CHAPTER 5. DISCUSSION
5.2 IM for different platforms of Web 2.0 services
5.2 IM for different platforms of Web 2.0 services
We roughly classify our six cases into two service types according their core value of services. One is knowledge‐accumulated service (K type). K type service is built to achieve the goal of building a platform to accumulate and share knowledge. And most importantly, the shared knowledge will be kept in the platform and can be searched and re‐used by the people who come to the platform later.
The other type is social network service (S type). S type service is built to achieve the goal of building a platform to develop a personal relationship network. The platform can used to share everything. Contrast to the K type service, the content of S type service does not have to be subject‐specific. The achievement of the S type service is not any kind of knowledge but a connection to represent the personal relation network. The following will discuss the difference of IM contexts in these two types of services.
In the first two stages, the impression management of S type service is the same as that of K type services. However, from stage three, there are different types of impression management in different platforms of Web 2.0 services. In social network services, more and more super groups will form. The super groups are the ones with relative more members in the community. The group members gather due to their same interests. The impression of super group is that we are the same.
In knowledge‐accumulating services, more and more superstars will show up. The superstar is the service member who has relative more fans in the community. Fans gather around the superstar to read the content provided by the superstar. The impression of superstar is that I am good. The details of the two types of impression management are showed in tables 5‐2.
Table 5-2 IM for different platforms of Web 2.0 services
Social network service Knowledge accumulated service
Actor Super‐group Superstar
Impression We’re the same I’m good
Resonance status
1. Relatively broad interaction with relatively strong peer pressure for sharing, like gaming, talking or exchanging files
2. Growth of members of group
1. Relatively strict interaction with relatively slight peer pressure for sharing , like commenting or evaluating to specific knowledge 2. Growth of fans of star
Reality 1. Larger and larger group
2. More and more super‐groups due to imitation effect
1. More and more famous star 2. More and more superstars due to
imitation effect
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5.3 4C management for different platforms of Web 2.0 services
Based on the result of our cross‐case analysis, we find that the four C management dimensions can be divided into two groups, main dimension and supportive dimension. Co‐creator management and content management belong to a main group, and control management and capability management belong to a supportive group because supportive managements eventually help main managements to accumulate, retain, and improve quantity and quality of either co‐creator or content. We compile a list of common management goals and means in the main dimensions, showed as table 5‐3 and table 5‐4. We compare knowledge‐accumulating Web 2.0 services with social interaction Web 2.0 services, and we find that there are only four management goals occurring in the knowledge‐accumulating Web 2.0 services. These four management goals are “To acquire better co‐creator”, “To improve co‐creator’s quality”, “To filter better content”, and “To synchronize content”.
Co‐creator management is one of the main managements in the Web 2.0 service development.
There are several goals involved and means used to solve them. In order to acquire the initial co‐creators, service founders and his team devote themself to be the first co‐creators. We call this creates online campaigns associated with certain special festivals. One instance of them is that AnswerBox offered its users a virtual party. The subject of this campaign is to celebrate the official opening of a new AnswerBox service. They also made invitation cards and invited Internet users to join this party. And most important, they sent the press to the mass media to announce the news in advance. After the party, they organized what happened in the gather information gain from the party and reported it to the media again in the form of the press releases. They leveraged the influence of the mass media to acquire more co‐creators. Five of our six cases have adopted this means.
In contrast to public promotion, there are two similar means and they are intra promotion and joint promotion. Intra promotion can be used to increase interaction among co‐creators and to classify co‐creators. This means to continually notify users what happened in the service and to host in‐site activities to let users interact to each other. Joint promotion is to cooperate with other service partners to host activities. This approach can be used to acquire more co‐creators and better co‐creators.
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to invite their friends via email or msn to register as the service users. In order to let their users easily invite their friends, both of AnswerBox and iPeen develop special service function to do so.
“To recruit opinion leader from related community” is especially useful when the service is in its initial stages. For example, PlaySport hired the manager of lottery forum of PPT. After few days, hundreds of co‐creators followed the manager to join PlaySport service. Similar to this approach, we can apply the same idea to bloggers. To leverage famous bloggers also benefit to acquire better co‐creators like what iPeen did.
“To expand service” is to add more service values without changing the service position in the market. For example, PlaySport offered “winner of hundred times prize”. It allowed users to show off their happiness to other users enhancing its co‐creator’s emotional relationship.
“Enlarge customer through business alliance” is to cooperate with other business partners to provide new service value. For example, iPeen cooperated with Google. iPeen offered the article contents and store information to Google in exchange to use its map mechanism to co‐create a food map service. This approach is also good for acquiring better co‐creators.
“Enlarge customer through business integration” is to acquire other business partners. It is a little bit different from the alliance we just discussed. It is a closer relationship between the two parties.
For example, MyGo acquired a cosmetics‐related service to get professional agencies of different types.
SEO is abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization. It is to adjust the website content to fit the search engine’s rule. After optimization, the service can be more easily found via the search engine.
For example, iPeen enhances the titles, meta‐data, alternative text of images and geographic information for each of its pages. As a result, not only the traditional search engine but also the map search engine can easily index the content of iPeen and users can easily access them through search engines.
“To expand market horizontally” is to copy the current successful service model to another market without adding extra service functions. For example, ihergo shifted its original market to local community and school campus.
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Beside aquaring co‐creators, it is also important to increase interaction among co‐creators in the co‐creator management. Of the corresponding approaches, besides “intra promotion”, there is “to increase functionality”. The goal is to add communication functionality to enhance original communication facilities. For example, users of ihergo can discuss their co‐buying affairs to their members in their group pages initially. In order to increase the interaction among users who belong to different groups, ihergo added public forum. Now users who belong to different groups can communicate to each other in public forum. This approach is also good for strengthening co‐creator’s communication ability and strengthening co‐creator’s representation ability.
