests in November kept the number of participants around 100,000 given that most people did join the crowd only for a couple hours. The protest movement rejected any sort of leader so far, at least those who attempted to head it.

And this all started through social media in a matter of hours. Hundreds of thousands people joined. And is happening through social media: blogs and twitter. The almighty government has no idea how to control it, or how to appropriately address it.

Putin's first attempt to start a dialogue succeeded. He got to hear his people. Was it something he wanted to hear? What would be the ultimate response? He can't afford suppressions of any kind now. Would he start loosening control? Or he already lost it?

Politter.com - Twitter and Japanese politics

Politter.com  is the website which aggregates Japanese politician's twitter accounts.

The site has been created since July 2009 and operated by Taichi IRIE, a web designer who is independent from any political parties.

565 accounts consist of politicians and political parties are displayed side by side. Readers can compare politician's tweets.

In English, 140-character is too short to explain a policy, to discuss political issues or to interact with supporters. However, in Japanese, which use Chinese ideographic characters, it can. It is said that a tweet written in Japanese has doubled or tripled information than one in English.

After the American Presidential elections in 2008, a few of Japanese politicians started to use Twitter. However they aren't allowed to tweet (and to write their blog!) during their election campaign period due to Japanese Public Offices Election Act. They have tried to revise the act since 2009, but the revision has been postponed so far.

Who's Role Is it?

The discussion of the governments' role in society is one that has been a topic of debate for centuries. With social media, this debate is one that is especially pertinent, the complexity of which should not be underestimated. Internet laws surely exist, but the law textbooks have murky reference on how they apply, with little case law to guide Internet based practices. The same is true of social media, which has gained increasing momentum in the last decade. However, even if the government gained the ability to control the mass of content generated through social media, the questions arises - fundamentally, should this even be a role that government plays?

In recent years, one specific issue that people have tackled has related to Facebook and minors. As Facebook has evolved and expanded its reach globally, it has also removed some of the filters of exclusivity that initially marked the site. Nowadays, simply supplying a working email address is enough to get a Facebook account. A danger to this is that minors now are able to access Facebook content. A segment of the population is of the viewpoint that the government should enact laws that intervene and protect minors from social media connections that could be dangerous to form and content that may be inappropriate. However, should the government really intervene in this situation or is it the job of parents to regulate their children's Facebook and overall internet usage? Is the risk of inappropriately using the site greater than the reward of having real-time access to the largest network in the world from an early age? Should all minors be penalized for the actions of a small segment of their peers or should these issues be dealt with on a case by case basis with families? But is it truly realistic to deal with these issues on a case by case basis given the magnitude of users and the inability to really track individual usage? Should Facebook be liable?

Opinions vary widely on this topic which is also then magnified by the international dimension of a site like Facebook makes it hard to pinpoint which governments should be responsible for enacting laws to govern social media coverage. In some countries, this is a non-issue as governments restrict access - but is their general population also consequently falling behind in the global rat-race as a result of these restrictions?

It will surely be interesting to see what the future of social media holds in terms of governance and whether there will be a cohesive international body that will tangibly tackle these issues!

"The hidden influence of social networks"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-tOghblfE , on TED talk

Success of Advertising Campaigns

We have talked about some ways to make social media campaigns and advertisements memorable: making it short, designing for remixing, not making it feel like an outright ad, making it shocking, using fake headlines and appealing to sex (Lecture 2). During a recent visit to Milan (Italy), I ran into a display tent in a square by the Duomo that invited passersby to interact with the display and find out more about a particular building:

This reminded me of a French commercial that was making rounds on Facebook a few months ago, and it seemed like the display tent was modeled after the commercial. One of the reasons this commercial stuck in my mind was indeed because it was not made to feel like an outright ad, had somewhat of a "shocking" content, definitely appealed to sex and kept you guessing till the end. The commercial ends with a pointer to their Facebook site which I visited and would have stayed longer on if it didn't involve me google-translating everything from French to English to get a better understanding of the kind of interactive elements it had.

