What’s in a (Things) Box?

ThingsBox, a new social shopping application on Facebook, allows you to select recently purchased products, or items that one wishes to have and give feedback or get feedback from friends.

This touches upon one of the essential components of Social Commerce; receiving reliable opinions before making a purchase.

What is noticeable about ThingsBox is the integration on Facebook and the interaction between using the application and posting comments on walls that generates the propagation of feedbacks.

The ThingsBox application is divided into 3 parts; a “HaveBox”, a “WishBox” and a box entitled “Undecided”.

This division allows subtle interactions between friends.  I put in my HaveBox items that I have and hand them over to be commented on, by posting them on my wall or by directly asking the opinion of certain friends.

I can also ask them about the contents of my “Undecided” box, but also ask them about things I have in my “WishBox”, otherwise what are friends for…..

Judging by the list of products recommended by ThingsBox, this application seems to specialize in electronics, laptops, cameras, and telephones…..and suggests buying such items on Amazon.

Is an affiliate business model sufficient for ThingsBox?

Have you Read Half a Million Tweets?

Probably not.  Even at the height of the live tweet feed #iranelection, I read only around 200 tweets a day, equaling a potential annual amount of 72,000 tweets.

However, Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), did!

Assisted by a small team of two students along with Abdur Chowdhury, Twitter’s chief scientist, Jim Jansen analyzed 500,000 tweets to study the presence of brands on Twitter.

In the crossroads of marketing, sociology, and technology, social commerce is becoming a “red hot” subject of research and business.

The results of their study were published in the “Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences and Technology.”

Confirming my post “The Twitter Paradox”, brands are often cited on Twitter.  With 20% of tweets being about or mentioning brands, Twitter is the quintessential word of mouth marketing platform.

Considering that there are 6 million people who use Twitter on a daily basis who tweet around two times a day, this equals 2.4 million tweets about brands.

Jansen adds:

“It may be right up there with e-mail in terms of communication impact.”

“Businesses use micro-communication for brand awareness, brand knowledge and customer relationship.  Personal use is all over the board.  A lot of the brand comments were positive.  There are some good products out there, or at least products that people are happy with.”

When one of the biggest hesitancies in using social networks by brands is the fear of “bad rap”, it is debatable whether adopting the use of social networks as communication tools is close and unavoidable.

In fact the results of the study by Jansen’s team are telling and can be broken down as follows:

• Very positive (no criticism, buying recommended)……..29.8%
• Positive (positive feedback, prevails over criticism)……30.8%
• Balanced (positive status is mediocre or balanced)…….12%
• Negative (globally negative or deceiving)……..15.7%
• Entirely negative (no positive feedback, not recommended)……..6.5%
• Neutral (no opinion, ask questions)…….5.2%

Brands need not worry because the percentage of negative tweets only account for 22.2% of the total.

Contrary to other marketing strategies which are based on the purchase of key words or the diffusion of emails, social marketing on networks is founded on the creation of conversations, the differentiating feature of the word of mouth strategy.

A challenge for all who think that it is only a question of money and that they would be running the risk of the networks being spammed, word of mouth works according to the relationship system that Jansen presents above.

The publication of a tweet can positively or negatively affect the image of a brand and marginally improve its notoriety.

The tweets circulation among followers and eventual retweets reinforce the confidence and satisfaction and generate loyalty or strength, which in turn shows in an immediate or future purchase. 

Just Dropped In To Check What Reputation My Reputation Was In….

This is from now on the problems brands are facing today.

With 20% of Tweets mentioning some kind of brand or mark, dozens of millions of fans benefiting from the advertising on Facebook, forums and e-commerce sites becoming more and more widespread for hundreds of thousands of Internet users, and with over 40,000 new blogs created daily and millions of emails in circulation, the problem is immense!

Word of mouth has changed its form.

The Internet and, particularly, social media has transformed conversations once limited to the classroom, the coffee machine at work, or mothers, into millions of simultaneous discussions that become more and more interconnected.

How can brands catch on?  According to The BIA Kelsey Group, a consulting firm, the expenditure of ERPM (Email, Reputation and Presence Management) will reach $3.1 million by 2013.

Word of mouth is the Holy Grail when it comes to marketing strategies.  A rainbow of media tactics on the Internet offer a key to the world, but until that point, there is word of mouth.

Managing the reputation of a brand on the Internet has generated a demand for technological business, professions, and solutions, a little like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and has become a major business for brand marketing. 

Among the existing solutions, to quote BrandsEye that states to be the only tool…..

However, if BrandsEye boasts a series of impressionable functions, enabling to:

1. listen to the "global discussion" about the brand
2. offer the possibility to enter into the conversation
3. react as fast as possible if ever a "crisis" came about
4. create quantified relationships with up and coming trends
5. monitor the competition

It is to a great extent defensive ORM (Online Reputation Management) and tools for crisis management.

True, a large number of brands fear a blow to their reputation on the Internet.

The result is a cautious approach to word of mouth on the Internet.  Hundreds of millions of discussions about brands develop and form a global conversation which is very quickly becoming the key to a successful e-commerce experience.

Is this conversation destined to stay out of hearing distance form marketing managers?

Matt Booth, (senior vice president and program director), à BIA/Kelsey adds,

"There are too many disparate conversations going on through social networks, user reviews, message boards and online affinity groups for a small business to find let alone track manually......The market has developed in such a way that ERPM (Email, Reputation and Presence Management) is basically a white space that capital and technology will rush to fill."

This requires a lot of skill!
How does one speak when there are so many word of mouth flows?

This is the question that opens access to $3.1 billion by 2013!