Today I will give you a view on the Power of Interactive platforms. \n\nBesides the fact that being active on these platforms is a fun way of procrastination, the presence of a lot of people gives rich opportunities for crowdsourcing. A notion on which I will elaborate further on.\n
The World has changed. In the 18th century thos was the way we looked at the world. A handdrawn map of Flanders, mostly to recognize borders of nations.\n\n
Today we look at the world from a quite different perspective. The map of the world we look at on Google is enriched with contextual information. Whether it is historical sites\n\n\n
or the latest tweet from Venice, Italy\n
And moreover, in the near future we will look at the real world through a device that delivers contextual information around what we see. This contextual information has been laid on the world for a great part by poeple like you and me. \n
We are able to do that because we are connected and we live in a connected world. We are connected with a great range of devices, not just at home, but everywhere we go.\n\n
Because we are connected with greater speed than ever, the internet has changed.\n
A change that we internetconsultants refer to as a change form web 1.0 \n
to web 2.0\n
And to the man in the street we narrow this down to a web consisting of social media tools, platforms and networks.\n
This change has led to a different perspective on how we use and experience the web. Web 1.0 was an internet full of websites where the messenger told the visitor how things were. We were sending information over the web to our visitors. \n
With the coming of web 2.0 or if you like social media we don't listen to senders anymore. On contrary: we listen to eachother. We rely more often on the opinion of our peergroup than the one of a selfproclaimed expert. The web has become a conversation.\n
We hold this conversation with 200 of our closest friends on facebook, or with our 1.000 so called friends on Twitter and sometimes with our 500+ business connections on linkedIn.\n\n\n
But our conversation is broader. We tell other unknown people how we experienced our stay in Hotel Sander in Amsterdam. In three words - I quote "Hotel from Hell" - this conversation leads to a better informed fellow traveller.\n
We listen to conversations of other people if we want to buy a new camcorder.\n
We watch the Beinbruch of Matias Concha on YouTube over and over again (268.000) and with 700 talkative people we rant about it in the comments.\n
And the most recent development in online conversation about products and services is about physicians and therapists. We rate and review our treatment so patients like me know what they can expect.\n
Conclusion: If you're online, you're using social media.\n\n
To be better informed about the world around you.\n
We call this the wisdom of the crowd. And we need this combined wisdom these days.\n\n
For though sometimes there's one man who can bring the entire world objective information about say political truth.\n
Most of the time we ask Google for information about say the Afghan war, we get around 12.5 million answers.\n
So we ask our peers to filter and interpet the information overload we experience\n\n
A small example from my personal quest for information. When I looked for the perfect screencast software to make the videodemo Nienke showed you yesterday, I found 764.000 results in Google. When I asked my close to 1.500 friends on Twitter\n
I found the answer in 1 minute. Three people replied me, of which two with the same answer. I stopped searching.\n
Sure, I could have send my entire adressbook with the same question, but besides the fact that the biggest part wouldn't have a clue, the right answer would fall in a mailbox cluttered with 1250 unread messages.\n\n
But how can companies profit from this development, when they don't have reallife friends like I have?\n
The answer is: Crowdsourcing\n
One place where you can start sourcing the crowds knowledge is in a LinkedIn Group. Asking a smart question might lead to at least 50 usefull answers. Why do people answer? Because everyone else in the group can see how smart they are. And with a little chance their answer becomes a featured answer in the group. Their face at the homepage of the group! It's all about reputation\n
Dell did something else. Their businessmodel of selling computers online is brilliant and very profitable. But when buyers started calling the helpdesk, they found out that there customers weren't that brilliant. And the girl In india didn't have an answer to all of them. So the set up an online forum, to deliver crowdsourced support. Dell customers helping other Dell customers. One forum-member - with the picturesque name Predator - has answered 20.000 questions, which generated 2 million views. If 1 in 20 of these viewers will not call the helpdesk, it saves Dell 1 million dollar.\n
Starbucks serves millions of people every day. These millions of people represent an enormous intelligence and creativity to improve their performance. So they started crowdsourcing this creativity by launching a website My Starbukcs Idea. Customers could drop their idea on the website about beverages, service and everything else. \n
In the meantime the generated more than 100.000 ideas to improve their business in many ways. The website informs everyone what they do with each idea, ranging from iced decaf to email notifications of a Starbucks Card reward. Whatever that may be:)\n
Innocentive harnesses collective brainpower around the world to solve problems that really matter. This is crowdsourcing intelligence. Innocentive gives Seekers the opportunity to let their problem solve by thousands of of Solvers. During the oildisaster in the MExican Gulf hondreds of solvers helped finding a solution to the problem of how to clean the sea. This example is of a company that wnats to identify a technology for the development of a product that will indicate when an item has been subjected to a temperature below a minimum acceptable temperature. \n
By rewarding the solver with 40.000 dollar, it has already 408 people actively involved in solving this probem. 408 people they didn't know before and who don't work at their company.\n\n
The blueprint of this model of crowdsouring is possibly made by Goldcorp. Halfway the nineties of the last century this Canadian golddigger saw a rapid decline in delved gold. They posessed big parts of the country, but didn't find enough gold. A board member told his fellow boardmembers: \n\n"I’d like to take all of our geology, all the data we have that goes back to 1948, and put it into a file and share it with the world. Then we’ll ask the world to tell us where we’re going to fund the next six million ounces of gold."\n\nThe eologists were a little skeptical, but they came around. The contest this board member came up with to encourage responses - 10.000 to half a million dollar for succesfull findings - was a rousing success, 80% of the 110 targets identified by the amateur geologists spread over the world had substantial quantities of gold (50% of which hadn’t been previously identified), \n\n
A $100 Million company turned into a $9 Billion,\n
This model can be implemented in big organzations as well. Sanoma - a big dutch publisher - started a Saleswiki. Every piece of knowledge about clients, advertisers, magazines, readers, et cetera has been put in their own Wikipedia. As soon as a salesmanager hits the street to visit new prospects or existing clients, he is informed within a few mouseclicks about everything. Number of campaigns, name of contact, adress, sales volume. An examination demonstrated that a slaesmanager using the wiki needed 2 minutes to gather his information and leave the building. A non-user needed 8 minutes more, to dig up everything.\n\n
Now you all have the tools at hand to harness the collective brainpower of ING's employees and become smarter faster than ever. \n\n
So meet your colleagues around the world \n
40. at the virtual coffeemachine to share your knowledge.\n\n40a. And realize with the Goldcorp-case in your mind, that the colleague of whom you expected the least, might deliver the most creative solutions. So think outside your small departments and invite smart colleagues with an interest in fraud-prevention to your platform as well.\n\n