What got me thinking was the reversal of roles: real life imitating social media. This booth clearly seemed to be modeled after the success of the commercial, wanting to attract more people into the booth and to the hall by audience participation. The more pervasive social media gets, the more blurred the lines get between real and virtual presence!

How Web 2.0 are the fans of your favorite team?

In honor of the San Francisco 49ers amazing playoff victory this past Saturday, a brief post on sports...leagues and teams are businesses after all.

Found this site, Fan Graph, measuring the social media followings globally for different teams and leagues, both professional and collegiate. Currently it just tracks Facebook and Twitter.

Some take aways after surfing:

• FC Barcelona has the largest amount of socially engaged fans
• Manchester United doesn't even have an official Twitter page?! Interesting seeing who does not have Fb or Twitter pages
• Ratio of Twitter/FB fluctuates a lot by city and sport (didn't crunch numbers, please feel free to be the first of my friends to do so)
• Each day, the average team grows ~160 Twitter followers or ~440 FB fans

Go Niners!

Piazza ? Coursekit ?

Have any of you heard of Piazza and/ or Coursekit? The probability is that most people wouldn't have heard of these firms. But Piazza and Coursekit are the two new social platforms in the world of education redefining the way course work is delivered and consumed.

During my masters (2005), I did a couple of e-learning courses and my school used WebCT at that time. WebCT was a horrible platform. If i remember rightly all it did was show me the presentations/video of the relevant class and it enabled us to submit our assignments to the professor. 

Fast forward to today, and Piazza and Coursekit have come out with social learning platforms. They enable teachers to deliver course materials online and the ability for teachers and students to interact outside the classroom. Students can ask questions which can be answered by either other students or teachers. A gimmick some might say, but both these platforms have acheived impressive results. Piazza has had huge adoption at Stanford and MIT and Coursekit seems to be making inroads into NYU. 

As I look at these platforms, I see quite a bit of use for it even at INSEAD. For starters, It would be great to have our Business Foundations material delivered by one of these platforms. Students need not come a week earlier to school and can become familiar with basic material much before they have reached school. Any doubts can be answered by other students/ instructor through the platform and in this way everybody learns. 

The other area I can see these platforms being useful in an INSEAD context is when we have all the quantitative coursework. A lot of folks struggle in these courses and tutoring for these courses is given mostly during weekends and other inconvenient timings. By using these platforms, students can learn at their own schedules whilst the professors/tutors have a channel to engage and see that the students are keeping pace.

Social Media and the Medical Industry

My mother and father are both physicians.   After our most recent class where we discussed physician reviews by laymen (i.e. non technical analysis) I spoke to my parents about this subject.  They both reacted with a lot of emotion which in some sense surprised me and yet after reflection should have been expected.

My mother, a well known cardiologist, has a number of these reviews online by patients.  She refuses to review anything online and tries to shut herself out from it.   Although initially I was taken aback by this approach I trust you will not find it surprising by the end of this post.  

My father said that as a good doctor you are of course driven to help people and to work as hard as you can to achieve this goal.   You don't want anything that can in some way hinder you from this motivation and he believes that online reviews are a huge issue.   One - they can become addictive for a doctor and all of a sudden the doctor no longer is trying to "do well" but rather is overly focused on what others think.  One bad review can destroy motivation to such an extreme extent.

I do not necessarily have a solution for this issue.   And yes I told my mother that the younger doctors in her practice must have a strategy for these reviews because it will increasingly become a greater tool for the general public.   But I do feel that physicians do need to take control of this process so that it does not spiral out of control.   My parents views are more jaded in that respect.

Another good blog post:
http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/09/how-doctors-are-using-social-media/

An example of Social Media in not-for-profit organizations

The Pedro Barrie Foundation, a privately-funded Spanish foundation, was created in 1966. The Foundation has ever since destined its resources to programmes and projects aimed at promoting a sustainable development of Galicia (a north-western region in Spain), with particular emphasis on initiatives concerning education and the development of talent. Amongst its initiatives, the Foundation makes it possible for 32 Galician students to occupy a place every year in the lecture rooms of the world’s leading universities through a scholarship programme.

