Ideas for the next big social application
The dot com era in the late 90’s and early part of this decade had all kinds of businesses vying to be on the internet and become ‘online‘. You had online shopping, dating, banking, grocery, friends, home pages etc etc.
In the past 3-4 years, the same can be said about the ’social’ or web2.0 phenomenon. everyone ants to build some kind of a social network application and ride the wave. So, this had me thinking that if in today’s world, one wants to build a truly successful social application, where are the opportunities for this? Which areas should one look at for building the next big social application.
I analyzed the current successful (a relative term) social applications and the ‘areas‘ that they are in. These are by no means the definitive social applications but are listed as representative samples of applications in various areas.
The first level nodes in the mindmap below represent the areas. For example, YouTube is about making videos social & open, twitter is about making SMS/messaging social & open and so on…
I believe that if one wants to build the next successful social application, then one could always try and build a better and game changing social application OR find out areas that are not yet ’socially enabled’ and create social applications in that space.
I can bet that the next twitter/facebook would not be in the areas mentioned above but in adjacent areas or areas not mentioned above. Now, I need to go and find out those areas and..!!!
Getting ideas 
fake smiles & customer service — just for the sake of it
Let me illustrate what I mean by 2 examples:
#1: Some time back I had posted about alleged malpractices of Skoda India and so did many other bloggers around India. This incident had nothing to do with me personally and was just my views on what I had heard on an automobile forum. I do not (and don’t intend to) own a Skoda car and yet someone from Skoda India read my blog and here is the comment they posted on my blog and the emails they sent to me had the following (name/email/phone number masked to prevent misuse):
“Please get in touch with Mr. XXXXX from the Skoda after sales department on xxxxx@skoda-auto.co.in or 0240 xxxxxx to resolve your concerns”
Now this action on behalf of Skoda India an act of reaching out just for the sake of reaching out. It has no value at all and just be reading it shows the lack of sincerity that is obvious in the interaction. Here I saw presenting my views and I don’t even own a Skoda and how would reaching out to “Skoda after sales department” help me ??
#2: Sometime back I along with few friends went to a reputed/upscale restaurant for dinner and since we had landed up there without reservation we had to wait for a table. After some time of waiting we were given a table and a smartly dressed, smiling, english speaking waiter came to the table and asked us if we would like regular water or mineral bottled water. We mentioned our choice and he went away and brought water and even poured for us.
As we settled down, the manager came to our table and mentioned that we were given a table that was actually meant for some one else (a family that had been waiting for some time now) and would it be possible for us to wait for another table and have that family take this table. He made a sincere request and we all agreed and we told the waiter that we will wait for a table. After some 10 minutes or so we got a table and we settled down there.
Now the same smartly dressed, smiling, english speaking waiter comes to our table and asks us this question: “would you like regular water or mineral bottled water sir”. we were like zapped..!!! That person, just 10 minutes ago had a conversation with us and had taken our preference and even poured water for us and how come he doesn’t even remember what kind of water do we want???
He was just smiling and that smile just said one thing… “fake smiles & customer service — just for the sake of it”…
Power of an online community vs. Corporate muscle power
A series of interesting and very powerful real life events are unfolding that are showing the power of a well know online community vs corporate muscle power.
“Mr Harish has been an unfortunate recipient of Skoda’s appalling standards of service. His only fault? That he spent 12 lakh rupees on the wrong brand. His Skoda had parts worth a whopping 4.0 lakh rupees replaced by counterfeit ones by Skoda’s official dealer / representative; fake parts that could have taken a toll on his family’s life (e.g. fake brake discs installed in his car). Now, Skoda is busy fighting him in court. Not to mention, his Skoda Octavia has yet not been returned to him. IN A YEAR!
Instead of apologising and making up to its so-obviously-wronged customer for their dealer / representative misdeeds, Skoda continues to fight the poor gentleman.
Harish turned to Team-BHP for support and posted his entire Skoda ordeal here (Skoda dealer changes parts in my car = Consumer Court = Car not returned in a YEAR!) with FACTS and supporting pictures.
Skodas response: Threaten the community and trying to curb freedom of speech.
Obviously, this has created a stir within the Team-BHP Community. Members are angry and united against Skoda.
Follow the full story here:
This is going to be a big one and will show the power of online communities in the digital age.
Corporate Version of “Moments of Truth”
A recent book that I was reading reminded me of a yet to be published book that has been lingering in my mind for a very long time.
We have the seminal book — ‘my experiments with truth’ by Mahatma Gandhi and for long I have desired to read a contemporary and a corporate version of that message. A version that has been written by a great corporate leader, talking about ‘moments of truth’ from a corporate context. A journey through the tough moments in the corporate world with all the human elements of their right and wrong decisions, human failure, temptations, greatness, etc. The book would NOT be about the ‘company/organization’ but about the business leader and their ‘moments of truth’.
The book can be written by a business leader, looking back at his/her own corporate journey(from a ‘moments of truth’ perspective) or can be a compilation of chapters from all the great business leaders of this country(or the world).
I am sure that the young professional would benefit immensely from such experiences. Too often we have books that portray our business leaders as heroes but very few, if any, that talk about their being human and their ‘moments of truth’ in a corporate context. I also know that this is a very sensitive subject and not many people would be willing to share their ‘moments of truth’…
web2.0 auto portals in India: mee too syndrome…
eb2.0 & Automotive portals? wow..!!! As a passionate automobile enthusiast and a firm Web.20 believer, it represents the best of both worlds for me.
I have been following the auto portal scene in India from the late 90’s and have seen them evolve, stagnate and fade away. Have witnessed portals such as indiacar.com, cybeersteering.com, bsmotoring.com come and stagnate in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
When ‘AutoMartIndia‘ (now called ‘FirstChoice‘) was launched in early 2000’s, as an automobile enthusiast I was excited as it represented a paradigm shift in the way Indians bought & sold ‘used cars‘. In fact, the term ‘used cars’ came into existence — at least in India after that only. Previously ‘used cars’ were always referred to as ‘second hand‘ cars.
In the last one year or so, I have been very impressed by carwale.com. The way these folks have approached about building an auto portal is simply great. They put in one feature at a time, must have analyzed user behavior to ensure that it was working spot on, and then built on the simple web2.0 premises of usability & simplicity tied together and anticipating user needs. Once you looked at carwale.com, you realized — why the hell did other auto portals not think of it? This is exactly what I as a user wants.!! Features like used car prices to the granular level of models/city and mileage are a great boon to users. carwale perfected this with tapping into it’s user base to come up with city/model specific indicative pricing for used cars. There are a number of other features that one can go on and on about the value proposition that carwale.com provides — both to end user(car buyer) and car sellers (individuals & used car dealers).
Of late numerous auto portals that are replicas of carwale.com have come up. In my opinion, while this is testimony to the fact that carwale.com is successful and good, is also resulting in mee-too auto portals‘ whose value proposition is exactly same as that of carwale.com. While this can also be termed as expansion of market, this leads to stifling of innovation & new business models. These mee-too auto portals are doing exactly what the auto portals of late 90’s did — copy each other.
Don’t believe me: Just look at the home pages of three different auto portals(carwale.com, carazoo.com, driveinside.com). It would be very hard for a user to distinguish one from another.
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