IBM targeting Social Media software for business as a key growth area in 2013

Our performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year was driven by our strategic growth initiatives -- growth markets, analytics, cloud computing, Smarter Planet solutions -- which support our continued shift to higher-value businesses," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. Ms. Rometty also highlighted IBM is focusing on new growth areas such as mobile technology, social media software for businesses and security technology. Mike Rhodin, senior vice president of the IBM Software Solutions Group, has said that businesses are adopting social media technologies and collaboration tools have become mandatory for employees to communicate and collaborate in the organizations. Employees in the business organizations are expecting to have such social media based collaboration tools within the organization’s intranets. To further prove the significance of social business technologies, IBM referred to a 2011 Forrester study during the IBM Connect Conference which highlighted social business as an "emerging business category," and social technologies are expected to be worth $6.4 billion by 2016.

IBM has renamed its Lotusphere, an annual conference hosted by Lotus Software (one of IBM's five software brands) as IBM Connect in January 2013 and during this event it highlighted its social business strategy with the debut of several new software and cloud services products. The intentions of these new services are to enable businesses to integrate IBM's social networking and analytics technologies with critical business processes. The new IBM Connections social networking platform software is intended to enable users to analyze big data from inside and outside an organization, including Facebook, Twitter, audio and video, embedded document management capabilities allow members of a network to access, analyze and act on different data types relevant to their work for improving decision-making and business results and will be available from march 2013. Another feature is enhanced integration of social capabilities in the Microsoft Outlook client that will allow users to access their social data (such as profiles, files and communities) directly in Microsoft Outlook. In December 2012, IBM released IBM docs to include social document editing on-premises and in the cloud as part of the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business that allows browser users to simultaneously collaborate on word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents.

IBM acquired Kenexa in December 2012, merged its Applicant Tracking System for talent data insights and launched a new web-based social networking environment in the form of the IBM Employee Experience Suite which is targeted at HR managers to "attract, empower and motivate talent" as the firm puts it and features social networking, e-meeting and instant messaging capabilities. IBM also announced that it expects to ship IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 in March 2013 and expected to be a truly social email client" that delivers a social experience to users. Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace highlights IBM as a Leader in Social business technology market and IBM is investing heavily on the social technologies for future growth.

Social Media Buzz of Anna Hazare, Jan Lokpal & Corruption in India

Chart 1 is Boardreader output a forum search engine which indexes about 16 billion documents. The chart highlights past three months activity. Activity shows higher levels when Anna Hazare was arrested and sitting on a hunger strike at Ram Leela Ground. As soon as the hunger strike was called off, activity levels normalized which shows that the web world was no more interested. Anna Hazare and corruption in India ranked high when compared to Anna Hazare’s solution of Jan Lokpal Bill. This raises doubts about Jan Lokpal and its efficiency. People were more interested in Anna Hazare and corruption in India but not Lokpal bill. 

Chart 2 is Omgili Buzz Graph which measure and compare the Buzz of any term. Buzz is the percentage of the term out of the total number of discussions. Chart shows in past one month buzz is more around corruption in India and buzz around Anna Hazare have gone down as he is on a vow of silence. Jan Lokpal bill is seeing no buzz at all.

Chart : 3 is IceRocket is a real time search engine that  searches web, social media, blogs, and videos.  Chart 3 shows that during Anna Hazare Agitation that started on  August 20 till September 04 there was buzz on all the three i.e. Anna Hazare, Corruption in India and Jan Lokpal bill. But the buzz died down to low levels after the agitation is called off and it even went down after Anna Hazare started his vow of silence. Corruption in India is high buzz when compared to other two. Lokpal generated lesser buzz when compared to Anna Hazare and but almost equal buzz compared to Corruption in India. Lokpal as a solution people are not accepting. 

Chart 4 is Google trends which shows the search volume trends and news reference volume.  Trend has significantly rose during the Hunger strike agitation during August 20 and September 04. Trend normalizes after the agitation is called of.  Anna Hazare and Corruption in India is the dominant trend. Jan Lokpal trend is very low . The movement is more in favor of Anna Hazare and Corruption but Jan Lokpal is very low. 

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Chapter 5 is a Nielsen Company tool Blogpulse that identifies the topics and subjects that people are talking about in their blogs. Buzz during the agitation is high and this data shows Lokpal bill too generated very high buzz during agitation.  After agitation is called off, the buzz normalized and in October Anna Hazare and Lokpal bill saw sudden increase in buzz as the team was campaigning in Hissar parliament by-election against congress. Corruption in India is seeing high buzz otherwise. 

Social Mention tracks blogs, blog comments, Twitter, mainstream news, images, video, and audio. Data shows Anna Hazare has comparatively  more buzz when compared to all three search terms i.e. Anna Hazare, Lokpal and Corruption in India. Anna Hazare ranks high in all parameters.

HowSociable tracks mentions of brands on a wide range of sites in terms of  brand's Presence that is the number of sites brand is visible on, brand's Brightness show visible it is on those sites where it has a presence and brand's Audience is the number of people who have seen it. Data shows Ann Hazare has high visibility score when compared to other two terms. Corruption slightly scores high.  Face book, Linked in, and You tube are social networking sites where all three terms had buzz. 

Twitrratr is a tracking tool that will help to discover what people are saying on Twitter and gauge the popularity of other Twitters, brands and products via a provided grading system. Data shows people on twitter are neutral on both Anna Hazare and Lokpal bill. More neutral in terms of Jan Lokpal bill. 

Overall Analysis:

Anna Hazare generated more buzz than his Lokpal Bill and his fight against corruption in India. People are more fancied towards him than understand his Jan Lokpal.  Corruption in India is topic of discussion on the social media and web after the agitation. The movement has been able to generate buzz in social media on corruption in India. Jan Lokpal is least discussed and many people have not understood the bill or made any attempt to understand or discuss the bill more. Anna Hazare has successfully brought the corruption problem to the forefront and made it a national issue. There has been a lot of buzz about him and his crusade on corruption in the social media and most of the buzz is positive and in in support. Anna Hazare and his  team has generated significant buzz in social media but were unable to keep it going as the buzz died down significantly since agitation was called off. Social media buzz on the corruption topic has to be kept alive.