CS5038 The Electronic Society
Lecture 18: Communities, Mobile and Future Trends
Lecture Outline
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Elements of Interaction in a Community
Example Communities
Commercial Aspects of Communities
Failure and Success for Communities
Mobile Advantages
Mobile Commerce Drivers, Hardware, Security
Mobile Commerce Applications
Intelligent Home
Web Services – machine-to-machine interaction
Semantic Web – machine readability of webpages
The Future of Electronic Commerce
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Elements of Interaction in a Community
Q. What is a community?
A. User-user interaction
Communication
 Bulletin boards (discussion groups)
 Chat rooms/threaded discussions
(string Q&A)
 E-mail and instant messaging
 Private mailboxes
 Newsletters, netzines
 Web postings
 Voting
Information
 Directories and yellow pages
 Search engine
 Member generated content
 Links to information sources
 Expert advice
EC Element
 Electronic catalogs and shopping carts
 Advertisements
 Auctions of all types
 Classified ads
 Bartering online
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Example Communities
Associations with web presence – aria.com.au
Ethnic Communities - elsitio.com
Affinity Portals (special interest) – workingfamilies.com
Games – halflife counter-strike, yahoo games
Fantasy Communities – Ultima Online
Shrine - Buffy
Mega Community – Geocities
B2B online communities – Exchanges are also communities
 PlasticsNet
3(20)
Commercial Aspects of Communities
Ways to transform a community site into a commerce site:
 Understand a particular niche industry
 Its information needs
 The step-by-step process by which it finds information to do business
 Build a site to provide the information (maybe partner with existing provider)
 Site should mirror the step-by-step process
 Build a community that relies on the site for decision support
 Start selling products and services that fit into the decision-support process
Advantages for sponsoring organisations / Creating economic value
 Customer participation and feedback increases
 their attitudes and beliefs  demographics/psychographics
 information needs of the community
= Valuable marketing information
 Customer loyalty increases  Increased repeat traffic
Sales and
 Drive new traffic to the site
advertising
 Visitors have a specific demographic and interest
 Communities charge fees for downloading articles, music, or pictures
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Failure and Success for Communities
Financial viability of communities
 Based on sponsorship and advertisement
 Expenses are very high because of the need to provide:
 Fresh content
 Free services
 Free membership
 This model did not work well, companies sustained heavy losses
in 2000-2001; too few members, too few purchases
Eight principles for community success:
1. Increase traffic and participation in community
2. Focus on needs of members (use facilitators and coordinators)
3. Encourage free sharing of opinions and information
4. Financial sponsorship is a must
5. Consider the cultural environment
6. Communities are not just discussion groups; provide tools and activities
7. Members must be involved in activities and recruiting
8. Guide discussions, provoke controversy, raise sticky issues
5(20)
Mobile Advantages
Local-based services
 Cost of GPS declining – may become standard in mobile devices
 Access to local information – good for customer and advertiser
 Restaurant, hotel, hospital, ATM, mapping – vindigo.com
 Instant connectivity to the Internet – no booting or modem call
Greater potential for personalisation and context sensitivity
 Information tailored to who you are, where you are and what you are doing
6(20)
Mobile
Mobile Commerce Drivers
Limitations
 Devices widely available Usability problem
 Handset becoming culture Insufficient bandwidth
 No need for a PC
3G licences
 Declining prices
Power consumption
 Improvement of bandwidth Not enough WAP enabled sites
 Can overcome digital divide
Typical Hardware:
 Mobile phones – Nokia
 PDAs – Palm
 Interactive pagers
Attachable & projection keyboard
Screenphones - Nokia
E-mail solutions - blackberry
Convergence
Security is more difficult on mobile devices
 Device can be stolen – how to authenticate user - biometrics7(20)
Mobile Applications
Voice applications
 Hands free, eyes free, portable
 Useful in many situations and for disabled people
 Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
 Voice portal technology: check inventory, delivery, diagnostics
 Get paid to listen to ads – flop in US, success in Singapore – singtel.com
Wireless access provided to existing B2C applications
 Example: getting stock exchange information and doing transactions,
online banking, news, weather, gambling, etc.
 Shopping – buy.com, amazon.com – perform comparisons
 Mobile music and radio – store mp3 and stream audio from radio stations
Location-based applications – uses Global Positioning System (GPS)
 NextBus (in San Francisco)
 Telematics – integrate wireless, vehicle monitoring, vehicle location
 Personalised information to dashboard + monitor vehicle faults
 Context sensitive advertising
Bill payment charged through telephone operators
 Examples: car parking, vending machines, car washes
SMS-based applications – congestion charge
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Intelligent Home
Prentice Hall, 2002
9(20)
Web Services
Web service =
Software system designed to support interoperable
machine-to-machine interaction over a network.
 Application components interoperate seamlessly in platform neutral manner
 Provide interface to your application for other applications
 Interface described in a machine-processable format
 Agreed standard protocols using XML and HTTP
 Web Services Description Language (WSDL)
 Other systems interact with Web service using Simple Object Access
Protocol (SOAP) messages
 SOAP envelope framework defines what is in a message; who should
deal with it, and whether it is optional or mandatory.
 Includes XML-based encoding rules to express instances of application
defined data types within the message.
 Defines an XML-based convention for representing the request to the
remote service and the resulting response.
 Ideal for business computing where platforms vary
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Semantic Web
Semantic Web = Extension of the current web in which information is given
well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in
cooperation.
- Tim Berners-Lee
 Web of machine readable data (Currently it is only human readable)
 Web of structured data based on Resource Description Framework
(RDF), uses XML
 RDF is metadata about Web resources
 Example for a report:
<? xml version="1.0" ?>
<RDF xmlns = "http://w3.org/TR/1999/PR-rdf-syntax-19990105#"
xmlns:DC = "http://purl.org/DC#" >
<Description about = "http://dstc.com.au/report.html" >
<DC:Title> The Future of Metadata </DC:Title>
<DC:Creator> Jacky Crystal </DC:Creator>
<DC:Date> 1998-01-01 </DC:Date>
<DC:Subject> Metadata, RDF, Dublin Core </DC:Subject>
</Description>
</RDF>
- An Idiot's Guide to the Resource Description Framework
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Trends and the Future
Increasing Internet usage
Mobile - no need for expensive PC  more people to Web
Security and trust - Significant improvement is expected
Payment systems – will be standardised and globalised
Going global
 Barriers will be reduced at a slow pace
 One of the most appealing benefits of Internet for
Commerce/Society
E-government – becoming comprehensive
Improvements in efficiency:
 Business: internal supply chain
 Government: e.g. between departments
 Health: e.g. data mining to improve best practise
Integration – computer, TV, telephone, mobile
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Summary
Elements of Interaction in a Community – user-user, news, EC element
Example Communities – Ethnic, Games, B2B
Commercial Aspects of Communities – better sales and advertising
Failure and Success for Communities – sponsorship/ads insufficient
Mobile Advantages – localisation, personalisation, context sensitivity
Mobile Drivers, Hardware, Security
Mobile Applications – voice, wireless access to existing
Intelligent Home – integration in appliances
Web Services – machine-to-machine interaction
Semantic Web – machine readability of webpages
The Future of Electronic Commerce – increasing, integrating
13(20)
Questions 18
4. Community of women - I didn't use this classification
9. & 10. we didn't do SMEs - but have a go
stop at 10.
Questions 19 - if time
3. Reachability - but I think any answer is good
skip 5 to 12 inclusive
14(20)