The plan is to propose a hypothesis connecting social media with business objectives. This process will involve documenting campaigns/initiatives by a wide variety of businesses.

This is the initial pictorial cause & effect diagram, which will serve as the basis for mapping the case studies:

For example: if a company is passively monitoring social chatter, it is able to react and minimize the negative impact of a conversation that might be harmful to the brand. This would be mapped as follows:

The current plan is to document these case studies in a blog format, keeping true to our SoMe theme. We have started work with an initial set of 5 companies, which range from a local non-profit media provider to a $25B B2B manufacturing conglomerate. You would hearing more about them soon!

If you or your company is open to participate in this project, please feel free to contact me at Gmail: UrbanTurbanGuy or Twitter: UrbanTurbanGuy. The burden-time would not be more than one hour.

- Gagan & Umair

ipad= the best media “consumption” experience

Many have observed that the iPad is much more like a big iPod Touch than a tablet computer per se.  The app-centricity, the OS, etc.  But the deeper, more fundamental distinction is that the iPad, like the iPod and the iPhone before it, is geared primarily toward the consumption, not the creation, of content.  The iPad will force consumers to continue to pull high-margin apps through Apple’s system.  A tablet version of the MacBook would do no such thing.

After watching the apple presentation , a few thing are glaringly apparent :

1) A big move towards the app based system rather than a file based system
You don’t browse files as you do on your MAC but rather work through apps like you did on the iphone. There seems to be no way to access the file system anywhere. All this is geared to promote consumption through apps rather than content creation that we traditionally associate computers with.

2) Missing flash support, once again
One who owns the doors to the best “media consumption” tool, makes the most dough. Flash has 70% of the worlds games & 75% of video, but apple has controversially not being supporting it, because it will open he flod gates of free content that people could access through safari.  Just for the record, there is no access to any of the flash content on Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, etc. Apple would rather prefer that they create an app., go through the app. store and give them a cut on any sale. Which might be good for a struggling media industry, but I am not here to take sides.

3) Most of the presentation time was spent promoting games, news apps,  ibook, video & audio playback . ( yes iworks was presented  & brushes was talked about. But lets try to follow my story here. )
Some numbers make this observation even more clear (quoting from Apple’s 10K)  :

Net sales of other music related products and services increased $844 million or 34% during 2008 compared to 2007, due primarily to significantly increased net sales from the iTunes Store in each of the Company’s geographic segments.

Again from their 10K – notice the Jump in Return on Sales :

Well,  that is because apple is moving from a hardware business model which traditionally has lower gross margin ( apples 33% numbers were way above normal to begin with )  to a software business model where  gross margins of 70-80% are not unheard of. This 5% jump in Gross margin can in a large part attributed to a 21% increase in the sales made through itunes, when compared to a 14% increase in overall net sales. The sales through itunes are now roughly 10% Apple’s total sales.

So the restrictions Apple has on iPad make much more business sense than usability sense.  They have created a device which promotes media consumption on their terms. Will it get sales figures comparable to the ipods & iphone’s , only time will tell.
As far as the name goes “No Comments !”.

Update: - Apple’s initial iPad demos showed flash component on websites now they demo videos have been modified to show placeholder lego blocks. more at venturbeat.com

1. Based on the vision and strategy, Identify key entities/groups that interact/or should interact with each other ( e.g. prospects, consumers, Sales force, Mkt , Competion, Regulators, Govt.)
2. Define the optimal mode of interaction between those entities (e.g. listening, responding, interaction, broadcast)
3. Identify a communication paradigm that best facilitates the interaction
   

   matching social tools to communication needs

4. Evaluate existing tools on the basis on these paradigms. ( the example below is an evaluation exercise for the career services department at a business school)
   

   Identifying communication needs and areas for improvement

5. Propose changes and new solutions or else congratulate the company on a comprehensive communication strategy!

Once again, this is a work-in-progress model, so all comments and criticism are welcome!