For all past years, the computer technology has developed to catch up with those of man. Word Processing Software was only the replacement of a man writing on piece of paper, without having a paper. Email was only the replacement of man sending letter, without physically delivery. However, SN is little different. What it has replaced with is not the tangible assets like paper, but rather interaction. The example is corporate blog where customers can interact with the company without being at the same place or same time. This completely ignores the formal organization structure, social norm, and social structure of how formal parties are interacting. It gave a man new ability and function to network with people. Therefore, yes, of course, it will change the way business interact with customers, by bringing customers closer to the company. It will change the norm of Customer Relation Management, and also other social norms such as “friending”, or “relations”.
The trend of such software seems to have two characteristics: improvement of GUI, and web based open system. The improvement of GUI gave superpower to users that users do not have to know anything about implementation and still be able to access to the privilege of technology. Also, the web-based open software is becoming so popular that you do not need software installed to your computer. Maybe in few years, even our desktop would be web-based that we can login from any computer to access our personal desktop.
Such improvement seems great but many bypassed man’s ability of interaction. Sure it is great, but such development is not based on human nature like developing to build house or cook food. The technology is totally man-made yet bypasses his ability. I am very excited to see how the nature of human interaction would change, but nothing really seems ordered or complete enough as our traditional means of communication: face-to-face.
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Compared with food and chemical, which also has been also found and developed as we talked during lunch, I hope development of IT technology will not do bad.....
Yeah... the conversation we had during the lunch scared me (effects of GM good on human etc). But, who knows really what new technology can do to us. Either bad or good, we will only find out much later. Maybe we should grow tomatos in our garden...
I wonder that I can’t live without computer technology – especially the Internet. The internet expands the limit what people can do. We have bookmarks, online tools/online collaboration tools, communities, and so on. But we have to consider that the speed of advancements in the Internet is too fast. The latest web based tool today is an outdated web based tool after few months, or just few weeks. It’s really hard for us to learn how to use web based tools correctly.
P.S. we should grow potatoes, too.
Yuriko made a great point in saying that that progress in the internet moves so fast. One of the problems is that the older generation whom is trying to catch up with technology has an even harder time because it improves so rapidly. Once somebody who is not tech savy begins to get the gist of a certain technology or software then before they can use it they will have to update and change the product they have learned. The change in technology is great...however, many remain left in the dust.
Ayumi,
Do you think that technologies such as corporate blogs brings companies closer to their customers or does it just make the opinions and questions that those customers would ask more public. For example, if a customer is going to contact a company regarding a problem, are they more likely to contact them because there is a blog available? I would argue no. I think the only thing that corportate blogs establish is more communication between customers of a particular company with one another.
-Ryan
Alex, yeah that is so true that " many remain left in the dust." As Yuriko said, technology is moving so rapidly and it is hard even for companies to follow the trend. The trend I see these days is more open and more standardized software use so that it is compatible. In that sense, outsourcing software to the web-based is not just a fad but improvement.
Ryan,
I think what corporate blog does is not to make it easier for the customers to make opinion but to make other people's opinions open to the public. The customer who is not willing to call the company would not post comments online since it is public. However, more people would read what others have to say and that would bring customers closer to the corporation, I believe.
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