Social Hallucinations

What's the New Customer Worth?

Interesting infographic based on a few studies, which focus on customer acquisition, retention and attrition rates. It gives an insight into how much the acquisition of the new customer costs.

Read more on Flowtown

What's your social nutrition label?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the need of the renaissance of business and its values, about the need for the good people doing good business in the networked markets. We need responsibility.

Unfortunately doing good business is often shadowed by the rip offs driven by greed. Like the latest scam: The Post Transaction Marketing Wall Of Shame: Hundreds Of Well Known Ecommerce Sites Rip Off Customers.

We re-tweet the link to the latest report: Most Fortune 100 Companies Don't Get Twitter and are so obsessed with trying to help companies to get the twitter. But it is not there were problem lies. Problem is that companies doesn't get responsibility and honesty. Problem is that well known companies choose cheating as the way of earning money. I do not expect the Utopian ideal world where we all will love one another and live in peace and harmony. I just expect decency.

I must admit Dostoevsky was right when he wrote "If people have power over everything, the world would cease to exist."

Fortunately there are also some positive things happening around. I've stumbled lately upon the project that is a step in a way of responsibility driven by consumers - Project Label that mission is to provide the consumer with a standardized way of comparing similar products in terms of the products' social impacts.

"Project Label strives to produce people-powered social nutrition labels. Just think food nutrition labels, but instead of only showing the impact on your health, our labels will show a company's social and environmental impact. Unlike many “green” labels out there, WE don't build these labels, YOU do. Using the power of the Web, we provide simple tools to allow consumers, businesses, and organizations to add, discuss, and vote on credible news, media, and research to help build our labels."

We don't compare just prices but turn our attention to more universal and long-term oriented values like companies' social responsibility. It will be interesting to follow the project grow and see its impact on consumer behavior. It is also the right step in the direction of adding more human and responsible face to consumerism.

Let's hope decency wins and business' social nutrition labels will be very healthy...one day :)

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."  Vaclav Havel

Inspired by: @misEntropy, @charlesfrith, @futurescape

Capitalism, Collapse and Renaissance

Alienation - one of the causes of the current crisis - the notion of human was replaced by models and greed of producing more. The system focused its all energy on producing profit and neglected society needs. Hundred years ago Max Weber wrote in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, that wealth can lead to salvation. Somewhere in the race to become saved, we've turned the wealth into hedonism. #System fail. It is time to rewire and reboot, cause we can't continue the same way we did before Lehman&Co collapsed.

The change is constant but this time it accelerates and often raises fear and distrust. Some companies feel lost and are reluctant to the change, and stay attached to the old way of doing things... probably to feel they are still in the control. But the world needs the new type of companies; companies that are socially useful, as Umair Haiq puts it. Companies where the question is not longer how much you produce but how much you manage to seed. The more you seed the more growth you create.

It is about finding a balance between generating profit and giving a part of it back to the society, doing good things for people, making communities life better, improving society.

Profit and wealth are positive aspects of business, cause they are means to doing good, to doing socially useful things. What we need is the renaissance of business and its values. Good people doing good business in the networked markets. Well, it may sound like the utopia right now when we are looking at the world around us crashed by the dehumanized models that should generate endless profits. But the change will come once the fear of the unknown disappears, we rediscover that real value lies in other people and society and reconnect the private with the public.

There must be hope for us...

Social(istic) Media or The Rise of the New Capitalism?

From now and then, there are voices talking about the digital media and the possibilities they bring - the driving force behind the new socialism era. But the question is whether the possibilities created by the digital media make socialism possible, or whether what we see is the rise of the new capitalism.

Image via Wikipedia

Socialism (latin societas - community) is the ambiguous term, referring to attempts to reduce social inequality and the spread of social services, treatment or management of social control through state institutions, local government, corporation or cooperative). What's common for various types of socialism is partial or total rejection of  the idea of capitalist free market, the restriction of private property and promotion of the idea of social justice. The aim was to build a socialistic society without poverty, where market forces are not the primary mechanism for distribution of wealth and where the functioning of society is based on common ownership, mutual cooperation and altruism. Beautiful idea but never proved to work (or fail - as it is not compatible with human nature). We are herd animals, but every herd needs the leader and clearly defined roles to ensure the proper functioning and survival of the group.

The whole problem with socialism is that the idea of socialism looks good on paper:

You have two cows. The government takes them and puts in the cowshed with other cows. You have to look after all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

Image by publicenergy via Flickr

Then you have the real socialism (which I experienced and would never recommend to anyone as one of the most humiliating systems to an individual and humanity):

You have two cows. The government takes them and puts in the cowshed with other cows that is taken care of by a former poultry farmer. You have to deal with the chickens, which the government took away from the farmers who are in charge of cowsheds. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as law allows, not as much as you need.

Third option is the national socialism - total exploitation, mean capitalism in disguise:

You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to care for them and sells you the milk with the flag state.

Sharing, cooperation and collaboration that are characteristic for the social media aren't quite working in the socialism, because there are always institutions watching and controlling the sharing or collaboration and trying to regulate those with laws. Maybe not a bad idea, but where regulations and power are involved, the inequalities usually emerge.
Of course there are also some positive sides in socialism, because it focuses on the common good but I can't see its chances to thrive in the world where people value their privacy and right to property. We are too independent and focused on our own success and own profits, driven by our needs. The value is YOU. Youniverse & Meritocracy are what drives the digital media evolution.

What we observe today is the rise of the new networked capitalism with intellect as the form of social capital that increases with use and the new digital opportunities are facilitators that drive the intellect growth. The value of the corporations in the new capitalism era - cognitive capitalism - comes from their ability to create new communication tools (Google), connect people (Facebook, Twitter), etc. Personal drivers as taste, creativity plays a huge role in the production process (Nike ID, Aston Martin). The property rights in relation to intellectual property also dramatically change (Napster).

In the industrial capitalism machines sucked workers in, depersonalized and automatized work, today computers / software sucked our knowledge, mashed it up and customized it getting it available and usable / reusable at every click. The question is not longer how much you produce but how much you manage to seed. The more you seed the more growth you create. What justify the existence and enhances the power of our ideas are their ability to spread and inseminate other minds (self-promotion happens to be quite effective insemination technique when used right) - twitter, blogs etc. being the tools helping on the way. It means social media has nothing to do with socialism except first 6 letters, they are the new capitalistic means of production and seeding. The question whether they contribute to the common wealth or satisfy egoistic needs and ambitions, I will leave open for now...

Image by diankarl*www.diankarlina.com* via Flickr

Sources:

Capitalisme cognitif (Le):nouvelle grande transformation, Moulier Boutang Yann

The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online, Wired

Can You See Any Black Swan in Your Rear-view Mirror?

I am currently reading the fantastic "The Black Swan" by  Nassim Nicholas Taleb a narrative of the importance of the highly improbable events that influence our existence and change the history we believed to be predicted and to happen as planned. The Black Swans are the metaphor for things we don't know before we see them and we rarely tend to notice them as we are focused on looking back.

"Trying to predict the future based on research is like trying to drive a car by looking in the rear-view mirror."

                                                                                                                (Marshall McLuhan)

While being unexeptionally busy with looking back, we hit black swans and left surprised how could this happen.

I can see one good advice: look forward.



Photo by jcoterhals

The Economic Current Study

Nielsen released the Economic Current study that tracks key consumer and retailing trends on a global, regional and country-wide basis. Interesting report covering such areas as:

• Market Index volume, in terms of unit and country currency change
• Retail channel shifting
• Shopping frequency and spending trends
• Overall consumer confidence

You can download the report here, on Nielsen's site.