Conclusion: Toward a Framework for DesigningProduct Oracles

Conclusion: Toward a Framework for Designing Product Oracles

This chapter demonstrated the effectiveness of social oracles for autonomous businesses - automated businesses based on online communities - like YNM. But can social oracles apply to more conventional businesses? In this concluding section, we examine how product-oriented businesses can use principles similar to those underlying the social oracles, to create product oracles for advertising their products. A product oracle works with a user to provide information about a product - information that users naturally want to share with other users in their community. Thus, instead of a social asset, a product oracle creates shareable, product assets.

Figure 1-28 depicts a general information activity for both social oracles and product oracles. The remainder of this section will show how product oracles correspond to this map.

Figure 1-28: General information activity map for both social and product oracles based on partial asset delivery

Step 1. Build an online community around product users

For a business that wants to use product oracles to advertise its goods, it must first construct an online community around the product users. Such online communities are commonplace on the Web. Developed by end-users, these communities have emerged around a diverse set of products such as video games , pocket computers, automobiles,

and guitars. These communities are usually message forums designed so that users can post product reviews or requests for help, and other users can provide opinions or answers. Businesses can either build their own online communities (see Hagel & Armstrong, 1997; Kim, 2000), or use existing, end-user created, online communities as platforms for their product oracles. The Web site mediating a business's online community corresponds to W in Figure 1-28.

Step 2. Identify practices where members of an online community freely share product- related information with one another (shareable product assets)

The members of an online community engage in practices that can serve as the basis for product oracles. Thus, once a business has constructed an online community, the next step is to identify those community practices where members freely share product- related information with other members. This shared, product-related information is a shareable product asset, and is analogous to the social assets exchanged between friends . Examples of shareable product assets include information about how to use a product, e.g., video game playing tips, or information about peripherals and accessories related to a product, e.g., what speakers go best with an amplifier . The shareable product asset corresponds to asseti in the arrow labeled 2 , in Figure 1-28.

Step 3. Design product oracles that work with the user to generate shareable product assets

Once the appropriate community practices have been identified, the next step is to build product oracles that - through user interaction - automatically generate those product assets that members of a community like to share with one another. The product oracle should take one or more inputs from the user and return a product asset. Like YNM's social oracles, the product oracles should be designed so that individuals can use them multiple times to generate a variety of different, and potentially shareable, product assets. The information exchanged between a user and a product oracle is denoted by the arrows labeled 1 and 2 , in Figure 1-28.

Step 4. Create an online distribution channel for delivering the asset to a user's friends and acquaintances

Given a product oracle that generates shareable assets, users need a distribution channel that allows them to share the assets with friends and other associates . The ideal distribution channel would: (a) have an entry point located near the product oracle's results; (b) allow users to easily specify the addresses of multiple recipients; (c) not rely on the recipient being online at the time the user sent the asset; and (d) allow the embedding of a return mechanism so that the recipient could easily visit the product oracle. YNM used e-mail as the distribution channel, because it had all the properties listed above, particularly the ability to embed a hypertext link into the message body, which the recipient merely had to click on to visit the site. However, there are many other online technologies that could potentially be used, such as cell phone text messages and instant messaging. The online distribution channel is denoted by the arrow labeled 3 , between the Web site containing the social oracle W , and the users' friends ( F1 FN ), in Figure 1-28.

Step 5. Design a mechanism that automates the generation of the product asset into an advertisement

With a shareable product asset generated and a distribution channel for the asset, the final step is to automatically transform the asset into an advertisement. The primary way an asset gets turned into an advertisement is by sending a message containing only a portion of the asset to a recipient, and requesting that the recipient visit the site and use the product oracle to obtain the remainder of the asset. The portion sent to the recipient must contain enough information about the asset that the user will want to visit the site to get the rest of the asset - analogous to sending a joke without a punch line. This assumes that the reader will see the message. For many online distribution channels, such as e-mail, before a user sees a message, he or she first views a subject list and can choose which messages to read, if at all. Thus, a headline must also be automatically generated for the product asset and used, e.g., as a subject line. As YNM's social oracles demonstrated, this can be a fixed headline, or one that incorporates elements from the product asset. In either case, the headline should arouse the recipient's curiosity and self-interest. Finally, the body of the asset qua advertisement should have a return mechanism - the online equivalent of a coupon in a printed advertisement. In the best case this coupon is an object the user can simply click on to visit the product oracle such as a hypertext link or button embedded in an e-mail message. If this is not possible, at the very least the coupon should contain the product oracle's Web address. The arrows labeled 3-5 in Figure 1-28 depict how the asset acts an advertisement.

Step 6. Design the Web site to convert the user once he or she visits to use the product oracle

If the advertisement is effective, the recipient will visit the business's Web site and use the product oracle to obtain the complete asset. The site must be designed so that the user does not leave, but instead explores the rest of the Web site and does the desired conversion action, such as filling out a registration form or purchasing a product. A basic way to encourage visitors to explore other areas of the Web site, after they finish using the oracle, is to have a menu on every Web page with the major site categories prominently displayed along with links to the different sections within these categories (see left menu in Figure 1-2 and Figure 1-3). Thus, the product oracle and business Web site work together transform a visitor into a customer.