But this commitment with the Galician society goes further with other social initiatives, by fostering innovation in business, research and development in universities and investing in the conservation of historical/cultural heritage.

The Foundation has identified Social Media as one of the best platforms to achieve its strategy and recently has taken a big step to improve its online resources to include more audio-visual content, including reviews on book publications and exhibitions, and launching educaBarrié, a webpage aimed at interchanging educational resources among primary and secondary school teachers. The Foundation is also trying to leverage its Grantees’ Association database, and trying to create a forum to further exchange knowledge within the extraordinary network of students from all the fields: Arts, History, Medicine, Biology, Engineering and Economics. During my Christmas holidays, I had the opportunity to have a look the beta version, and now I can clearly recall it included some of the aspects of the “Open Innovation concept” we discussed in class. I sincerely hope that local and national businesses will consider this platform as a source of knowledge and innovation in the next future.

http://www.fundacionbarrie.org/

http://www.educabarrie.org/

The rise of Social Media - Towards a faster-paced world

While social media are increasingly becoming a strong actor in today's business world, it still remains far from understood, and its mechanisms, meaning what takes off or what won't, what is in or what is out is still a mystery.
One of the most significant manifestations of this is the doubtfulness of newer generation towards media. As Bonnie K. nicely said in class, it used to be "If it's on type, then it must be true". We all know it is no longer the case, googling some word to know its correct spelling might be hazardous, and a lot of content available on the web is -let's face it- plain nonsense. Having grown in that media jungle, newer generations are more skeptical, showing a couple of guys in turbans waiving guns on TV doesn't prove anymore that there is an uprising in middle-east, and more and more people end up checking what they read in newspapers, or even -capital sin- verifying what they see on TV News.

But I would like to propose another point of view on this generational clash. That is - the pace of life. As people live in a growingly fast-paced world, where waiting becomes a real nuisance, and having things resolved quickly becomes a luxury, new generations become increasingly demanding in terms of interactivity, and speed of response. See texting as opposed to calling people. As you can text many people at the same time, and not get locked in the social norm that governs any face-to-face or phone dialog - I mean having to wait for the other person to answer -, texting appears to be a more-efficient, less time-consuming way to have everyday casual chit-chat. And now teenagers scold their mums when they call them "You could have texted me, I have no time for discussing right now."

As such, a new approach to the use of social media might be to make immediately available things people usually wait for, creating therefore user value by saving time to the end user, and matching the needs of a more impatient population.

For further illustration of this idea, I recommend RSA Animate videos. This group takes excellent conferences of TED.com, and illustrates them, while keeping the audio, with whiteboard-like drawings. The concepts are hence more easy to catch-up with, and the video I post below concerns especially the topic of a faster-paced life, and how it impacts education.

Enjoy!

Privacy for the Next Generation

The current generation of MBA students (of which I consider myself to be a typical example) probably had their first experience of the Internet when they were in middle school or high school. I remember that Internet chats were a major part of my relationship with my boyfriend in high school. Social media platforms didn't really become a part of daily life until we were well into university. What all of this means is that in our class, our experience of social media is limited to a part of our lives when we already had some degree of control over our identities. Or more importantly, the technology wasn't available to us until we had some idea of who we wanted to be.

I often wonder what the digital world will be like for the generation who will live their entire lives in world with fully-developed or fully-integrated social media (whatever that will mean). With my limited imagination, I can see a world where an entire record of one's life is available online - from the photos of your first day as a wrinkled cabbage at the hospital to your recent scores at the retirement home bridge club. Of course, there are clear benefits. For example, family histories will be much more easily preserved. It will be possible for children to watch videos of their grandparents' or great-grandparents' weddings and other life events. Or for INSEAD, because institutional histories will be much better preserved, it will be much easier to maintain culture and continuity from one MBA class to the next.

