Survive and Thrive the Web 2.0 World

Don’t be afraid of the power of collaboration, know your objective

            The Internet has become a platform for us to show that in this digital era, we as the masses are in charge. Because of this ability for people to connect with each other, it has fuelled a revolution of powerful online communities that often dominate the offline world. Humans have always naturally been attracted to other humans through what they find they share in common. From tribes in South Asia to the Vikings in Scandinavia, these communities were brought together because of a natural instinct to form relationships. Relationships are what many of us are good at right?

In the book Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, describes the ‘groundswell’ as “a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from the traditional institutions like corporations”. Traditional businesses and nations succeeded only by defeating, destroying and dominating competition at all costs. If this description fits your company, you should continue to read this blog. I'm going to let you in on a multi-billion dollar marketing strategy: collaborative measures made possible with Web 2.0.

In 2005, Howard Rheingold said that a new story is beginning to emerge, “corporation, collective action, and complex interdependencies play a more important role, and the central but not all important role of competition and survival of the fittest, shrinks just a little bit to make room”. He continues to add that human communication and society have been evolving to collaborate, which later resulted in wealth. In the many-to-many era, every desktop is now a printing press, a broad casting station, a community and marketplace. You should learn how to best use social technologies in order to benefit you or your organization.

Ebay found its niche of creating a marketplace where people can easily be both the seller and the consumer. Wikipedia is a non-profit encyclopedia developed, updated and edited by anyone on the web. NGOs have put up their problems on Third World Countries on the Internet to be solved by university students all over the world. Yes, we are the all-powerful masses that threaten companies but at the same time, we are also necessary! They need our collaboration as much as we need theirs. Rheingold also mentions that these companies enrich others not because of altruism but because they are also enriching themselves. This is turning the Prisoner’s Dilemma game into an assurance game where neither side wants to trust the other but once proven trustworthy, they will cooperate.

Let me first explain that the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a game theory coined to describe why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so. With social technologies, it is in the best interest of both the company and their audience to collaborate to generate more wealth or awareness. Of course there are risks involved with bolding sharing information online. What business decisions do companies make that are risk-free? Hardly any. Making information ‘open source’ means that your product or details about it are posted for anyone and everyone to access and use. Before you start taking big risks, it is important to understand the objectives behind the use of social technologies. Li and Bernoff came up with 5 objectives that companies can pursue in the groundswell:

Listening: use the groundswell for research and to better understand your customers

Talking: use the groundswell to spread messages about your company, if ready to extend your current digital initiatives

Synergizing: find your most enthusiastic customers, use the groundswell to supercharge the power of their word of mouth

Supporting: set up groundswell tools to help your customers support each other

Embracing: integrate your customers into the way your business works (using their help to design your products)

It is good to be selective about what objectives apply to your company. It is a matter of appropriating them strategically that will help your company reach the top! The objective to embrace is well exemplified with the Toronto-based gold mining company Goldcorp. Goldcorp had come to a halt with a staggering amount of debt, exceedingly high costs of production and a bad gold economy. Goldcorp’s in-house geologists concluded that their fifty-year old mine in Red Lake, Ontario was out of gold and that it was time to terminate all operations. CEO Rob McEwen did something unheard of in their industry: “He published his geological data on the Web for all to see and challenged the world to do the prospecting.The "Goldcorp Challenge" made a total of $575,000 in prize money available to participants who submitted the best methods and estimates.”

The Internet became a home to Goldcorp’s 400 megabytes of information on their 55,000 acre property. Their challenge integrated some 1,000 participants from 50 countries who got busy with Goldcorp’s data. It wasn’t long before submissions from all over the world were shared with the Goldcorp headquarters. It was like Christmas when Goldcorp began receiving copious amounts valuable information. McEwen said “We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in the industry. When I saw the computer graphics, I almost fell out of my chair." Since the challenge, participants identified 110 targets and 8 million ounces of gold have been mined (worth $3 billion). WOW. It saved their company. Li and Bernoff also state, "people connect with other people and draw power from other people, especially the crowds. Internet allows people to draw strength from each other." Their objective was to embrace and they did this successfully! 
The application of the Web 2.0 theory of collaboration is not always possible with every company but it is important to identify your objective before pursuing the collaborative action of the masses online. Li and Bernoff's identifying objectives can be one  If you are a marketer for your company, be open to connecting, interacting and collaborating with your audience members online. You never know when you may need the power of the masses!