Homepage of author: http://yury.name

1. Business-Consumer
Networks
Yury Lifshits
Caltech
http://yury.name
Saint Petersburg, 17 January 2008
1 / 25

2. Project Objectives
Goal: to design a web technology that
serves as a universal tool for
business-consumer communication
Outputs: paper, community, prototype
Time constraints: 3 months
2 / 25

3. Informal Idea
Business-Consumer Networks:
Nodes: businesses, consumers
Fan links: who likes which brand
3 / 25

4. Outline
1 Vision
2 Social Design
3 Information Architecture
4 Implementation Issues
5 Algorithms
6 Conclusions
4 / 25

5. 1
Vision
5 / 25

6. Two Worlds
Private life and business life:
Home and office
Business cell phone and private cell phone
Facebook and ???
6 / 25

7. Two Worlds
Private life and business life:
Home and office
Business cell phone and private cell phone
Facebook and ???
Next few years: urbanization of the Web
6 / 25

8. Business Identity
Reference point
Accumulating reputation
Active: sending messages, organizing
events
Interactive: answers questions
7 / 25

9. B2C Functions
Marketing
Providing information about business
Loyalty programs
Special offers
Organizing fan movement
Affiliated marketing
Customer relationship management
Collecting feedback
Accumulating data
Market research
Sales
Hiring
8 / 25

10. C2B Functions
Product search, shopping
Local search
Getting recommendations
Sharing experience
Customer support
Freelance
9 / 25

11. Business Web is Not Here Yet
Social networks are positioned as a tool
for private communication
Most web services are developed with
focus on customers, not businesses
Disintegration of services and networks,
non-convertibility of reputation
Lack of analytic tools: learning and
measuring customers
10 / 25

12. 2
Social Design
11 / 25

13. Social Design
Define rules of the system and economic
incentives to motivate:
Experience sharing
Communication activities
“White” marketing, fair competition
Interest-driven browsing
Self-organization
Evangelism marketing
12 / 25

14. Question List
Usage scenarios?
Reputation rules?
Promotion tools?
Privacy policy?
Business model?
Starting platform?
Role of grassroots?
Partnership strategy?
Starting ID? Deleting fake IDs?
Snowball mechanism? Rewarding early adopters?
13 / 25

15. 3
Information Architecture
14 / 25

16. Components of Information Architecture
Entities
Communication tools
Search and navigation
Notification system
Relations with the big Web
Policies
Reputations
Information flows
15 / 25

17. Things to Think About
Privacy: private, friends-only, network-only, public,
XML access, API access
Communication tools: blogs, messages, forums,
Q&A, reviews, requests
Entities: customers, businesses, products,
communities, fanpages, listings/offers
News feed architecture: top products/companies,
friend news, voted stories
Interruption policy: who can speak with whom?
Market research tools, CRM tools
Role of widgets
16 / 25

18. 4
Implementation Issues
17 / 25

19. Implementation Issues
Web application framework
Data formatting (FOAF, semantic web).
New formats?
API policy, widgets
Open ID. Business ID?
Distributed vs. centralized?
Billing tools
Integration with mobile devices
Upload client for business accounts
18 / 25

20. 5
Algorithms
19 / 25

21. Algorithmic Challenges
Ads
Recommendations
Search
News feeds
Computing reputations
Discovery algorithms
Fighting social spam
Market research algorithms
20 / 25

22. Conclusions
21 / 25

23. Participate in the Project
Participate in designing business web
Technology partnership: infrastructure,
services
User base partnership
Funding
Engineers support
22 / 25

24. Participate in the Project
Participate in designing business web
Technology partnership: infrastructure,
services
User base partnership
Funding
Engineers support
Be a member of our prototype team!
22 / 25

25. Topics for Discussion
Critics? Threats?
Which ideas do you like?
Comments to vision?
How to start?
Ideas for social design? Information
architecture? Implementation?
Algorithms?
Partnership?
23 / 25

26. Topics for Discussion
Critics? Threats?
Which ideas do you like?
Comments to vision?
How to start?
Ideas for social design? Information
architecture? Implementation?
Algorithms?
Partnership?
How can you contribute?
23 / 25

27. Links and Contacts
http://yury.name
http://yury-lifshits.livejournal.com
http://yurylifshits.habr.ru
+1 626 463 3668
+7 904 331 0563
yury@caltech.edu
Yury Lifshits: Facebook, LinkedIn
24 / 25

28. Thanks for your attention!
Questions?
25 / 25