Social Media in a Corporate Context, Manchester 2010 - Martin Thomas, Snapper Communications

Crowdsourcing Comes of Age

A natural cycle

Apologies to Gartner Hype Cycle

Superficial publicity gimmicks, tokenism, cheap creative work

Game changing business applications

Alvin Toffler, The Third Age 1980 = “prosumers”

Socio Cultural Trend… rather than a short-term fad

Self expression

+

Collective action

The spirit of collective action

Informal, Spontaneous, Powerful

When self expression meets collective action

Capturing the mood of the times

A vicious or virtuous circle?

Virtually unlimited technological Capability

People’s insatiable

Desire to collaborate,

personalise & manipulate

Co-creation A two-edged sword

Co-creation A two-edged sword

Numbers are Compelling

• 70% of companies regularly create value through use of web-based communities

• Using customer communities to solve customer

problems costs 10% of traditional call centres

• Product revenues +200%

* McKinsey 2010

Value of Institutionalising Problem Solving

35% of new products have elements from outside company

R&D productivity up

60%

Evolution of Crowdsourcing

Customising

Contributing

Creating

Solving

Collaborating

Collaborative Journalism

“mutualisation” = “getting readers to care about, inform and enhance our coverage” Meg Pickard

Collaborative Government?

Collaborative Business Models

Community Commerce

Self-sustaining creative community Members submit designs => 80,000+

submissions

• Opportunity to pre test beta versions

Community votes => 800+ designs

Designers receive $2,500 + marketing advice + retain IP

No professional designers, no salesforce, no distribution, no market research, no advertising=> $30m revenues … high margins

Community Commerce

People-powered mobile network (from O2) Members receive points for recruiting new

people, making suggestions & solving problems, which are converted into cash

20% actively involved

Aim that 25% of members will get half of cost of calls returned to them for contribution to community

Plans to involve community in pricing & marketing decisions

Not reliant on call centres, expensive marketing & product support

Formula for Success

Ensuring strategic focus Publicity as bi-product not sole objective

Planning – who, what & how? Obama’s 100

Devolving control to community Continuous feedback loops

Anticipating subversion Bieber in North Korea

Managing IP rights

www.crowdsurfing.net#crowdsurfing