Web Science 2013 Industry Forum Series: Social Businesses

Social business is an area that has been massively influenced by the Web. Tremendous opportunities are now available for companies to engage with their customers and supporters, receive and respond to feedback, and carry out market research by being on social media. But to determine what value this really has for an organisation – moving beyond solely financial value – interdisciplinary research via Web Science is required to elicit  – and attempt to quantify – the advantages that this new phenomenon affords.

The types of value that Web Science will examine – as well as the financial savings and rewards – include: customer loyalty from more engaged consumers who feel like they have a personal connection to a brand; increased exposure to a wider customer base who become aware of a product through their own social connections; and the potential for marketing messages to spread virally through a massive network of interconnected people. Web Science is contributing to the understanding of what these things mean for a business, and is looking at finding suitable, contemporary measures for how effective they are. Looking forward, this will provide organisations of all sizes a way to determine whether they are meeting their goals through social media – currently an issue that has yet to be achieved in the existing disciplines. With more and more people flocking to social media sites to express their love of – and frustrations with– companies, learning how to reliably assess this landscape is of the utmost importance to businesses going in to the future, and Web Science offers the mix of perspectives and methodologies to achieve this.