Unit 5.1
Unit 5 Intro: Social Computing in Business
Learning Objectives 🎯
By the end of this introductory chapter, you will be able to:
- ✅ Define social computing and its core principles.
- ✅ Explain the fundamental shift from solitary to collaborative computing.
- ✅ Recognize the role of Web 2.0 as the foundation for social computing.
- ✅ Identify key business applications of social computing.
What is Social Computing?
Definition: A paradigm focused on using computing and the internet to support and enhance social interaction, collaboration, and community building.
It's a shift from technology as a tool for individual productivity to technology as a platform for human connection.
🎯 Social Computing: Concept Check
Q1: Social computing primarily uses technology as a platform for...
Q2: Which best describes the shift social computing represents?
A Fundamental Shift in Paradigm
Traditional Computing
- 👤 Solitary Activity
- 💻 One person, one machine
- 📥 Static information consumption
- 🏢 Top-down content flow
Social Computing
- 👥 Collaborative & Interactive
- 🌐 Many people, many devices
- 📤 Dynamic content creation
- 🧑🤝🧑 Peer-to-peer sharing
🧩 Paradigm Sort: Traditional or Social?
Click a characteristic, then click the correct column to sort it.
👤 Traditional Computing
👥 Social Computing
🎬 Watch: Business Goes Social
The Engine: Web 2.0 ⚡
Social computing is powered by the technologies and philosophies of Web 2.0.
Web 2.0: The "social web" or "read-write web," characterized by user-generated content, participation, and interoperability.
- Examples: Blogs, Wikis, Social Networks (Facebook, X), Video Sharing (YouTube, TikTok)
The Evolution: Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0
Web 1.0 ("The Read-Only Web")
Content: Static pages
Creator: The organization
User Role: Passive consumer
Example: An early university website with only official information.
Web 2.0 ("The Read-Write Web")
Content: Dynamic & interactive
Creator: Users & community
User Role: Active participant
Example: Wikipedia, where users collaboratively create and edit content.
🔀 Web Era Feature Sort
Click WEB 1.0 or WEB 2.0 for each feature:
Why Does This Matter for Business? 📊
Social computing has moved from personal use to a core business strategy. It allows companies to:
- 🤝 Engage with Customers: Build relationships and gather feedback directly.
- 📈 Build Brand Loyalty: Create communities around products and values.
- 💡 Drive Innovation: Crowdsource ideas and co-create products with customers.
- 🧑💼 Support Employees: Enhance internal collaboration and knowledge sharing.
💼 Which Business Goal Does It Serve?
Click an activity, then click the correct business goal.
🤝 Engage Customers
📈 Build Brand Loyalty
💡 Drive Innovation
🧑💼 Support Employees
🛍️ Key Term: Social Commerce
Social commerce is buying and selling that happens through, or is driven by, social interaction: friends' recommendations, reviews, shareable posts and in-app shops.
- A friend shares a jacket in a group chat, and three people order it.
- A seller takes orders through comments and messages on a page.
- Buyers trust a product because hundreds of strangers rated it.
We study it in depth in Units 5.3 and 5.4.
🧩 Crowdsourcing — Real Case: Gamers Crack a Science Puzzle
Crowdsourcing: giving a task to a large, open group of people (the "crowd"), usually online, instead of to employees or experts.
- Foldit (University of Washington) turns protein folding into an online puzzle game anyone can play.
- 2011: scientists had struggled for years to work out the structure of an enzyme from an AIDS-like virus in monkeys.
- Foldit players produced an accurate model in under three weeks, and they were credited in the scientific paper.
The crowd brought human pattern-spotting at scale, which computers alone couldn't match.
🎬 Watch: Gamers Beat the Scientists
Unit 5 Roadmap: Application Areas
In this unit, we will explore how social computing transforms key business functions:
🛒 Marketing
Using social platforms for advertising, market research, and influencing purchasing decisions.
❤️ Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Engaging with customers for support, feedback, and building long-term relationships.
