Page 76 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

54 2 E-Commerce: Mechanisms, Platforms, and Tools

Mobile social networking is especially popular in Japan, logs, and wikis, which are described in Online File W2.1. Note
South Korea, and China, generally due to better data pricing that the capabilities of these tools are improving continuously.
(flat rates are widespread in Japan). In Japan and South Here we provide a representative list of recent innovative tools:
Korea, where 4G networks offer more bandwidth, the leaders
in social networking are mixi.jp and Mobage by Dena
(mbga.jp). Numerous other mobile social networking sites
• Snapchat.com—A mobile photo messaging service
have been launched in Japan. For statistics on the exponen-
tial growth of mobile social networks, see comscore.com. for “chatting” with friends through photos, videos,
and captions “like ‘texting’ with pictures or videos”
Experts predict that mobile social networks will experi-
ence explosive growth in the future. (see webtrends.about.com/od/Iphone- Apps/a/What-
Is-Snapchat.htm).
• WhatsApp.com—According to its website, WhatsApp
Mobile Enterprise Networks
is a cross-platform free mobile messaging app for
smartphones. Users can form groups, send each
Several companies have developed (or fully sponsor) mobile-
other unlimited images, video and audio media
based social networks. For example, Coca-Cola has a social
network that can only be accessed by mobile devices. There messages. The company was acquired by Facebook
in 2014 for around $19 billion. WhatsApp was used
Coca-Cola employees attempt to influence young people to
buy Coke’s products. by over one billion people each month in January
2016 (Ahmed 2016).
• Tranzactive.com—Enabler of real-time conversa-
Examples of Social Mobile Commerce Applications
tional translation mainly in social media.
• Droid Translator (tiwinnovations.com)—Trans-
There are several types of social mobile applications.
lates phone calls, video chats (e.g., Skype), and text
Illustrative examples are provided next.
conversations into 29 different languages. (For
more information, see Petroff 2014).
Example 1
IBM is a leader in social commerce adoption on mobile • Viber.com, line.me/en, etc.—Companies that pro-
vide free voice and video calling, etc. for mobile
devices. Following are some examples of IBM’s initiatives.
devices and desktops (e.g., Viber for Desktop).
• Instagram.com—A free platform for sharing pho-
• IBM Mobile Connect (formerly IBM Lotus Mobile
Connect; social media and social networks building soft- tos and videos. As a social network, it allows for
creation of reviews, etc. (Acquired by Facebook in
ware, abbreviated as Connect) is popular in industry.
Customers can get immediate access to blogs, wikis, and 2012.)
• Hshtags.com; (“A social media search engine dedi-
other tools. They can also share photos, videos, and files
on major mobile devices (e.g., Android, iOS). cated to hashtags”)—Enables users to see in real
time, all public content related to any keyword and
• IBM Connections allows people to generate and vote on
ideas at work (see ibm.com/connections/blogs/Sametime join any related public conversation in real time
Blog/?lang=en). (see digitaltrends.com/social-media/new-search-
• The capabilities in IBM Connections 5.0, such as engine-like-google-social-web).
Moderations, or Ideation Blogs, enable workers to
embrace networks of engaged people.
Mobile Community Activities
Example 2
With the current technology, we also see a trend toward In many mobile social networks, devices can be utilized to con-
sophisticated interactions of Internet social networks with duct the same activities that are performed in a nonmobile set-
images, voice, and videos. This is expected to be a powerful ting. Customers can even create their own mobile community.
managerial and marketing feature in the near future. Mobile video sharing, which sometimes is combined with
photo sharing, is a new technological and social trend.
Mobile video-sharing portals are becoming popular (e.g., see
Recent Innovative Tools and Platforms spicedigital.in/mobile-operators/mobile-vas/video/video-
for Social Networking sharing- portal). Many social networking sites offer mobile
features.
A large number of software tools and platforms are available For 2016 statistics about social commerce, see bazaar-
for social networking. Well-known tools are blogs, microb- voice.com/research-and-insight/social-commerce-statistics.