My Designer Blog

Web 2.0 has Impacted Society for the Best!

In recent years many large companies and even several government sectors have shifted their business model to better reflect Wikinomics business models. These methods often do not directly financially benefit the organisation as the models are based around openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally.

The Queensland Police Service (QPS) are an excellent example and implementation of social media in a crisis, in particular the devastating floods which occurred at the beginning of 2011. The Brisbane community relied heavily on the QPS Facebook page for updates as many homes were without power to watch the local news.

In the 24-hour period following the flash floods, the number of “likes” on the QPS Facebook page increased from approximately 17,000 to 100,000. This same day the QPS Facebook page generated 39 million post impressions, equating to 450 post views per second over the peak 24-hour period.

This almost instant crossover from “old media” outlets to “new media” forms allowed information to be published by news channels to be distributed at a much faster speed to a greater number of people than traditional methods which became cumbersome without electricity. The benefits of social media in a disaster:

  • It was immediate and allowed Police Media to proactively push out large volumes of information to large numbers of people.
  • The QPS Facebook page became the trusted, authoritative hub for the dissemination of information and facts for the community and media.
  • The QPS quickly killed rumour and misreporting before it became “fact” in the mainstream media, mainly through the #mythbuster hashtag.
  • It provided access to immediate feedback and information from the public who were on location.
  • The mainstream media embraced it and found it to be a valuable and immediate source of information.
As I was overseas at the time on holiday, the QPS social media Facebook and Twitter accounts proved to have the most up to date information which I constantly checked on a daily basis.

Vitamin Water’s latest flavour, launching in March this year, was developed and named by the brand’s Facebook fans. The black cherry and lime flavoured drink will be called ‘Connect’ and one Facebook fan, Sarah from Illinois, won $5,000 for her role in developing this new product. The more chatter about a flavour online, the higher it was rated on the Facebook page. By mid-September last year the ten most talked-about flavours were put to Facebook fans for them to vote for their favourite. This is a good example of harnessing the collective intelligence of the community to co-create and ultimately settle and Vitamin Water’s new flavour.

In reference to Wikinomics business models, Vitamin Water has cohesively utilised the models of peering, being open and sharing.  Many brands would be anxious of allowing consumers to create a product like this, but at every stage the brand and consumers were playing different roles and doing different things, resulting in better brand recognition. It is true that sometimes a business’ most valuable assets actually don’t work for the company and by working with them in a controlled but creative environment like Facebook can have great results all round.

Comments (12)

    • admin

      Hey Cherizza!
      I also find the QPS Facebook page amazing! It has actually helped me avoid high traffic areas due to accidents etc!

  2. Abdullah Alsaleh

    great examples you for last week’s topic.

    I woud like to add that in case of QPS, the “old media” were distributing news including videos and images from QPS’s “new media” including Facebook and Twitter.

    That shows you how organisations become more successful if they implemment Enterprise 2.0 following Wikinomics Business Model.

    • admin

      Thanks Abdullah,

      To extend on what you are saying, I believe TV News shows have advertised their presence on social media networks and often have links up on screen.

  3. John Porter

    Interesting post presenting two very different examples of organisations harnessing the power of social media.
    QPS has received a lot of much-deserved praise over their use of Facebook and Twitter during the floods. They rightly recognised it as the fastest, most efficient way of disseminating authoritative info on the disaster. It was interest to read your own experiences using the QPS feeds.
    I hadn’t heard of the Vitamin Water campaign, although it seems to be an increasingly popular way of marketing, conducting market research, and promoting a brand. All at the same time.
    Twinings recently wrapped up a promotional campaign where they had a bunch of celebrities blend their own teas, and customers were given the chance to vote on which flavour they thought was best.
    More info here:
    http://www.twinings.com.au/campaigns/australian-afternoon-tea-2/the-challenge/

    • admin

      Thanks John!
      I really search hard to find a great example like Vitamin Water using Web 2.0.

      And thanks for the Twinings link! very interesting read and gotta love even an MP is getting involved!

  4. muaathaljamah

    This is a great post. I quite had the same experience, where my friend studding in Egypt during the revolution and the government stoped most of the communication and the only way to communicate with him is Facebook.

    Also, I agree with John that Vitamin Water’s used the Enterprise 2.0 in a smart way by producing a new product and do marketing for it at the same time.

    • admin

      Thanks Muaathaljamah!
      Oh wow, another reason why Web 2.0 offers such great versatility for their users!

      Do you have a blog? link me?

  6. Xavier Livingstone

    Hello Web Admin, I noticed that your On-Page SEO is not that great, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings, You now NEED On-Page SEO. So what is good On-Page SEO?First your keyword must appear in the title.Then it must appear in the URL.You have to optimize your keyword and make sure that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). Then you should spread all H1,H2,H3 tags in your article.Your Keyword should appear in your first paragraph and in the last sentence of the page. You should have relevant usage of Bold and italics of your keyword.There should be one internal link to a page on your blog and you should have one image with an alt tag that has your keyword….wait there’s even more Now what if i told you there was a simple WordPress plugin that does all the On-Page SEO, and automatically for you? That’s right AUTOMATICALLY, just watch this 4minute video for more information at. WordPress Seo Plugin

    • admin

      Thanks for the kind words David!
      also cheers for the link. This area really interests me as to how people use the internet for good not evil :)

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