🧑💻 Human Resources (HR)
Leveraging social tools for recruiting, onboarding, and internal collaboration.
Practical Application: Social Computing in Nepal 🇳🇵
Example: E-commerce & Community
Daraz Nepal uses customer reviews and ratings (user-generated content) to build trust. They also run extensive campaigns on Facebook and Instagram (social marketing) to engage customers directly.
Example: Customer Support & Communication
Many Nepali businesses, from ISPs like WorldLink to local restaurants, use Viber Communities and Facebook Groups for instant customer support, service announcements, and building a loyal customer base (social CRM).
🇳🇵 Nepal Scenario Spotter
For each Nepal business scenario, identify the primary social computing application:
Scenario 1: Daraz Nepal sends push notifications when customers abandon their cart and displays "12 people viewed this item today" on product pages.
Scenario 2: WorldLink Nepal uses a Facebook Group where customers post outage reports, staff respond publicly, and resolved issues are pinned for all to see.
Scenario 3: Ncell posts a LinkedIn job opening and asks current employees to share it; applicants are pre-screened using their LinkedIn profiles.
⚠️ The Risks of Social Computing for Business
- Loss of control: customers, not the company, decide what is said about the brand.
- Fast-spreading complaints: one bad experience can be seen by thousands within hours.
- Misinformation and fake reviews: false posts can harm reputation or mislead buyers.
- Privacy and security: staff may leak confidential information, and customer data must be protected.
- Time and cost: communities need daily attention, and an abandoned page looks worse than none.
Mitigate with a social media policy, trained staff, monitoring tools and a crisis plan.
🍔 Real Case: The Hashtag That Backfired (#McDStories, 2012)
- January 2012: McDonald's paid to promote the hashtag #McDStories on Twitter, hoping for warm stories about farmers and happy meals.
- What happened: users hijacked it to share bad experiences and criticism of the company.
- Response: McDonald's stopped promoting it within about two hours, but the stories kept spreading and the media reported on the "bashtag".
Lesson: on social media a business can start a conversation but can't control it. Think about how critics might use a campaign before launching it.
🎬 Watch: When #McDStories Went Wrong
🧪 Quick Activity: Benefit or Risk?
- A cosmetics brand's customers post 500 make-up tutorials using its products. → Benefit: free user-generated marketing
- An employee posts a photo from the office that shows a confidential sales chart. → Risk: data leak (privacy and security)
- A rival floods a shop's page with fake one-star reviews. → Risk: misinformation and fake reviews
- Engineers in three branches solve a problem together on an internal network. → Benefit: internal collaboration
💬 Discussion: Should Every Business Be Social?
- Is there any Nepali business that would be better off without a social media presence? Why?
- Who should be allowed to post on a company's official page: only the marketing team, or every employee?
🔍 Key Takeaways
- Social computing shifts technology's focus from solitary tasks to social interaction and collaboration.
- Web 2.0 is the foundational technology that enables user participation and content creation, making social computing possible.
- Businesses leverage social computing across key functions like marketing, CRM, and HR to connect with stakeholders.
- This approach fosters community, enhances engagement, and can drive significant business value.
Review Questions 📝
- What is Web 2.0?
- Define social commerce.
- What is crowdsourcing? Give an example.
- Explain the applications of social computing in marketing, customer relationship management, and human resource management.
- Discuss the benefits and risks of social computing for businesses in Nepal.
Revise the answers in the full note.
Image & Video Credits
Images
- Foldit screenshot: Animation Research Labs, University of Washington (Foldit), CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons
- Commuters reading smartphones, Roma Street Station, Brisbane: John Robert McPherson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Videos (YouTube)
- Business School 101, "What is Social Media Marketing? | From A Business Professor" (31–79 s)
- MDNewsNetwork, "Foldit Gamers Predict HIV Protease Structure" (2011; 8–82 s)
- Mashable, "McDonalds' Promoted Hashtag Backfires, Goes Viral" (2012; 29–69 s)
Thank You!
Any questions?