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Business-Consumer Networks Concept and Challenges Yury Lifshits Caltech http://yury.name SISL Seminar, February 1, 2008 1 / 32

Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

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Page 1: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Business-ConsumerNetworks

Concept and Challenges

Yury LifshitsCaltech

http://yury.name

SISL Seminar, February 1, 2008

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Page 2: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Project Objectives

Goal: to design a web technology thatserves as a universal environment forbusiness-consumer communication

Outputs: paper, community, prototype

Time constraints: March 1, 2008 — May31, 2008

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Page 3: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Informal Idea

Business-Consumer Networks:

Nodes: businesses, consumers

Edges: loyalty relations

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Page 4: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Outline

1 Vision

2 Functionalities for Business Web

3 Research Challenges

4 Conclusions

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Page 5: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

1Vision7 Principles For Business Web

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Page 6: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

1. Separate Business from Private

Home and office

Private cell phone and business cell phone

Private email and business email

Facebook and ???

Focus on business-side of the Web:

Web2.0 technology for every business

Avoid non-commercial features

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Page 7: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

1. Separate Business from Private

Home and office

Private cell phone and business cell phone

Private email and business email

Facebook and ???

Focus on business-side of the Web:

Web2.0 technology for every business

Avoid non-commercial features6 /32

Page 8: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

2. Business Identity

Serving as a reference point

Accumulating reputation

Active: sending messages, organizingevents

Interactive: answering questions,communication instead of ads

Loyalty program conductor, endpoint forb2c relations

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Page 9: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

3. One Network for All

Open data portability: reusingaccumulated social data

Convertibility for reputations

Simplifying registrations

Merging business-centered communities

All reviews in a single place!

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Page 10: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

4. Open Business Data

New generation is willing to share: givethem tools for publishing business-relatedinformation

Social design and reputation systemshould motivate openness

Open RDF-based standard for businessdata

Programming access to core data for thirdparties

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Page 11: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

5. Using Artificial Artificial Intelligence

For demand/offer matching:

Demand extraction: wishlists, “My troubles”, “Helpme to choose”, “Give me a recommendation”

On-line consulting: putting human layer fordemand/offer matching

Supporting decision making

For demand generation:

“I am bored”

Surfing business web

Human-delivered interactive ads (?)

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Page 12: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

5. Using Artificial Artificial Intelligence

For demand/offer matching:

Demand extraction: wishlists, “My troubles”, “Helpme to choose”, “Give me a recommendation”

On-line consulting: putting human layer fordemand/offer matching

Supporting decision making

For demand generation:

“I am bored”

Surfing business web

Human-delivered interactive ads (?)10 /32

Page 13: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

6. Global Algorithms

Social search

Query-free search

Recommendations

Computational marketing

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Page 14: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

7. Reputation-Based Economy

The more reputable you are the cheaper isadvertising

Irrelevant ads are punished, relevant onesare rewarded

Focus on viral ads, grassroots support andevangelism

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Page 15: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

2Functionalities for Business Web

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Page 16: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Customer ProfileInfo: age, location, billing info, interests, mybusiness-roles

Facts: I have, I use, I bought, I visit, my discounts

Friends, friend-businesses

Contributions: blog, reviews, recommendations,anti-recommendations

Demand: wishlist, my troubles, job demand

Offers: I sell, freelance, handmade

Free-space, place for widgets, wall/guestbook

Reputations: rewards/loyalty statuses, karma,credit history, profile completeness, activity score,online status

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Page 17: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Business ProfileCompany info: logo, address, business hours,contact data, driving directions, teams, activities,employees and their roles, free text, keywords,industry category

Products, special offers, services, menu, playbill,bestsellers, prices, sales, associated events,corporate blog

FAQ, question answering

Ads collection: texts, banners, audio, video, viralads,promo-widgets

Business-friends (related businesses)

Reputation, votes up, profile completeness,product ratings

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Page 18: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Other entities

Fan-spaces: wall/guestbook, reviews, fan list,critics, discussions, feature requests, fan-wiki

