“I think one of the most interesting things is that we can turn a feature on. Going from zero users to 300 million users in an afternoon for a brand-new feature is pretty crazy. And we can do that because, generally speaking, we share all of the infrastructure. You can turn it on and have it go from 1 percent adoption to 100 percent adoption in a day without much or any perceived downtime.”
Sheraton conducted extensive guest research during the revitalization process, allowing significant insight into the guest profile. A Sheraton guest is often educated, affluent and experienced at traveling, the results showed. At an average age of 44.3 years, the guest population sits at the intersection of Generation X and Baby Boomer. Perhaps most importantly, Sheraton found that its guests would like to spend more time in social spaces and will use technology when it intersects with a personal need or fulfills a desire. "We found that our guests are social and like being around others," says Harper. "We saw technology as an enabler, so we decided to put the two together."
"Google has launched many communication services
since its inception yet none of these have had such obvious business
utility or attempted to reinvent the collaborative process from the
ground-up."
Dion Hincliffe does a deep dive into Google's new product
Inc. Magazine on why shoes are almost an after-thought at Zappos.
“At a time when most business leaders are retrenching, Hsieh is thinking big. In late 2006, he launched an outsourcing program to handle selling, customer service, and shipping for other companies, and last December, he started an educational website for small businesses that charges them $39.95 a month to tap Zappos executives for advice. Hsieh has said Zappos will eventually move beyond retail to businesses such as hotels and banking -- anything where customer service is paramount. "I wouldn't rule out a Zappos airline that's just about the best customer service," he announced at the Web 2.0 conference last fall.”
Oh, the article also talks about its investments in technology like warehouse robots, social networks and more.
If all software vendors want to talk about these days is their "services" should not services firms be doing the same in reverse? Especially for applications with mass viral appeal?
appirio, which does plenty of salesforce and Google Apps systems integration projects, recently announced its Referral Management solutions leveraging Facebook APIs and salesforce functionality.
Its referral engine searches for and matches based on key words in profiles of friends of company's community - and is intended to be used for viral recruiting, marketing and sales.
appirio's philosophy - "Referrals from employees, customers, and partners are the highest quality, lowest cost source of new business and new talent and are a core benefit of participating in a social network."
"In the two years since it launched Nike+, a technology that tracks data
of every run and connects runners around the world at a Web site,
nikeplus.com, Nike has built a legion of fans. In August, for instance,
800,000 runners logged on and signed up to run a 10K race sponsored by
Nike simultaneously in 25 cities, from Chicago to São Paulo. Now the
company is testing a social network to promote its basketball shoes"
I have written before Enterprise 2.0 is an amorphous term being used for a collection of social media tools. I had proposed SNOW - for social networking, office 2.0 and wikis - as a category acronym
Good friend Ross Mayfield who started SocialText to deliver wikis, has expanded the portfolio to include Facebook and Twitter like capabilities and a Dashboard (see picture)- see Zoli's analysis here.
It has previously announced a group spreadsheet, SocialCalc (in collaboration with Dan Bricklin of the original Viscalc fame).
Social Networking, Office 2.0 spreadsheet, Wiki....the forecast is SNOW...though the company would prefer you call it "connected collaboration with context"
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