Infosys <Name of the document>

Infosys

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook: A Study of the evolving trends of social plug-ins March, 2012

INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED Bangalore

Document No. Authorized by:

Ver. Rev. : Signature/: Date:

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore, India. All rights reserved. Infosys believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys acknowledges the proprietary rights of other companies to the trademarks, product names and such other intellectual property rights mentioned in this document. Except as expressly permitted, neither this document nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Infosys Technologies Limited and/or any named intellectual property rights holders under this document. Infosys Technologies Limited Hosur Road Electronic City, 3rd Cross Bangalore 560 100 India. Telephone: (91) (80)28520 261-270 Fax: (91) (80) 8520 362 Website: http://www.infosys.com

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

Guidelines to the author: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Please keep the content short and concise with concentration on project experience/learning. Text within '[ ]' can be removed. Text within '< >' is to be replaced by the correct value. Notes to the Author are in Blue within '[ ]'. Document text need to be in Verdana, 10 pt for consistency purposes.

6. The watermark need to be changed to restricted/ confidential/ highly confidential based on the confidentiality class of the content presented in the document. 7. Please retain the copyright notice and the footer as it is.

Author: Amit Nigam Anamika Singh Infosys Project(s) involved (if applicable): NA Suggested Key words: Plugin Target Audience Everyone interested in Reading about Trend in Social networking and Social plugins. Not for Developers. Abstract Social plug-ins are everywhere these days and if you are not aware of it or if your website hasnt got any, theres a great chance you might be loosing your opportunity to get your business / websites accessible and reachable to a large number of potential users, apparently more than the number of visitors you expect to come to your website directly. We analyze here, what actually are they, how are they used, how websites are taking the benefit of it and reaching to more numbers of users that actually visit them and whats the future trend looks like for them.

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

Have you seen these? If you are an average internet user, apart from the time spent on Facebook, Twitter and Google plus you would have definitely come across these widgets below, Fig A, B, C. They are everywhere. All good websites these days have one or the other of them, either a single, a couple of them or a complete set from Wibiya (http://wibiya.conduit.com/) or Joomla (http://extensions.joomla.org/). What are they and where they have come from?. This paper explores an interesting and evolving phenomenon, coined as The Web Coalescence phenomenon to explore how making use of these social plugins benefits both the web applications involved, one who has created it and the one who use it and how they are increasingly becoming indispensable for either of them. And interesting, how they are transforming the networking and browsing experience of web users.

Fig A: The Share and Twit plug

in at British council of Arts

Fig B: The Share Scribd

and Twit plug in

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

Fig C: The Share and Twit plug at WordPress

The web coalesce phenomenon: Scribd & Facebook This, Fig 1, is a widget panel you can find on Scribd website against a document you are reading. To understand how this small flike icon acts at the center of the new Web coalesce phenomenon, we have to consider two possibilities of how the flike icon is used.

Fig 1: Widget on Scribd Description: The panel combines 4 different social plugins for 4 different web applications viz (needless to say though) Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln and Google plus.

Possibility 1: If you are a Facebook user and have already logged into your Facebook profile.In such a situation, clicking on this flike icon would open a small comment text box, Fig 2, to enable you to attach a comment to the document.

Fig 2: Comment box

Description: To add a plain text. The icon would show your Facebook profile pic with the document link you are reading.

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

Once you have added a comment and decided to Post to Facebook, a small feed, Fig 3, would appear in your Facebook profile, essentially to be seen by all your friends.

Fig 3: Feed as appears on your Facebook profile

You can see a link within this feed that points back to the Scribd document and which will take you the Scribd website if clicked. If you have not turned on the supportive platform apps on Facebook which actually enables the feed to be posted back to your profile, you may find a window, Fig 4, popping up to turn on the app. Facebook allows you to change the visibility mode of the feeds visible on your profile so that only a desired restricted community of your friends or users would be able to see the post. This is one of the way how Facebook helps you manage your privacy level. Fig 4: To turn on Apps on Facebook

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

Possibility 2: If you have not logged into Facebook, or least likely though, if you are not a Facebook user, clicking on the flike icon would open a small window, Fig 5 , and prompt you to either log in or open an account with Facebook.

Fig 5: Facebook login window (within Scribd) There are essentially two websites involved above [1] Scribd, which uses the social plugin provided by Facebook [2] Facebook, which provides the social plugin like flike icon and numerous other with more interesting use to be embedded into any web application. We shall define two important terns here in order to study how this Coalesce works.

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

Consumer: The primary page you are visiting which has an embedded link to take you to another page. Producer: The secondary page a user is being redirected to through navigation from a primary page.

