SF New Tech Event Summary – How to leverage the “Social Data Revolution” Part 2

This is the continuation of SF New Tech’s “Social Data Revolution” event summary.  In part 1, we covered the ideas surrounding the ‘why’ and ‘what’ of the “Social Data Revolution”.  Now, in Part 2, we move the panel discussion to how to use the “Social Data.”  The real power of “social data” is using it to make better decisions for yourself, your company, and your social world.

Andreas Wiegend, Moderator, Director of Social Data Lab at Stanford University.

The panel consisted of:

• Christian Wiklund, CEO, Skout – Tool for connecting singles via mobile.
• Michael Sha, CEO, Wikinvest – Tracking aggregated investment data.
• Joe Stump, Co-Founder & CTO, SimpleGeo – Bridging digital and physical.
• Eric Ly, Founder & CEO, Presdo; Co-Founder, LinkedIn – Social data driving real world interactions.
• Lars Leckie, Partner, Hummer Winblad – Early stage venture firm.

How to Build “Killer” products in the Age of Social Data?

AW: “Let’s look at things that get better with social data and things that get worse with social data”

Killer products developed on social data should have:

• Should help people coordinate
• Makes people make better decisions
• Makes it trivially easy for people to contribute to the data

AW: “What are examples of radically different products based on Social Data that get better over time?”

EL: “Yelp has gotten better…there long gestation period for Yelp, example of a site that without social data it wasn’t possible…(Yelp) helps you make better decisions…Yelp can improve by even making ratings about an individual meal”

MS: “Social data lives everywhere…where it co-exists with other data will be needed.  Wouldn’t it be cool if you can know what people are trading inside a company”

LL: “Let’s step back…From the investment side, we look at 3 broad areas  1) Enabling technologies like the Infrastructure layer enabling people to store social data 2) Taking existing business to socially enable them 3) Now that you live in the social world, now go create a business based on knowing social data.”

How Do Companies get to True Customer Centricity using Social Data?

AW: “How do move using social data from old style “fake” customer centricity to new style “genuine” customer centricity?” “Transparency is the word here”

JS: “Apple is fascinating that they doesn’t do anything different than companies in the 70’s, 80’s did – they never will engage me…we are now accustomed to companies caring about what we say..we have changed our attitude about engagement so quickly”

CW: “So addicting with twitter search, real time search of brands.  Most big companies and small companies have changed because of the social data…In the old days, 1 customer complaining will reach 10, Now in the social world 1 to 10000 …you have to be careful about who is hollering about your brand. For the consumer, it is good.

EL: “Gov’t organizations need to be more responsive, IRS, for example, needs to be more social/responsive…dealing with bureaucracy is a problem in government.”

LL: “Want to know which companies have the biggest call centers..who are in the business of “call-deflection”,  and want them to e more social- insurance companies, mortgage companies, etc.  For most brands are realizing that these conversations happening no matter whether you are there or not…”

MS:  “In the representative democracy we live in, we have lost touch that there are people that represent you(in congress)…the social data will be an opportunity of how representatives can engage with the people”

New Possibilities for Behavior Change Using Social Data

AW: “I am interested in changing behavior…What were some of the surprising changes in the past year or two based on social behavior?”

EL: “E-mail communications have become constantly shorter…E-mails are like tweets now, as a society, we are communicating in 140 characters now.”

JS: “Gary Vanderchuk, of Wine Library says “barriers to disseminating information have been knocked down”…”that the people who should be scared are doosh-bags..they will find you out…we have to be our true selves, we can no longer have multiple faces anymore, this will be a drastic shift over the next 5 years.”

CW: “The fact that we are sharing so much stuff…I can’t share anything right now because it will be pissing off parts of my social graph. How can you treat the lowest-common denominator in your social sharing?”

MS: “I want to use the social data in my system to “out” the people that are ripping others off…so there are many opportunities to help people make better decisions.”

LL: “Think of Blippy, we are going through a phase now where people have many streams for “X”…how much are people willing to share seems to be the issue.”

It is interesting that the world has changed since we can share information easily and quickly.  Unfortunately,  for the common person  to get past the sharing “noise” is going to be the challenge moving forward.  Do we need more science or less science to measure the social data?   Think of the quote from a french writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupery,  “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”  We are going to enjoy the “Social Data Revolution.”