Products, listings: description, offers, discussion,reviews

Events

Topic-specific portals: mashup, originalcontent/functions

Rewards networks

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Page 19: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Consumer Query-Driven Activities

General keyword search

Product search, event search,parameterized business search

Local business search

Post request, express demand, askquestion, request recommendation

Compare, make choices, decide

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Page 20: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Query-Free Activities

“I am bored” button

Suggest engine: interests, businesses, news,products, events

News/updates: (digg-style) voted news, news fromfriends, news from friend-businesses

Tops businesses, users, products, events:bestsellers, hot today, most-voted, most-friended,highest karma/reputation, most requested, mostattended, cheapest.

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Page 21: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Contribute and Communicate

Messaging, wall posts, discussion participation

Publish, review, recommend, vote, register yourpurchase

Help, answer questions, (real-time) consulting

Invitations: to system, to events, to friendship, tofan-movement, to product/offer

Tag, classify, flag, complain, vote for and againstconsumers/businesses

Unlock/start a business profile, createfan-movement

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Page 22: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Activities for Businesses

Publish: news, ads, special offers, upcomingevents, positions

Push info: send messages, blog, invite

Respond to questions, maintain FAQ

Market research: mine demands, customers,customers statistics. Search for new consumers.“Recommended consumers”

Conducting loyalty programs: sharing revenue,cash-back, extended warranty, virtual thanks

Ask your customers: voting, crowdsourcing,feedback, feature requests

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Page 23: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

3Research Challenges

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Page 24: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

I Am Bored!

Tops/Bestsellers

Popular among my friends

Sandbox method

Social business news: “My friends arebuying”

Feedback for “I am bored!”

Relation to random walk?

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Page 25: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Reputation-Based Economy

The more popular you are the cheaper arepromotion mechanisms for you

Robustness of reputation

“Fair competition”

Auction type (non-flat prices)

User is protected

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Page 26: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Social Search

Query AnswerCurrent customers Suggested customersTwo-three names Similar people

Differences from web search:Query languageGranularity of answersRelevance/authority factors

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Page 27: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Relevance in NetworksSimilarity chart for paper recommendation:

Scientist Paper

co-authors

cited

interested in used words

author

cited

cited

Relevance is high when:# of chains is high, chains are short, chains are heavy

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Page 28: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Other Interesting Questions

Fighting social spam

Market research algorithms: customer suggest,CRM tools

Design new standard for business data (a-la FOAF)

Extension for Open ID: Business ID?

Interruption policy: who can speak with whom?

New ideas for UI?

Catching moment of interest

Information pushing tools?

“Thanks currency”

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Page 29: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Project Challenges

Identify basic use cases

Getting first businesses/customers?

Snowball mechanism? Rewarding early adopters?

Earning mechanisms for users?

Authentication for businesses?

Partnership strategy? API policy, widgets?

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Page 30: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

3Conclusions

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Page 31: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Seven Principles

1 Separate business from private

2 Provide business identity

3 Merge all business-centered networks intoone

4 Keep business data open

5 Use artificial artificial intelligence

6 Build reputation-based economy

7 Provide global algorithms

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Page 32: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Participate in the ProjectParticipation:

Be a member of our prototype team

Be a “a friend of the project”

Participate in algorithms/social designresearch

Partnership:

Data exchange

Incorporating specialized services

Funding

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Page 33: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Participate in the ProjectParticipation:

Be a member of our prototype team

Be a “a friend of the project”

Participate in algorithms/social designresearch

Partnership:

Data exchange

Incorporating specialized services

Funding30 /32

Page 34: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Links and Contacts

http://businessconsumer.net

Facebook group “Business-Consumer Networks”http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7986532437

http://yury.name

[email protected]

+1 626 463 3668

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Page 35: Business-Consumer Networks: Concept and Challenges

Thanks for your attention!Questions?

Comments to vision?

Relevant research topics?

Any constructive ideas?

How can you contribute?

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