Cycle A: We discovered in Possibility 1 how once you have liked a document on Scribd (and/ commented as well) and as a result a feed activity is added to your Facebook profile, Your friends and other users, depending on the visibility level, will be able to see the Scribd link you visited. What this phenomenon does: It essentially opens up for Scribd, a whole new set of potential visitors, who may not have heard about the site but may find it interesting to Visit using the link embedded on your feed. This would allow Scribd to Consume an attention of more number of users that actually either dont have an account or are totally unaware of it to visit it, depending on how many people see the post on your profile. We say, Scribd is playing the role of Consumer here. While Facebook produces for Scribd, these many potential users who might visit it using the Scribd link posted on your profile. Hence we say, Facebook is acting as a producer here. Cycle B On the contrary, a user may not have visited Facebook (which is a rare possibility now) and browsing through the pages on Scribd would like to flike the document or add a comment. This is similar to not being logged into facebook. Fig 5 reminds us in such a case, hitting the like button would open a window to tempt you to create your Facebook profile and hence allowing potentially Facebook to add another user to their account. Scribd is playing the role of producer and Facebook acts as a Consumer here.

Facebook (Consumer)

Facebook (Producer)

Scribd (Producer)

Scribd (Consumer)
Cycle A

Cycle B

Fig 6: The Two way cycle of innovative Web coalesce phenomenon

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

The beauty of these web plugins are they all work two ways and this removes any possibility of being a universal producer or universal consumer. This seems not just a new marketing technology, out of a small social plugin which can virtually be embedded in all websites, but a whole new experience for its users and interestingly let you enjoy two good websites at once.

The Coalescence Phenomenon at British Council of Arts This is something that you may find while browsing literature rich pages at the British Council of Arts.

Fig 7: The Like plug-in at British Council of Literature Description: Facebook Social plugin Like in British Council Arts website to like content here that would appear on Facebook. Website http://literature.britishcouncil.org/home

If you press the like button, a message indicated that you have liked it, Fig 8 Fig 8: After you have liked a content at British Council

Where does it appear?. In your friends Social profile pages/ News feeds, Fig 9 Fig 9: The like feed as appears on your Facebook profile

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

For users who can see your feed, clicking on the British Council Arts Link will redirect the user to the page that you liked. In this way, What British council gets out of it: The British Council of arts page is extended to be potentially viewed by more number of users who have not visited the site directly themselves. What Facebook gets: On the reverse side, embedding a Facebook social plug-ins in your website (in this case the like button) increase Facebook reputation and market reach (market in terms of the number of websites) and helps Facebook establish itself as an innovative web advertiser that makes use of the already existing, rich and thriving social network of the people who are on Facebook. If you dont believe me, have a visit to <http://gold.insidenetwork.com/facebookmarketing-bible/?page_id=1260> and see for yourself how and why Facebook is keen to have such a business model in advertising to help you to transform your business. Mathematically, Lets assume, that Y is the number of the users who visit and like contents at British Council of Arts and also have Facebook profiles. And lets further assume that an average, x is the number of users added to each of their Facebook profile who have visibility to see the feeds coming from British council. After clicking, each of the Y post will be available to be seen and potentially visited back by x*y number of users on Facebook.

The Coalescence between Google plus and WordPress At the bottom of the Word press website, if you click +1 symbol below, you will get a dropdown like

Fig 10: Google Share plugin at WordPress

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India

Infosys <Name of the document>

Sharing this, a word Press shared link will appear on the Google plus news feeds, in the profiles of the users with whom you have shared. See figure below. Fig 11: Liked Content as appearing on Google plus.

What does word press gets from this: publicity on Google+ What does Google gets from this: Helps establish Google as a brand in innovative web advertising that makes use of the already existing, rich and thriving social network of the people who are on google+. Same as what Facebook gets if you use a Facebook plugin in your website.

A better browsing experience at our disposal All the above websites used to demonstrate the new coalescence phenomenon have their own good share of Internet market. Scribd is a popular website that allows us to upload and download documents, in all popular formats and partners with Major Publishers around the world to bring Articles, Books and numerous other kinds of writing stuff content to Community of 50 Million+. Facebook and British Council of Arts do not need any mention even. This is not a new trend however. When Facebook was launched, reportedly, within a week of its launch, 50,000 websites have enabled the fshare and flike icon on their websites. But there is no denying the fact that each one of these market leaders strive to get the bigger part of the internet users attention. Social plugins not only helps them to achieve this, but also enables, due to its inherent nature, competitors to come together and give internet users a better browsing and networking experience they never had before.

2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India