Insight Community

Venturing out into social media is still a bit scary for some companies, as there really aren't great metrics to use or a well-defined ROI to prove that the project makes sense. If you were in charge of digital marketing for a non-technology Fortune 1000 firm, what types of metrics or other support would you use to demonstrate to your superiors that investing in social media makes sense. Assume you're trying to defend a yet-to-be-funded strategy, against those who might shoot it down.

Dow Jones is looking for submissions that will be distributed in its upcoming social media round table and then incorporated into a whitepaper associated with that event.

Folksonomies and taxonomies in the Enterprise will be the main topic of discussion. With social software applications gaining in popularity across the web, collaborative tagging, or folksonomy, has emerged as a popular way to organize ideas. These tools have made information more accessible on consumer sites such as del.icio.us and Flickr.

Now, businesses are starting to take notice. What are some best practices for implementing social tagging and folksonomies in the Enterprise? For example, how do you manage and merge folksonomies and existing taxonomies? Do folksonomies and taxonomies even belong in the corporate environment?

An Australian food products company is thinking about how Web 2.0 and social media applies to their business. We've seen brand-oriented campaigns such as the Dove real beauty or the Heinz MySpace campaigns. That is not what they are asking about. They are more interested in how they can use these technologies or platforms to derive long term value and relationships with their customers. Focus your thoughts around Facebook, blogs, the Metaverse (Second Life), and mobile platforms -- although you don't have to limit yourself to those if you have other ideas. Think about a time frame that encompasses the present to 3-5 years out. What should a brand-oriented food products company be doing to drive value from Web 2.0?

Background on the company:
Limited online presence now consists primarily of a static corporate web site. They are generally considered #1 or #2 in their market - products consist of a range of shelf stable (not in the chiller/fridge) sauces and condiments that people cook with/eat with. (think pasta sauces, ketchup, etc.)

As a mobile application development team, we're trying to understand how to bring social networking to mobile in a useful manner. To date, there have either been weak mobile versions of existing social networks, or simple tools like Dodgeball. What we're looking to do is build something that is more comprehensive and useful, that takes advantage of the fact that a person is mobile (while also understanding the limitation of mobile platforms). We're not against building this on top of an existing network (via Open Social or Facebook's platform), but don't want to be locked in either. We have our own ideas, but are looking for advice from the community on which areas to prioritize of focus on.

LetsTalk's PhoneTalk blog wants to add new voices to its website, and they're posting regular Cases here for the Techdirt Insight Community to add interesting new content to their site. The winning submissions for each Challenge Case will be posted (perhaps with some editing) on the PhoneTalk blog -- with credits to the author. The following is LetsTalk's next assignment:

It's only a matter of time before everyone's cell phone has a social networking app on it. In fact, phone addressbooks and service plans like T-Mobile's MyFaves already contain most of the features of a social networking app. So which mobile social networking apps are (or will be) the most popular? Will 'Bluedating' ever make it big? If you had to pick a top 5 list of social networking functions for your phone, what would they be?

Please rank the following companies' media device strategy on (a) vision and (b) ability to execute: Apple for the iPod, Microsoft for the Zune, Creative for the Zen, Samsung, Archos, Sony. Rank each on a one to ten scale (1 to 10 for vision, and 1 to 10 for ability to execute), with one being the lowest, and ten being the highest. Please provide a short paragraph explaining your rankings.

Cisco has recently purchased two different sets of social networking technology (FiveAcross and assets from Tribe.net). What do you think Cisco's strategy or thought process is in making these acquisitions?

There are some eerie parallels to the dot com funding bubble of late 90's and the social networking funding bubble today. In the 90's it was about e-commerce. There were the Goliaths: eBay and Amazon who clearly dominated the market. However, there was a frenzy of investment in all kinds of vertical e-tailers, from Pets.com to eToys to completely niche-focused areas like "foreign foods." Then, there were companies that tried to piggyback on the success of the two big players with things like AuctionWatch and PayPal.

This time around, it's all about social networks, with MySpace and Facebook playing the role of the Goliaths. Recently, there's been tremendous investment in vertically focused social networks, for narrowly-defined demographics -- such as mothers or people who want to lose weight. There has also been tremendous interest in funding applications that piggyback on the success of MySpace and Facebook, with things like Slide, Photobucket and LendingClub.

Obviously, many of the bubble-era investments went bust, but there were some success stories, like PayPal and Zappos. What characteristics should an investor look for in figuring out which companies this time around will be the successes -- and how should we avoid the Pets.com of the social networking era? What criteria should we be focusing on and what hidden gems or opportunities are being ignored?

The Digital Entertainment industry can be characterized by the creation, distribution and monetization of digital content and devices intended to entertain end users through media consumption. Examples of players in
the industry are device manufacturers (Apple, Nokia), distribution networks (CBS, XM Satellite), network access providers (Comcast, AT&T), content producers (Electronic Arts, NBC Universal), web based content aggregators (Yahoo, Google, MySpace) & multi-business tech/media conglomerates (Sony, Microsoft).

Given the rapid pace of innovation and shifting power dynamics to date, what are the major trends that will shape the industry over the next 3-7 years? How would you respond to these trends if you were the CEO of any of the above firms? Specifically discuss the economic impact of each trend and show how it would affect the market valuations of the relevant companies.

With the launch of the Facebook platform, a number of startups are developing apps with the Facebook API, rather than on general websites. This can obviously make sense for some products, especially ones that want to leverage immediate network effects of a large social network. However, as a web 2.0 applications startup trying to determine a development path, what key points should we consider before jumping on the Facebook bandwagon? We have a recommendation-based service that will be initially ad-supported and then offer premium subscription services. (Think evite on steriods.)