Page 268 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

Summary 253

issue to consider is whether an organization should tionships with employees, customers, and business part-
employ productivity-saving devices that are not ethical. ners. Significant cost reduction, productivity increase, and
Another ethical issue is the use of knowledge extracted competitive advantage can be achieved as well.
from people in crowdsourcing. A further related issue is 2. Business-oriented public social networks. Following
whether a company should compensate an employee the successful examples of LinkedIn and Xing, many
when others use knowledge that he or she contributed. public business-oriented networks were created. Notable
This issue is related to the motivation issue. It also is networks are Viadeo (us.viadeo.com/en) and Google+.
related to privacy. Should people be informed as to who Applications vary from recruiting to market research and
contributed certain knowledge? advertising. Most notable is f-commerce. One major
2. How should we deal with social commerce risks? There activity in public networks is external collaboration.
are several possible risks in implementing social com- Several entrepreneurship networks also exist.
merce, depending on the applications. For example, to 3. Major enterprise social commerce activities. Currently,
protect the security of the SC open source system, you collaboration and communication, as well as community
need to consult your internal security experts and you building, are the major activities. In addition, problem-
may need some outside legal advice. There is also the risk solving via idea generation and finding expertise are
of information pollution and biased or falsified user- becoming more and more important. Related to this is
generated content. You may also need to use a consultant knowledge creation and management. Companies recruit,
for large projects to examine and evaluate the associated train, and conduct other HRM activities in enterprise net-
risks. Weighing the benefits of social media against secu- works. Several companies also use the enterprise social
rity and other potential risks is a major strategy issue. network for interactions with customers, suppliers, and
3. Should we move to be a social enterprise? It depends other business partners.
on the estimated costs and benefits. Also, it is possible to 4. The online job market and its benefits. The online job
introduce some, but not all, features of social enterprise. market is growing rapidly, with thousands of jobs matched
For example, using crowdsourcing can be very beneficial. with job seekers each day. The major benefits of online
Social collaboration may be cost-effective as well. job markets for employers are the ability to reach a large
4. What about a private, in-house social network? Such a number of job seekers at a low cost, provide detailed
venture may bring many benefits and it can be combined information online, accept applications online, and even
with internal activities of crowdsourcing, as well as with conduct skill tests. In addition, résumés can be checked
social collaboration with business partners. Most success- and matched with positions more quickly by using intel-
ful in-house networks are used for idea generation, inter- ligent software agents. Many job offers are posted on the
nal collaboration, recruitment, and public relations. Internet, helping job seekers to obtain employment. Job
5. Shall we try gamification? In most cases it is wise to seekers can also post their résumés for recruiters to find.
wait and see the results of other companies. The deploy- Recruiting via social networks, especially via LinkedIn
ment requires skilled employees. In certain applications and Facebook, is growing very rapidly.
the reward can be large. But in most cases we are not sure 5. Social commerce, entertainment, and gaming. Rich
at this time. As one says: “Try it, you make like it.” media, user-created content, and groups and subgroups
with common interests have opened many possibilities
for a second generation of online entertainment. Add to
SUMMARY this the wireless revolution and the increased capabilities
in mobile devices to support Web 2.0 tools and social net-
In this chapter, you learned about the following EC issues as working activities, and you will discover a new and excit-
they relate to the chapter’s learning objectives. ing world of online entertainment ranging from music
and videos to comedy.
1. The social enterprise. Conducting social networking 6. Social gaming and gamification. Many Internet-based
activities in the enterprise can result in substantial benefits. games include some social activities. Players collectively
Two types of business social networks exist, public and pri- agree to the rules and act as community members. Companies
vate. The private network is company owned; it may have such as King and Zynga create the games which are played
restricted access, or it may be open to the public. The pub- on Facebook and other social networks. This is one aspect
lic network (e.g., LinkedIn) is used mainly for recruiting, of gamification. Another aspect is the introduction of social
connections, collaboration, and marketing communication. media into games.
The private, in-house social enterprise uses Collaboration 7. Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Crowdsourcing in
2.0, social CRM, social marketing media, and more. You the enterprise is used mostly for idea generation, voting,
can even “spy” on your competitors (see entrepreneur. and problem identification. Content creation and updating
com/article/229350). All this translates to improved rela- projects, such as volunteers translating the Facebook