But what does all this mean for privacy? Because it's not just a question of whether I'm comfortable with my current friends, family, potential employers, etc. seeing the information I post online. It's whether I want everyone I might encounter or affect in the past, present or future to have access to this information. In 40 years, will my grandkids laugh at me when they read this blog?

Politics and Facebook

Political parties in india seem to be getting in on the act and joining the web 2.0 phenomena to gather support and spread their message.An excerpt from the economic times:

"The idea is to bring out the failures and shortcomings." Apart from hoardings and mass media, the campaign is piggybacking on Web 2.0 with a page on Facebook that, at the time of going to print, had close to 8,000 followers "

New Privacy Threshold

When the cell phone was introduced to our daily lives some said: "great! i can reach people i know anytime anywhere" but some others said "too bad! i lost my privacy now, i am reachable anytime anywhere by people who know me". 

Then arrived chatting (MSN and others) same story again ... however now i can reach people i don't even know through people i do know and vice versa 

Then arrived social media and Facebook in particular... same story again ... however now i can reach anyone and anyone can reach me. 

Isn't it just the evolution of things?; what we now consider as private will no longer be as we evolve and adapt to this new platform. Has privacy been breached or has only its threshold been increased by social media?

Why I took a social media class

When I thought about the classes to take this period I came across the social media class course. As I had never really put any thought into what social media are and what effect they can have, I decided to take this class to learn something about a subject I knew close to nothing about. Of course I know what facebook is and have heard about Twitter etc. However, I was interested in learning a lot more.

The questions that we have discussed so far range from how by default the information about us nowadays is all public to advertising campaigns launched on social media. What I was most intrigued by was the question what makes a video go viral. Naturally there is absolute answer on this, but thinking about it, discussing in class and hearing other peoples opinon is what makes this class valuable to me.

Divining success from social media

Since the advent of social media, companies have been started in hopes of finding ways of monetizing content. One such wave comprises social media monitoring firms of which Crimson Hexagon is a well known example.

These firms will analyze content such as Twitter, blogs, and other internet sources in order to divine user sentiment toward certain topics. Many use statistical analysis of content chunks to ascertain the closeness of favorable or unfavorable words to a particular topic.

Check out the latest sentiment regarding the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

http://www.facebook.com/notes/crimson-hexagon/ces-the-good-3d-the-bad-att-and-the-boring-exhibit-space/297101020992

http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/has-ces-lost-its-luster-with-consumers/

Social Media, territorial competitive advantage?

Building up on the first sessions we had, social media connection could be a strong economic growth driver.

It is well documented that the main factor for a city to be sustainably rich and successful is mainly connections.
The so-called alpha cities are hubs for transport and communication networks.

We could think that social media and internet could lower the relative importance of those hubs but keeping up with the pace of increasing data flows requires huge invesments (cable, 3G and 4G networks) collectively but also individually (smartphone, ipad, laptop,...).

I then wonder if social media growth will not increase the global economic disparities.

For example, here is the submarine-cable global map (higher resolution on http://www.iscpc.org/).
Striking example of infrastructure development and economic growth

Managing Your Online Information Just Got Harder

Following on our in class discussion about Mimi's situation and the ease with which the Canadian kissing couple was identified, I wanted to share two articles I read recently about the increasing difficulty of managing your image online.

Face Recognition: In The Future Can You Remain Anonymous? 

I think this article is particularly interesting because of the regulation discussions that are currently being had regarding what defines a customer "opt-in". 

Google Moves Social Search Forward

Regarding Google's new search algorithm, I am surprised that they are taking such a overt approach to social search. Furthermore, I think the public's concern regarding privacy will outweigh the potential benefits that Google claims from this new Search Plus. I think one of the benefits of Google is that it aggregates across multiple networks of sites but in this case they are limiting that effect by prioritizing their own sites and networks. Ultimately I think this move will hurt the growth of Google+ as those of us looking to manage our online identities are unlikely to create a profile on a platform that doesn't let us opt out of having that information pushed to other users who we may not want seeing our information.

