Information Systems Session 5 & 6 - 19/200510

In Session 5, we learned about the following:

The Main Positive Effects of Technology

1. Reduce search time (simplified information access)
2. Brought distant places closer (buying online)
3. More interactions (computer networking)

How the Net works? (http://www.warriorsofthe.net/)

Activate IP --> Packet --> Label --> Address: URL --> LAN --> Accidents (error correction) --> Router and Swtich --> Network Interface --> Proxy Server --> Firewall --> Error Correction / Acknowledgment --> Webserve

Twitter

We can see a increase use of Twitter from companies as show below:

1. Comcast Cares and Telefonica uses Twitter as a channel for customers to provide feedbacks and because of this convenience, people expressed their concerns more and thus these companies are also able to tackle their concerns and thus increasing satisfaction index. Some banks are using Twitter, Facebook and Skype to communicate with their customers.

2. Another avenue for companies to leverage Twitter's users is when users posts their wish list on Twitter. Company can then try to tap on these potential customers. Twitter is extremely powerful to companies in this aspects.


In Session 6, we learned that Foursquare is a Geo location, personal, real time application that harvest data (data stream) on reviews, types of places, demographic, location where customers visit, the retails' popularity and we can also find out possible competitors through these data collected. For more in-depth analysis please refer in my previous blogs.

Although I understand that the success of Foursquare is actually pegged to the number of users and more importantly, the data they create, I did not know that there is actually a term associated to it. The term is "crowdsourcing". The main difference between crowdsourcing and ordinary outsourcing is that a task or problem is outsourced to an undefined public rather than a specific other body. This is an extremely powerful tool. Not only social networking application can make use of the idea of crowdsourcing. Businesses can also create crowdsourcing like how Starbucks create a forum to tap on ideas from the public (See - http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/ideaHome).

Another important thing I learned today is the "Initial to change". Currently the number of users are increasing exponentially and that existing users had created a network and reputation, accumulated points and badges, and this causes a huge resistance for Foursquare users to rebuild everything if they were to join a new similar platform. This effectively demonstrated the initial to change. This effectively is Foursquare greatest competitive advantage. Thus, if Facebook or Twitter tries to launch a similar application to compete with Foursquare, chances of them succeeding is very low.