Business-ConsumerNetworks

Yury LifshitsCaltech

http://yury.name

Saint Petersburg, 17 January 2008

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Project Objectives

Goal: to design a web technology thatserves as a universal tool forbusiness-consumer communication

Outputs: paper, community, prototype

Time constraints: 3 months

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Informal Idea

Business-Consumer Networks:

Nodes: businesses, consumers

Fan links: who likes which brand

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Outline

1 Vision

2 Social Design

3 Information Architecture

4 Implementation Issues

5 Algorithms

6 Conclusions

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1Vision

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Two Worlds

Private life and business life:

Home and office

Business cell phone and private cell phone

Facebook and ???

Next few years: urbanization of the Web

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Two Worlds

Private life and business life:

Home and office

Business cell phone and private cell phone

Facebook and ???

Next few years: urbanization of the Web

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Business Identity

Reference point

Accumulating reputation

Active: sending messages, organizingevents

Interactive: answers questions

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B2C FunctionsMarketing

Providing information about businessLoyalty programsSpecial offersOrganizing fan movementAffiliated marketing

Customer relationship managementCollecting feedbackAccumulating dataMarket research

SalesHiring

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C2B Functions

Product search, shopping

Local search

Getting recommendations

Sharing experience

Customer support

Freelance

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Business Web is Not Here Yet

Social networks are positioned as a toolfor private communication

Most web services are developed withfocus on customers, not businesses

Disintegration of services and networks,non-convertibility of reputation

Lack of analytic tools: learning andmeasuring customers

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2Social Design

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Social DesignDefine rules of the system and economicincentives to motivate:

Experience sharing

Communication activities

“White” marketing, fair competition

Interest-driven browsing

Self-organization

Evangelism marketing

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Question ListUsage scenarios?

Reputation rules?

Promotion tools?

Privacy policy?

Business model?

Starting platform?

Role of grassroots?

Partnership strategy?

Starting ID? Deleting fake IDs?

Snowball mechanism? Rewarding early adopters?

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3Information Architecture

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Components of Information Architecture

Entities

Communication tools

Search and navigation

Notification system

Relations with the big Web

Policies

Reputations

Information flows15 /25

Things to Think About

Privacy: private, friends-only, network-only, public,XML access, API access

Communication tools: blogs, messages, forums,Q&A, reviews, requests

Entities: customers, businesses, products,communities, fanpages, listings/offers

News feed architecture: top products/companies,friend news, voted stories

Interruption policy: who can speak with whom?

Market research tools, CRM tools

Role of widgets

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4Implementation Issues

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Implementation Issues

Web application framework

Data formatting (FOAF, semantic web).New formats?

API policy, widgets

Open ID. Business ID?

Distributed vs. centralized?

Billing tools

Integration with mobile devices

Upload client for business accounts18 /25

5Algorithms

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Algorithmic Challenges

Ads

Recommendations

Search

News feeds

Computing reputations

Discovery algorithms

Fighting social spam

Market research algorithms20 /25

Conclusions

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Participate in the Project

Participate in designing business web

Technology partnership: infrastructure,services

User base partnership

Funding

Engineers support

Be a member of our prototype team!

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Participate in the Project

Participate in designing business web

Technology partnership: infrastructure,services

User base partnership

Funding

Engineers support

Be a member of our prototype team!

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Topics for Discussion

Critics? Threats?

Which ideas do you like?

Comments to vision?

How to start?

Ideas for social design? Informationarchitecture? Implementation?Algorithms?

Partnership?

How can you contribute?

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Topics for Discussion

Critics? Threats?

Which ideas do you like?

Comments to vision?

How to start?

Ideas for social design? Informationarchitecture? Implementation?Algorithms?

Partnership?

How can you contribute?23 /25

Links and Contacts

http://yury.name

http://yury-lifshits.livejournal.com

http://yurylifshits.habr.ru

+1 626 463 3668+7 904 331 0563yury@caltech.eduYury Lifshits: Facebook, LinkedIn

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Thanks for your attention!Questions?

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