Do INSEAD need to know my pet's name?

I just registered for a google account because you need one to to be able to access this blog, that would allow you to blog for this course at INSEAD.

To cross this "entry barrier", I was asked my birthdate, phone number, name of my dog,.....

It could be seen as normal, but why do I have to give personal information to a company (that is making money out of it) to be able to participate to a class in a school I have already been admitted in?

Do not misunderstand me, I am not complaining about ethical issues or about this blogging idea.

I just think that internet is supposed to be simple and easy to use.

But as the big e-companies are going into the "data business" (selling customers base, data mining, targeted e-marketing) is becoming too visible and annoying, it seems that you can not use one interesting site without getting asked to answer private questions.

And honestly, are those personal data reliable? I lied on each data I gave (almost) because I do not want google to know my life (yes, I am old school).

Just out of curiosity, do you always say the truth when asked about your private data for commercial purpose?

Political efforts at controlling social media

Following on from Rami's post on social media's influence in revolutions, you can also look at the efforts of China's government to control and suppress social media as evidence of this media's resilience. This is especially interesting in the wake of the Arab Spring and the Chinese governments efforts at stopping information about these events from reaching their own population.

The Chinese government seems to treat social media, and indeed the whole internet, in the same way it treats other communications channels - something that can be shut down at will, much like mobile phone networks were shut down during the recent unrest in Tibet.

The continued activity of both Tibetan and Uighur activists, and their ability to communicate with outside media sources using social media, speaks to the resilience of it as an organizational tool, even in the face of sustained government efforts to control it.

As Rami said - not a replacement for actual action, but a great organizational tool.

Arab spring for now, but what if dictators and anarchists learn to use Social Media effectively?

Recently, an innumerable numbers of articles, blog post and, more generally, discussion has revolved around Social Media's potential in bringing about political and social change to the masses. But what about its potential to control the masses through disinformation? What about its potential to generate social instability for dubious purposes?

Granted, there yet few examples of this dark potential as of yet. Or at least that is the perception of people that are on "masses" side of the disinformation campaign.

I'm not trying to create conspiracy theories, I actually do have an example of a case in my country which I believe has not been explored enough in a Social Media context. Let me give you the quick overview of the case:

• Rodrigo Rosenberg, a prominent Harvard and Cambridge educated attorney is shot dead just a few block from his apartment in Guatemala city
• A few days later a video of Mr. Rosenberg surfaces on YouTube, recorded less than a week before his murder. In it he claims "If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Álvaro Colom, with help from [Colom's private secretary] Gustavo Alejos." Given the level of corruption, drug cartel problems and violence in the country the narrative presented by Rosenberg is actually not too hard to believe, and his death serves as the ultimate evidence
• The day it is posted the video has 80k views, and reaches 150k over the next few days. All hell breaks loose. An already weak leader is faced with widespread demonstrations, attacks from the press, attacks from political opponents and attacks of political allies. The president comes incredibly close to being toppled by his main rivals and by popular demand.
  

So far it looks like the makings of a mini Guatemalan Spring, no? Indeed, that is what it felt like for those of us there (I was in Costa Rica at the time but was there in spirit).

The only problem was that it was all part of a very strange plot. However, this only came out months later after a UN investigation followed all the leads up to the murder. The Colom Administration survived. This is the short version, you can find the long version in a New Yorker article if you are interested (or talk to me).

So back to my main question... yes, social media is great, but are we too much focused on the positives and ignoring the risks? What impact would this have if, say someone carried out a similar, more successful disinformation campaign in a much larger economy (say, the US)? We know Social Media amplifies public perceptions, what if the public is wrong, and the impact of this is large?

Is Social Media re-defining customer service ?

The power of the masses has always defined the outcomes of a conversation. Here I explore how social media is now really beginning to change the way companies do business and interact with their customers.

