"Hazlo social"

In 2004, Flickr won the game for other services to upload photos to Internet by integrating social features inherent in the act of sharing photos with friends. Set different groups (family, friends, acquaintances), allow comments, favorites, create shared walls, tag photos were among the services that inspired Tim O'Reilly to coin the term Web 2.0 in the same year.

Flickr "social was" a service that previously existed. A few days ago, sought to convince the audience of a conference in São Paulo of the importance of "social" processes, products and services. And by "social action" I mean to introduce "social functionality" in the DNA of the same: to share information or data with other friends, play and talk with them about this information, a digital asset tag, rate it collaboratively.

When we speak of "social functionality" refers, of course, the virtual environment interaction, since in this world almost everything is social, meaning to civilization as the collaborative effort of society to progress. Speaking, for example, of " social commerce "refers to added these possibilities of virtual interaction as itself-trade transaction between two individuals or legal entities-is social.

The grail of social media, which wrote in Socialholic , puts people in the middle of a transformation process that will reach nearly every organ of society, businesses included. Grail that does not refer to use that companies are making these tools in the field of corporate communications and advertising. But transcends to reach all corporate areas. And one of the points, precisely, is to integrate "social" in the design of products and services. Especially now that will be increasingly, information that makes up , or generate digital information associated with their use, through the "Internet of things" .

Products and services "social"
Year and a half ago, the communication equipment KLM was a great success with their initiative KLM Surprise , delivering some passengers arriving at Schiphol airport, small gifts chosen according to what these had shared in their social profiles. Following that, the area of social media has taken strong enough to offer a service to make a social online checkin, called Meet and Seat , in which we can know in advance the social profiles of people who travel on our flight, to choose our seat. Do not we already talked about "communication", but rather adding "social" in the service itself.

When in 2005 Nike and Apple created Nike + , did not just connect a pedometer to your iPod, but allowed users to upload data from their careers, getting to compete "virtually" with friends at points far between. Today, many runners use RunKeeper in a similar manner.

Amex has launched Sync Amex card, which offers discounts in return for tweets . Tweeting with hashtag determined, associated with a chain of stores, the card automatically posts the discount will be applied in the next order in the chain.

Collaborative processes
It can "social" any process. Socializing the communication process we have come to understand what is now mostly a communication 2.0. Not so normal, however, to see how a car company decides to create a prototype of a small car in a collaborative way. The result, the Fiat Mio CC , licensed Creative Commons, which was designed from 17,000 ideas, from 11,000 participants from 120 countries and presented at the auto show in São Paulo, in 2010.

The process of "customer service" is also socializing through online self-supporting communities . This is the case of BT Business Forum , a community where BT business customers help others to resolve issues or concerns about the service. Or the case already mentioned here several times, Giffgaff , mobile virtual operator, in which the customer support is provided almost exclusively by the community.

Innovation is another process which already has numerous examples of "social innovation" , also known as open innovation . Procter & Gamble pulled Connect & Develop for over 5 years. An initiative to establish a partnership with suppliers, universities and research centers that want to develop new initiatives or products in conjunction with P & G.

Business 2.0
Both are products, services or processes, some companies are beginning to drink the holy grail of social media, initiating a transformation that will face the turbulent century most likely to succeed. A sustained capacity mainly in motivating people to change and innovate. Socializing our companies, we break the barriers to organizational change. As we said at the now famous comment McKinsey report on Web 2.0, "the network companies have more fluid information flows, deploy talent more flexibility to deal with problems and reduce the hierarchy in decision-making. The collaboration within the organization is correlated with increased profitability and increased market share. "

Thinking about how to "do social" we imagine ways for people to collaborate, or that our customers share, play, use our products more useful, fun or interesting. Perhaps initiatives such as the KLM Amex or not succeed. But I, personally, I like your thinking.