Page 266 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

8.8 Social Collaboration (Collaboration 2.0) and the Future of Social Commerce 251

Social collaboration is supported mainly by: Questions and Answers in Social Networks

In a Q&A “answer” function individuals and companies can
post questions. For example, in LinkedIn community: go to
• Wikis, blogs, and microblogging (e.g., Twitter)
the Help Forum and use the posting module on your home
• Collaborative communities (forums and discussion
groups) page to ask your network a question, and the community
usually will provide you with answers. You can also ask a
• Early vintage Web 2.0 technologies
• Crowdsourcing question on the “share box” on the home page. Many other
professional networks and their internal groups provide
• Other tools (e.g., Yammer)
advice and supporting material for helping in decision-
making. These services can be either paid or for free. For
example, according to the medical social network “Sermo”
Most collaboration software vendors are adding Web 2.0 (sermo.com; “Social Media Meets Healthcare”), a large
tools to their collaboration suites (e.g., Binfire Inc.). online community exclusive to physicians, “has an app that
allows physicians to author and discuss urgent and interest-
Using Blogs and Wikis Inside the Enterprise ing patient cases from any Web- or mobile-enabled device,
and based on market tests, be almost assured feedback from
In Chapter 2, we provided some examples of blogs and wikis multiple colleagues. Typical questions and responses include
used within enterprises. The use of these tools is expanding requested/suggested diagnoses and treatments with the best
rapidly. Companies use blogs and wikis for the following insights often resulting from collaboration among the doc-
activities: tors” (see sermo.com/who-we-are/press-releases-view/3).

Suites of Tools for Social Collaboration
• Project collaboration and communication
• Process and procedure documentation Several companies offer suites of social collaboration tools,
• FAQs either as stand-alone products or as added tools in existing
• E-learning and e-training collaboration suites.
• Forums for new ideas
• Corporate-specific dynamic glossary and termi no- Example 1: IBM Connections
logy IBM Connections provides tools such as forums, wikis, and
• Collaboration with customers blogs, and new capabilities like advanced social analytics,
which enable users to expand their network of connections
and engagement. For details, see press release “IBM
Launches New Software and Social Business Consulting
As you can see, most of the activities in the previous list
relate to collaboration. For additional information, see zdnet. Services” at ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/32949.wss.
com/blog/hinchcliffe (several blogs). You can download many free white papers at the IBM
Jam Events page (collaborationjam.com). IBM has about
20,000 internal blogs (used by over 100,000 people). Over
Using Twitter to Support Collaboration 70,000 members are in SocialBlue (an internal clone of
Facebook). 350,000 members are on LinkedIn (January
Twitter already is used extensively in the enterprise to sup- 2016), and over 500,000 are participants in crowdsourcing.
port collaboration. Twitter is used extensively for interaction Today these numbers are probably larger. IBM also provides
with customers and prospects as well as for conducting the tools needed to support innovation.
collaboration.
Example 2: Cisco WebEx Meeting Center
The Role of Mobile Commerce in Social Collaboration (Formerly Cisco Quad)
Cisco WebEx, according to Cisco’s website, is an enterprise
As described in Chapter 6, mobile commerce is growing collaboration platform, which is designed for today’s work-
very rapidly. Most enterprise social applications can be done force. It is characterized by social, mobile, visual, and virtual
on wireless devices. This is particularly true for communica- features. WebEx connects people to the information and
tion and collaboration. expertise they need, when they need it. Knowledge and ideas