• Recently Bank of America caused an uproar in the United States when they decided to charge a $5 debit transaction fee. Within days, you had people putting up an online petition http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-bank-of-america-no-5-debit-card-fees. 300,000 signatures and a few days later Bank of America decided to pull the debit transaction fee.

There are many more examples like this where a company does something that the customer perceives as being wrong. The customer takes his grievance online and within a few days perhaps hours nowadays the issue has been solved. 

What this implies is that companies are increasingly becoming aware of this whole new social media world where a single wrong sentiment if not responded to correctly can have grave implications for firms. It is changing the way firms do business and today you see a whole new proliferation of customer service jobs targeted to monitor the social media space.

Interestingly, this is not only changing the way companies perform customer service, it also creating new opportunities. I recently had a conversation with folks from Fisheye Analytics ( http://www.fisheyeanalytics.com/Customer-Direct ) and they were mentioning how their tools are increasingly being used to detect when certain trends are predicted to go viral. By nipping negative sentiment at the right time, companies are increasingly able to prevent the wrong (in some cases incorrect information) being spread.

Google yourself

After our most recent class I did some Google research on my self and found a long-lost cousin. Thank you Google.

Social Media, Uprisings, and Limitations

We've all seen the Arab Spring uprisings, the Greek protests, the Occupy Wall Street and other similar movements taking place in abundance in 2011. While there are fundamental causes behind them (corruption, financial crisis, poverty, etc...), social media has played a big role in mobilizing these events and making them possible. Social networks and social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, and other desktop/mobile apps allow protesters, activists, and others involved in the above-mentioned movements to spread news, information, pictures, videos, and mobilize what's necessary to get these movements rolling.

Social Media's role in these uprisings can be categorized as follows:

1. Social Media helps mobilize protesters quickly.
2. Social Media helps bring to light the truth behind regimes and institutional corruption that is otherwise hidden. This is major driving factor in convincing protesters to mobilize against regimes and corrupt institutions. Furthermore, Social Media helps the spreading of this information rapidly and provides the national and international public with a more vivid account of what's happening. In turn, this builds up more support for the protesters and their actions.

Despite Social Media's strong role in the past year's uprisings and social movements, there is a fear that more and more people over play its role in these uprisings. In other words, I am concerned that people who wish to help are simply relying too much on social media and are avoiding getting physically involved. In the end, these uprisings require more than simply sharing, tweeting, and liking posts, pictures, videos, and other digital content related to corrupt regimes/institutions and their historical actions and responses to the uprisings against them.

With that said, Social Media's role in 2011's social uprisings should not be discounted, but it is important to realize that real activism doesn't just happen through your mobile phone or laptop.

Media Campaign for Tata Motors

This is a good example of sharing a concept through social media. The car is inspired by world's cheapest car (Tata-nano).

How Social Media Can Make History

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. An interesting lecture on TED.

Social Media in an Emerging Market

Last year I had the great pleasure to be the curriculum designer for the Kellogg School of Management's "Global Immersion in Management: Southern Africa" class.  Prior to our two-week country visit, local Chicago blogger Dibussi Tande visited our campus to tell us about the rise of social media in Africa.

Please click on the links below to learn about social media in an environment where PC and broadband penetration is below 10% and mobile penetration is estimated (by some) to be greater than 100%.


Why Mxit is Africa's largest social network
Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare could learn social responsibility from South Africa's Social Network
mxit.com

Tools to find influencers

Influence is the ability to shape thoughts, perception or behavior. Every year, 500 billion consumer opinions are shared online. In line with the discussions on influencers, social media monitoring tools are used to track the influencers. Some of the tools used are Attensity 360, Brandwatch, Radian6, Alterian, Scoutlabs, Sysomos, Synthesio, Social Radar and PeerIndex.

Click here to know more about tools

FDA issues draft guidelines for Social Media usage

Continuing our class discussion on the impact of Social Media and its implementation in healthcare industry, FDA has issued draft guidelines. Read the following post:
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2012/01/09/fda-has-some-social-media-advice-for-pharma/