Linda Cheung and Mark Bower must be congratulated on what I think is an important contribution to facilitating communication both within and between individuals and organisations. It’s an easy-to-use, attractive, “start up”, called “CubeSocial” – their blog is a very good introduction to their approach, in fact. Where good ideas come from, in the context of innovation and the enlightenment, is all down to our social interactions. The whole is considered to be more than the sum of the individual parts, and often, through notions such as “the adjacent possible“, new innovative ideas can emerge. The environment is considered to be crucial for forging links between individuals and their ideas, and this is indeed at the heart of the internet – idea creation is mooted to have been previously the domain of “the coffee house”. Here’s Steven Johnson, a major proponent of network innovations, on the network philosophy.
CubeSocial is an innovation in the true principles of network design. It builds on an important concept in corporate management; that social capital can be as important as, or even more important, than material resources. The platform is available here. Its stated aim on its home page, which is uncluttered, accessible and informative, is ‘Discover your contacts’ social media profiles, join the right conversations and grow your business’. Its aim is to mine information in your social media profiles, including the usual suspects such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and to construct intelligently the conversations which are taking place within them. Its market positioning is clear, in that it seems ideally placed for an individual within any jurisdiction. Its pricing strategy, such that you can opt to pay for a ‘basic’ or ‘plus’ package, makes sense as a classic price discrimination strategy, outlined here; the cost of the package is reasonable, and the two basic tiers allow for personal and corporate customers.
There are many basic features of CubeSocial which are attractive, and indeed vital for it functioning as a valid innovative contribution. One is trialability – in other words, you can see if CubeSocial is for you, without parting with any money – and compatibility, in that it works well with various cloud social media platforms and operating systems effortlessly. Is CubeSocial doing anything fundamentally different from another service? The questions it poses are indeed sensible (reproduced below), but the danger is that incorrect use of CubeSocial might mean that you are missing out on potential clients. If it works well, it would save time, and potentially sort out the signal from noise which is the ultimate nirvana of networking.
The questions are:
? How can I use social media to get to know my existing clients better?
? How can I find people that need my product or service right now?
? Which social media platforms are relevant to my business and where should I invest my time?
Like all innovations, the ‘success’ of the innovation will ultimately be determined by its uptake, and feedback from customers. Whilst many technological innovations seem like a ‘fun’ idea, the acid test will be as to whether personal or corporate customers will wish to allocate resources into a platform of CubeSocial. There may be some people who enjoy using Facebook or Twitter, who are very hands-on, who will prefer to use their selective attention cognitively to filter the mass of information themselves. I have no idea how customers will react to it, other than the product is very attractively presented, is very easy to use, and does not suffer from any technical issues. It is very reliable, being built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The risks of using CubeSocial are indeed the same for the use of any of the social media platforms built into it, like Facebook: privacy, security, and confidentiality. I have personal experience of Microsoft Azure as a cloud platform, and can faithfully report that it is considered to be excellent within the industry. Supplier stability is essential in this regard.
Part of the difficulties in understanding whether the approach will be useful for the customer of CubeSocial lies in the known difficulties with the ‘network approach’ in technological innovation. That is where it is critically to be aware of the existence of ‘lead users’ in its adoption, which are provided in a testimonials page of CubeSocial. I found most relevant this testimonial by @JonBloor, as Jon is a significant lead user with an expertise in both business law and technology. Jon provides the following.
The concept is simple, but well executed …worth a look for anyone using Twitter for business purposes (lawyers or otherwise)
More network clients do not necessarily mean a higher quality of information, as introducing more clients can introduce more ‘noise’. Noise is nothing new, of course; there was a lot of noise even in coffee houses, as depicted by Hogarth.
There is no doubt that CubeSocial has the ability for individuals to develop ‘the slow hunch’ before the epiphany of their idea creation. There will clearly be people who will benefit from CubeSocial, and those who will not, and this does not necessarily depend upon the size of their network. Some networks will contain ‘stars’, individuals who are highly connected within their networks, or ‘boundary spanners’, individuals who will broker relationships between the networks. The problem comes if the network which have a high number of ‘isolates’, individuals who might be relatively disconnected from the network, but who do turn out to be surprisingly ‘high worth’ at some stage.
In summary, CubeSocial is more than another cloud invention. The idea behind it as an innovation, and its value and worth will be ultimately determined by its customers. If CubeSocial can build a sound business case for its uptake in corporate clients, the business plan of CubeSocial would be in safe territory, I feel. Clients will be quick to note that CubeSocial is fast to implement any technological improvements to make the platform ‘better’, such as the recently announced Gmail integration.
