Key Dynamics for Internet and Technology in Social Media

• Socialization of product launches, uses, sharing of tips — all consistent with brands that usually rise above individual features in their brand positioning (driven by social cultural model
• Viral adoption of new features and viral spreading of complaints
• Immediate access to, connection among, and insight from their audiences.
• Massive volumes of customer participation demand efficiency and scale to listen, moderate, respond, and glean information from customers.
• Nimble strategic adjustments to a fast-changing market make the difference in rates of growth and engagement.
• Social customer service and support
• Developer communities
• Social crisis management

Current case study:

LiveWorld works with eBay on its active website social venues. Supported by our Advanced Power Moderation tools and Community Center technology, LiveWorld moderators monitor community activity 24/7 according to eBay culture and guidelines. Our community managers perform high-level curation (identifying community content for featuring or highlighting), listen and report on community perspectives important to the company, and recommend best practices for community management and development. For a global implementation of 28 instances in 16 countries and 8 languages, we provide community message boards for discussion among buyers and sellers, Answer Centers where members support each other with information and best practice, and groups that allow members to run self-managed community venues. The Answer Center averages a customer response within 20 to 45 minutes compared to 2-3 days for email support.

Classic case studies:

From 1984 to 1996, the LiveWorld management team (as Apple employees) developed and managed industry and consumer facing online services, blending brand and culture to create long-lasting loyalty. Online services the team created included these:

• AppleLink was the Apple industry professional network (50,000 members across Apple employees, dealers, K-12, university developers, user groups, and corporate IS) in 50 countries, a B2B online community through which the business networking of Apple and the industry were conducted
• eWorld and AppleLink Personal Edition (which later became AOL) were consumer facing networks with large scale, diversified interests, constant people to people posts, chat, and discussions.
• Salon, initially funded by Apple was initially developed by our team with the Salon founders.

From 1996 to 2001, LiveWorld created, managed and owned talkcity.com, regarded as a pioneer in family friendly consumer facing social media suitable for global advertisement, reach, and engagement to mainstream demographics. A forbearer of today’s social networks, Talk City delivered hundreds of moderated chat rooms and discussion forums, growing to about 4 Million unique users/month and ranked as one of the stickiest sites on the Internet at the time. Awarded Newsweek’s top five family sites on the Internet three years in a row, Talk City appealed to mainstream advertisers such as P&G, The Campbell Soup Company, and Intel. LiveWorld sold Talk City in 2001, to allow the company to focus 100% on its private label solutions for major brands.

Current Clients:

1996 – 2010 Clients:

• AOL
• Cisco
• Diamond Multi-media
• iVillage
• Match.com
• MSN
• MSNBC
• BEA
• HP
• IBM
• Palm
• Quokka
• Web TV