Facing Up to the Facebook
Australian companies who shut their cyber gates against the Facebook onslaught are missing out on a useful productivity tool and a business opportunity, says Deloitte Digital’s chief executive.
Peter Williams says his company is using the social networking site as an extension to its intranet and a test bed for online experimentation.
His company’s Innovation Program is using it to prototype a “visual search tool” it plans to launch on the web next month, and even to raise money for food and education in Africa.
The search tool focuses on searching for music, video and people. “We took the prototype and launched it on Facebook as ‘Friendly Search’ – a really quick, cheap way to get a market test.
“It took two weeks of part-time work to get it up there and we got traction quickly. We are also using it to sharpen our viral marketing skills.”
Deloitte’s Hafeez Bana worked in reverse: taking an idea from the web and putting it into Facebook. Ripple.org was launched by three young Melburnians to harness the power of internet advertising for charity. Visitors to the site are encouraged to click on advertising and the revenue from that advertising goes to African charities.
Mr Bana has adapted the idea for Facebook, calling it iRipple.”Facebook comes with user management and membership functions that the website doesn’t have, you can tell how much people have contributed, you can invite people. It’s all provided for you.”
The application has already raised a couple of thousand dollars and found 3000 users since going live in August.
Mr Bana says Facebook’s technology is impressive but “not perfect”. It sometimes fails, affecting third party applications – and users tend to blame application developers instead of Facebook.
“The biggest risk is the viral aspect,” he says. “You can use it to push out a good message – but if you mess with your users you tend to find they rally against you far more quickly.”
(c) 2007 Waikato Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.