The Business Web 2.0
As CEO of business-based social networking site WeCanDo.BIZ, read my take on the role Web 2.0 technologies can play helping businesses to grow.
Saturday 31 January 2009, 12:42 PM
Unified login, CRM 2.0 take small steps forward
Important announcements this week to help OpenID catch Facebook Connect; and to help bring Facebook and Salesforce.com closer to delivering CRM 2.0.
I wrote at the end of last year about how Facebook Connect was winning the race to get close to a unified login across the web, where one set of credentials will take you anywhere. It was not because anyone wants Facebook to win this battle -- they don't, in fact, because Facebook remains proprietary, owns your data once entered and is a long way from being open and fair -- but because OpenID has always been hard to use and Google Friend Connect is a little lame in what it offers. Well the game has moved on yet again.
This week Google and Plaxo have announced that they've brough together OpenID, OAuth and the Google Contacts API to enable much simpler sign in, with the ability to bring contacts with you when you join new networks too.
(A great description of how it works can be found here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/10036)
This certainly gets close to matching Facebook Connect in most way, but misses out on two key features. First, there are no details of how other sites on we internet can use this functionality to benefit their members (like they can with FBC, albeit with some pain to get it implemented). Secondly, Plaxo and Google lack a central site with a common contact list and where details of activities on remote sites can be posted back to. OK, Google has quite a lot of e-mail addresses and Plaxo has 20 million users willing to volunteer more than that, but even combined the lack the cache of a network of 150 million people and 20% of the population logging in to check what is happening with the contacts they have (activities from FBC sites could be included in the Facebook newsfeed, driving traffic).
It's a step in the right direction -- and one to be applauded given how much more open this solution is compared to Facebook's -- but Zuckerberg still leads the field in this area.
Another important step this week was the involvement of a third small party in beinging together a flagship CRM 2.0 exmaple that everyone can relate to.
Software vendor Appirio, which announced an offering called Referral Management Solution, a set of technologies to help Salesforce.com exploit Facebook for viral marketing and employee recruitment.
The tools search friend profiles and tell users which connections may be best for sales campaigns, marketing promotions or to approach as candidates for roles. It's an important step towards what I have previously called "the perfect business application" where a CRM system can mine the data people happily volunteer on social networks.
Appirio went for Facebook first because of its scale -- no doubt the promise of tapping into Facebook's 150 million users was in their mind when they priced the solution at $25,000 for an annual subscription -- you need volumes for that to be economic for most organisations.
If the cost doesn't make you question this as a way forward, privacy concerns might (although these can be overcome on Facebook by customers opting in to an application, as with all other data sharing apps), as may a question whether the "right" data is on the networks to be exploited in the first place. Whereas Facebook is great for consumer contact, it wouldn't work so well for companies with a B2B focus -- but then LinkedIn, which is what most people would think of, actually stores and shares very little contact information.
What do you think of how these two technologies will change the way people use Web 2.0?
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
I wrote at the end of last year about how Facebook Connect was winning the race to get close to a unified login across the web, where one set of credentials will take you anywhere. It was not because anyone wants Facebook to win this battle -- they don't, in fact, because Facebook remains proprietary, owns your data once entered and is a long way from being open and fair -- but because OpenID has always been hard to use and Google Friend Connect is a little lame in what it offers. Well the game has moved on yet again.
This week Google and Plaxo have announced that they've brough together OpenID, OAuth and the Google Contacts API to enable much simpler sign in, with the ability to bring contacts with you when you join new networks too.
(A great description of how it works can be found here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/10036)
This certainly gets close to matching Facebook Connect in most way, but misses out on two key features. First, there are no details of how other sites on we internet can use this functionality to benefit their members (like they can with FBC, albeit with some pain to get it implemented). Secondly, Plaxo and Google lack a central site with a common contact list and where details of activities on remote sites can be posted back to. OK, Google has quite a lot of e-mail addresses and Plaxo has 20 million users willing to volunteer more than that, but even combined the lack the cache of a network of 150 million people and 20% of the population logging in to check what is happening with the contacts they have (activities from FBC sites could be included in the Facebook newsfeed, driving traffic).
It's a step in the right direction -- and one to be applauded given how much more open this solution is compared to Facebook's -- but Zuckerberg still leads the field in this area.
Another important step this week was the involvement of a third small party in beinging together a flagship CRM 2.0 exmaple that everyone can relate to.
Software vendor Appirio, which announced an offering called Referral Management Solution, a set of technologies to help Salesforce.com exploit Facebook for viral marketing and employee recruitment.
The tools search friend profiles and tell users which connections may be best for sales campaigns, marketing promotions or to approach as candidates for roles. It's an important step towards what I have previously called "the perfect business application" where a CRM system can mine the data people happily volunteer on social networks.
Appirio went for Facebook first because of its scale -- no doubt the promise of tapping into Facebook's 150 million users was in their mind when they priced the solution at $25,000 for an annual subscription -- you need volumes for that to be economic for most organisations.
If the cost doesn't make you question this as a way forward, privacy concerns might (although these can be overcome on Facebook by customers opting in to an application, as with all other data sharing apps), as may a question whether the "right" data is on the networks to be exploited in the first place. Whereas Facebook is great for consumer contact, it wouldn't work so well for companies with a B2B focus -- but then LinkedIn, which is what most people would think of, actually stores and shares very little contact information.
What do you think of how these two technologies will change the way people use Web 2.0?
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
PreviousComments on this post
Great article. Part of what made facebook the place to start for Appirio was definitely the large number of users and the relative openness of its APIs compared to others. Also, a critical component is that we were able to manage privacy.
Word of mouth referrals are compelling because they are personal. Spamming someone's network would actually devalue the interaction. So while referrals are matched and suggested by the solution, the final decision to pass it one to a friend is left to the user.
We also then allow for the publisher to create incentives (referral fees, points, etc.) and surface those to user to encourage the action of a referral.
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