Reading: World of Connections
It seems that once upon a time complete strangers being connected by ONLY 6 other people was a big deal. Now I feel like we are getting really close to having no degrees of separation. Today if I chose too I could make a very reasonable effort to contact a celebrity, or with even more ease I could connect to a complete stranger. While the connectivity and socialization of the internet is fascinating, I think that solving these high valued companies' cash flow issues is an even better chore to take up.
So here comes my idea to solve Twitter's income problems. My thought involves combining twitter, 4Square, and the fastest growing internet company ever, Groupon. I'm sure few of you have heard of Groupon, but it is a company that sells coupons for local shops, restaurants, and attractions online and it splits what people pay for the coupon with the restaurant. A restaurant may offer a coupon for $2 burgers when they are usually $6, and when Groupon sells a coupon they take a cut of the $2.The customer's are only charged for the coupons when a certain amount of them are sold, giving the restaurant or shop a new customer following who in the long run will cover the short term loss they take on the coupons.
My idea would be to funnel these coupons through 4Square and announce their purchase on Twitter. This way people see the coupons right when they could use them, and by announcing them on Twitter the group buying necessary to activate the coupons would take place rapidly. In terms of profits I would think 4Square and Twitter could take a cut of what the restaurant and Groupon make on each purchase. Also I think that imbedding a credit card payment button right on whatever program runs this service would make it really easy to use. Finally, I think it would be easy to get people to use this as mobile payment via smartphones becomes more and more prevalent.
In all I'd like to know what everyone thought about me tackling a problem addressed in the article, versus just discussing it? Also if you have any comments on my solution, or your own it would be awesome to hear them.
Peace, Love, and Social Media.
So first off kudos. I think its really cool to see you taking the tools we are using, experimenting with and studying in class and APPLYING them to the real world, which I feel like is an important difference between our course and MI021. I also like that you are taking a multitude of social media tools and bundling them into one system that could not only streamline the customer's experience, but give the firms a way to profit from their business.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I have to wonder, would over publicizing purchases or coupon usage go as favorable for twitter and 4square as Facebook's Beacon. Would your idea give people to opt out of publicly announcing their purchases and if so do you think people would be more inclined to opt-out? While I do think that there is a very good baseline here, I also think that in publicly displaying consumers' purchase habits you may in fact be infringing on their privacy or at least coming across in this way to the consumers. Now who knows, especially taking into account Professor Kane's conviction that location orientation is about to take off in social media. So in this way, if people don"t mind declaring where they are, who is to say they will mind informing friends and family the businesses/ coupons they are spending their money on.
Overall I must say that I am very impressed with your initiative to take this problem and a gap in social media and propose not only a solution, but one that links various social media systems into a streamlined system that gets the consumers discounts and the social media companies their MONEY.
The idea of combining Groupon, 4square, and Twitter is great! Income problems of these sites are actually issues, because users or people in general believe services on internet should be FREE. In order to solve the income issue, Korean social networking site, Cyworld would be a good example. It is a lot more personalized than Facebook and it allows each user to decorate own page. People can buy music, icons to decorate their wall(?), and etc. I believe this is where income of Cyworld is coming from; customization.
ReplyDeleteAlso, FB and Twitter, I believed, they collect so much of data from the users, and that would lead FB and Twitter to do better in business later on. FB has all of our information; who, what we like and where we go. Twitter can also know who we are as they know who we are following, and what kind of context that we are putting on. Therefore, these data would help them to do better in the future, i believe. But still income issue is still on.
Charlie,
ReplyDeleteI am very impressed that you came up with a solution like this, however I have the same concern that Hadley addressed. Thinking back to when Facebook launched the News Feed, and everyone was upset about having their activity broadcasted on everyone's "feed," part of me thinks that people would feel the same way about having purchases made public like that. Maybe if there were a way to be able to choose who you share it with and who will see your buying activity, it would be better so that the person can decide who he or she thinks would be interested in the purchase. At the same time, I think now that social media is becoming so popular, it is a good idea to link so many together toward a common goal and to do so in a way that will benefit every party involved!
Wow, Charlie - really impressive to think of combining popular existing technologies together to create income - it's easy to do if the companies are willing to join forces, but how much of the pie will each company get? How would Groupon, 4Square, and Twitter divide up the profits and still be profitable?
ReplyDeleteSimone,
ReplyDeleteI think in terms of profit sharing 4Square and Twitter's earnings would vary depending on how a customer eventually bought the coupon. If a person were to see a friend bought the coupon on Twitter and buy one for themself, Twitter would deserve a larger stake than 4Square. Also whether Twitter or 4Square develops the mobile payment plan would determine their profits.
I also think this is an interesting idea, but echo Hadley and Jessica's thoughts about privacy. Obviously having the ability to selectively share your information is preferable than having it broadcast to everyone with no choice on your part, but what about idea of this information being tracked in general? A lot of these sites are known for having bugs and even security issues. Do consumers really want/feel comfortable with all of these services having yet even more detailed records of what could be very personal and identifiable data?
ReplyDelete