How to use social media in product development

Our first assignment is based on a famous social media -- facebook. We must remember that, facebook is not only the platform where to put our application, but also a platform where we can take advantage of to realize our customer-driven product development. I want to introduce my shallow understanding about how to use social media in product development.

Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content".It includes Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and bookmarking. Comparing with traditional media, social media has accessibility, recency, interaction and dynamicity. So for product development, especially for the development of consumption product, social media is a new tool to realize the strategy of customer-driven product development

The purpose for people to use the social media in product development may include:
Deeper and wider communication with customer.
Positive effect in Marketing Effectiveness and public relations.
Low cost in effective communication.
Finding new products to satisfy customers' needs and potential needs.

The traditional media (radio, TV, newspaper etc) mainly focus on the last stage of the product development, like advertisement, marketing etc. The application of social media can runs trough the whole progresses of product development, from communication and capture, to product design and
products experience and testing; from product marketing, publish and information feedback, to after sale service.

Following is some examples about social media in product development.

Threadless
Threadless is a community-centered online apparel store. Members of the Threadless community submit t-shirt designs online; the designs are then put to a puclic vote. A small percentage of submitted designs are selected for printing and sold through an online store. Creators of the winning designs receive a prize of cash and store credit.

Dell IdeaStorm
Dell IdeaStorm is a website launched by Dell to "gauge which ideas are most important and most relevant to" the public. After registering, users are able to add articles, promote them, demote them and comment on them. As articles are promoted, their score is increased, allowing Dell to rank which suggestions and requests are considered most important by the website's users. the PC with with no OS preinstalled and linux OS preinstalled comes from uers' advices and votes.

Lenove DesignMatters
Similar to Dell IdeaStorm

Open innovation of P&G
P&G publish it's innovation needs through it's website Connect+Develop, to collect originality and innovative technology and products. This let the development strategy depend on outside innovation instead of inside innovation. In 2006, 35% of the innovations of new products of P&G in market come from outside. In 2000. this persentage is only 15%.

In our assignment, We may not have enough time to do a survey to collect new ideas. We come up with the idea by ourselves. But our ideas are also based on the social media. As users of Facebook, twitter etc, we observe our friends and even "strangers" in these SNS. We collect and analyse information about them to figure out what kind of services these people need. Then we propose our own ideas. And in the progress of development, we can also make use of social media. We can put our app trial in the facebook, and ask people to try and feedback. In this way, we can complement our own product and offer better services to people at the same time.

We need to make sufficient use of social media. I believe it's a gold mine. =]