As the number of co‐creators becomes more and more, the frequency of their interactions becomes more and more frequent. As a result of this interaction, we will see that a variety of virtual groups gradually appearing. If co‐creators can identify those who have the same interests with them, co‐creators can easily interact to each other enhancing its service development. Beside “intra promotion”, there is also “user self‐management” which is use to design mechanisms to allow users to build a team with other users. For example, co‐buying masters of ihergo will actively promote their groups to other users to recruit them. Users of ihergo also can actively ask co‐buying masters to allow them to join the groups. Co‐buying masters are in charge of classifying the users.
As a result, each user of ihergo at least belongs to one group. Of course, one user can belongs to more than one group. It is up to you.
The service managers should pay their attentions to take care of the interactions among co‐creators.
At the same time, they also need to maintain the emotional relationship between co‐creators and the service itself.It is also good for retaining co‐creators.To do so, beside “ to expand service”, there are two approaches and they are “physical contact” and “frequent virtual contact”.For example, the manager of WeNews service will meet co‐creators frequently.Maybe in a teatime afternoon, they meet in a coffee shop and talk each other’s life and even discuss their expectations about WeNews service. Another example is that both AnswerBox and iPeen assign special personnel to be in charge of contacting users online. The personnel will actively say hello to the new users, to visit users’ page and leave a greeting message and so on. As what AnswerBox service founder said, “We are a big family and here is full of warm atmosphere.”
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“to develop indexes to measure participation degree”, is to design a mechanism to evaluate and visualize the co‐creators’ contribution. The index could be numeric or could be a kind of badges to award the special contribution offered by co‐creators. For example, iPeen’s “P coin system” is used to evaluate the degree of user participation. Users can earn more P coins if they obey the rules made by iPeen. P coin is not only a kind of incentives to encourage users do what should do in iPeen.
But also it can be used as a kind of punishment tool to punish users if they do something bad that ruin the service order or reputation. Another example is PlaySport’s award predictors with badges.
The last item of co‐creator management goal is to retain co‐creators. As listed in table 5‐3, we compiled three approaches. “To regulate community order” is to design service usage rules and to assign order managers. Order managers are in charge of keeping the community in order by enforcing its rules. For example, there are many predictors published articles in PlaySport to show their opinions and insight about sport games before the games begin. They also predict the result of games. These articles will affect other PlaySport users’ behaviors. The readers may believe what the article say and then buy the sporty lottery. However the result of games may not match what the articles say. Occasionally, some unreasonable users will publish negative articles to curse the predictors. In such situation, the order manager must handle this immediately to ensure the predictors avoided from the literal attack. Otherwise the predictor may be afraid of predicting and do not predict any more. That will be bad for the service development.
“To reinvent service” is to re‐engineer the whole service from core value, market position and website functions to provide users a brand new service value. Different from “to increase functionality” that do not add additional service value merely enhance original website functions and “to expand service” that add additional service value but still not change the service core value and remain the same market position, this approach is about dramatically renew the service itself.
For example, iPeen was used to serve as a website to discuss experience about eating. Afterward it transformed as a website to discuss life experience not limited to eating. In order to do so, iPeen develop many new website functions and design specific rules for different markets. It is totally different from the original eating discussion when discussing clothes, travels, cars and so on.
“To create subject” is to create virtual in‐site activities to lure users to login every day. For example, AnswerBox hosted “poke poke fun” game online. If user login the AnswerBox, he will get one chance to poke a hole on the screen. And then he will possibly get a prize. This activity was very successful for retaining the users in the AnswerBox’s experience.
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Table 5-3 Co-creator management for different platforms of Web 2.0 services
Goal Means Example: S Example: K
Co‐creator To acquire first
co‐creator In‐house devotion ihergo
AnswerBox
co‐creator Public promotion ihergo
AnswerBox PlaySport
iPeen WEnews
Users acquire users AnswerBox iPeen
WEnews To recruit opinion leader
from related community ihergo
PlaySport MyGo
To expand service PlaySport
Enlarge customer through
horizontally ihergo
To acquire better
co‐creator Joint promotion WEnews
To recruit opinion leader
To increase functionality ihergo To classify
co‐creator User self‐management ihergo
AnswerBox iPeen
WEnews
Intra promotion PlaySport WEnews
To enhance
To expand service PlaySport
Frequent virtual contact AnswerBox iPeen To improve
co‐creator’s quality User education MyGo
WEnews
order PlaySport iPeen
To reinvent service ihergo AnswerBox PlaySport
iPeen MyGo
To create subject AnswerBox
To strengthen co‐creator’s communication ability
To increase functionality ihergo MyGo
To strengthen co‐creator’s representation ability
To increase functionality ihergo iPeen
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Table 5-4 Content management for different platforms of Web 2.0 services
Content To acquire first
content In‐house devotion ihergo
AnswerBox
To expand service AnswerBox
To re‐organize
content To recruit volunteer
community coordinator ihergo
PlaySport
To filter better
content Users evaluate each
other’s work iPeen
To enrich content To expand service PlaySport
To produce high‐quality content
Expert production PlaySport MyGo
To acquire better
content Intra promotion PlaySport
To enhance co‐creator’s
motivation PlaySport WEnews
To deny inappropriate content
To develop automatic filter
system PlaySport
To improve
content To streamline operation MyGo
To improve
content’s reliability Users evaluate each
other’s work ihergo iPeen
To modify functionality iPeen
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