[Week 8-10] Social Media in Existing Applications - A Review

Social media has been widely utilised in recent years as a tool to aid communication. However, is that really a good thing. Here, we examine 3 different applications of social media in different contexts, and evaluate the extent to which the element of social media helps these applications in achieving their goals.

1. Second Life - Education

Second Life is a virtual world created by Linden Labs. It has a game-like interface, and users, called Residents, interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or even travel throughout the world virtually. Second Life's target age group is for people aged 18 and over, while Teen Second Life is for people aged 13 to 17.

Applications in education:

Several educational institutions have utilised Second Life as a tool for collaborative learning. An example is the National University of Singapore (NUS), which has a virtual university campus which is “co-created, co-owned and co-built” by students. Students can express their creative ideas and thoughts in a virtual setting, feedback, discuss and test out new ideas that would otherwise be impossible to carry out in real-life settings. Second Life is also used in some curriculum, e.g. Japanese Language courses, where students are encouraged to go on Second Life to interact with Japanese Residents to improve their language ability.

Advantages & Limitations:

As a collaborative tool, Second Life provides a novel way for students to interact with each other and generate new ideas. However, its usage is still rather limited as it incurs a steep learning curve and it may not be suitable for all kinds of educational purposes. As of now, most if its usage is limited to courses that require creative thinking, or as a side activity to mainstream curriculum.

2. Salesforce.com - Corporate (Internal Communications)

Salesforce.com is a company that focuses on produced software for Customer Relation Management (CRM) & cloud computing. One of its products, Chatter, utilises elements of Social Media to aid in internal communications between employees of a company. Unlike Facebook, it has a private cloud for each company to ensure security of information. It has an interface similar to many social media sites, comprising file sharing, real-time status updates, groups, recommendations and event invitations. The main difference here is that, this is solely used within the company and for corporate purposes only.

Advantages & Limitations:

This is an innovative way to facilitate communications within the company. Many benefits can be reaped from it, such as the decreased need for emails regarding trivial matters. Project progress within the company can also be tracked easily by any one in the company, thereby reducing the need for higher authorities in the company to arrange follow-up meetings with their subordinates regularly. While this may be a good way to encourage more efficiency within the company from the top-down, this kind of approach may eventually lead to increased stress from the employees, as people have different working styles, and such a transparent working environment might lead to unnecessary conflicts and disagreements over trivial matters.

3. Foursquare - Marketing

Foursquare is a popular location-based social networking site & game. It is a software for mainly for mobile devices, and users "check-in" at physical venues using their mobile device. They are then awarded points and sometimes "badges.” Users earn badges by “checking in” at tagged locations, for check-in frequency, time of check-in, etc. Foursquare is also open to business owners to create “Specials”, which are discounts and prizes for loyal customers, when they check in on foursquare at specified venues.

Advantages and Limitations:

Location-based media like Foursquare provides targeted marketing, one-to-one relationship marketing, and builds brand recognition and loyalty. It also increases impulse buying, leading to increased return on investment (ROI) when repeat or additional consumer purchases during a visit. Consumer purchasing history can also be examined, increasing companies' abilities to provide personalised service. However, as with many complaints regarding social media, there might be an issue of invasion of privacy here, with some customers feeling uncomfortable with their purchasing history being tracked. It also has a limited usage within avid smartphone users, and is still at its infancy.