Bringing Social Networks to the Network Provider
There have been many announcements over the last year with Communications Service Providers providing access to popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and others. In the short run, this provides potential subscription revenue and data plan uplift to drive average revenue per user. However, I still have many concerns with this approach in that it does not create differentiation or enable one of the Service Provider’s key assets, customer information, since the social networking sites are essentially closed “black box” solutions. Orange has just announced a service to consolidate social networking sites to enable the display of “popular functions of each site side by side so they can be accessed with one click… to send messages, upload photos and check status updates without having to browse individual URLs or log into separate sites” which I feel is a terrific step forward. This not only creates differentiation, but also a new customer experience to ease the issues with managing multiple social networking sites and puts the Orange brand in the front of that access portal. Essentially, this is having the original network provider manage these new networks in an efficient manner.
While the efforts mentioned above are interesting, I feel they still fall short due to the fact that the value of the social network, the information on member interactions or social graph, is still hidden from the Service Provider. The information is not combined with the vast amount of customer information already resident within the Service Provider’s own databases. Gaining access to that social graph would provide insights to key influencers and support rich campaign targeting, particularly when combined with data from the mobile web or IPTV platforms. This is one of the reasons Infosys has created a white-label offering for Service Providers to launch their own social networking platforms that would be integrated into their own customer information systems and assets, in addition to providing lifestyle themes such as sports, to provide purpose to those community interactions. It is my opinion that this model will create the most value to the service provider due to the rich customer information generated, the creation of new commerce and advertising opportunities, and the establishment of a hub to promote other value added services. What are your thoughts on this approach? I welcome the discussion.
Comments
I think Telcos have never paid much attention to the monetization possibilities from the data that they hold currently anyway.
Your value proposition on social graph makes so much sense. The only difference is whether service providers should launch these portals themselves or whether they should create open platforms and partner (with shared rights on customer data) with other companies to let them launch their applications on its platform.
I also want to bring a case of BT Tradespace in this discussion as well. Now this is a portal that BT provides to its SME customers to allow them to sell their services to each other (eBay styled). From that perspective,I think white labelled portals not only give you additional customer insight but can provide value to the customer in many different ways and increase loyalty with the service provider.
Posted by: Ankur | July 10, 2008 06:18 PM
Interesting approach, I also believe it would add value. I believe the question is:
do the companies have any interest in sharing their information and things like social graphs. Do you see the telco as being the best placed to do this? What is Infosys differentiator, why do you think it can have a privilege to compete in this fast growing, but I would argue already saturated market, is it its unique skillsets, or its brand ?
Posted by: Yves Zieba | July 21, 2008 07:16 PM
Great questions-
The social graph is the holy grail since it shows the customers you need to target with advertising. The biggest issues regarding utilization of a social graph is the data itself and opt-in. Facebook has already had mixed results from its own attempt with their advertising platform.
In regards to the operator being the best place for this to happen, I believe it is a "must do" initiative. It would allow them to monetize their current information assets while maintaining the customer interaction. Whether or not they can overcome the new emerging brands to do so is yet to be seen.
Finally, a big Infosys differentiator is that we are working with the operator instead of trying to claim our own customer base. We tailor our solutions to help extend key operator assets while leveraging our skills in the end to end system stack. This technical and solution capability combined with our consulting knowledge helps demonstrate our unique value.
Posted by: Jeremy Kloubec | July 23, 2008 06:14 PM
>This is one of the reasons Infosys has created a white-label offering for Service Providers to launch their own social networking platforms that would be integrated into their own customer information systems and assets, in addition to providing lifestyle themes such as sports, to provide purpose to those community interactions..
Can you please provide more information on the offering?
Posted by: Prasad | August 26, 2008 05:44 AM
Prasad,
Let me know if this pdf provides enough information.
http://www.infosys.com/industries/communication-services/infosys-sports-destination.pdf
Posted by: Jeremy Kloubec | August 26, 2008 02:49 PM