Mob Mentality

Mobs are not always a bad thing… especially when they get you sweet deals at local businesses.

Scoutmob, Inc. is a new company that has popped up in cities across the nation.  Started in Atlanta, GA just over a year ago, Scoutmob is an app (or email) that provides customers with discounts on food and services in their area.  Started with the intention of helping out local businesses, Scoutmob capitalizes on customers’ desire to save money while exploring new places in their city.  In an economy where everyone is watching what they spend, this little app goes a long way.

As soon as you download Scoutmob on your smart phone you begin receiving  discounts in your neighborhood.  From the authentic French bistro down the street to the trendy new pizza place, Scoutmob has it all.  By giving customers access to discounts on food and services businesses gain exponentially more foot traffic than with traditional advertising.  New technology means new ways of acquiring business, and companies are aware of the need to keep up.  However, the basic concept of couponing remains the same: the discount pulls you in, but the product makes you stay.  There are plenty of local restaurants that people are hesitant to try, but give them a deal and they will venture into the unknown much more willingly.

With locations from Seattle to Atlanta, Boston to Los Angeles, Scoutmob has created the perfect couponing system for the non-coupon-clipping crowd.  People will buy an app for almost anything these days, and a free app is exponentially better.  The mob effect is three-tiered:

1. it’s free to download;
2. you start saving instantly;
3. and you learn about local businesses.

Every day people grow bored with their standard lunch and dinner options, now there is an app that not only suggests new options but helps you save money at the same time!

As with everything else, couponing must evolve to keep up with the times, and Scoutmob has more than contributed to that financially responsible cause.  No matter what the economy, people will always want to find new, fun places to go – and Scoutmob makes it easy with one teeny tiny app.

Bored with your go-to restaurant?  Craving a good deal?  There’s an app for that.

A New Breed of Online Worker

The Internet has transformed nearly every aspect of work — the way we search for it, the way we perform it, and what type of workers are valued — but there is a sinister side of this transformation. Corporations are realizing the potential of a global Internet marketplace and are beginning to rely upon a new breed of contract-based online worker: the microworker.

The “microworker” is basically an outsourced sub-contractor unique to the Digital Age. He takes advantage of near-instant global communication and readily available software to work anywhere in the world at extremely low cost. This puts an instant global workforce at a company’s fingertips, one that can be sourced via the Web at a moment’s notice.

Microworkers are paid strictly by the task (sometimes as little as ten cents) and typically receive office grunt work, such as creating PowerPoint presentations and entering data. But they can also bid for higher-level work, such as software code testing and online video creation. Employees of microwork-supportive businesses simply create tasks and dish them out through a microworking website.

By participating in microwork, companies have contract-based employees working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; saving millions of dollars; and freeing-up thousands of mindless work hours.

But at what cost?

Global competition for contract-based jobs drastically decreases wages, causing workers in developed countries to surrender to and become outbid by foreign counterparts. This also leaves job creation stagnant and contributes to a disgruntled, unemployed population segment.

Also, because microworkers are paid as little as ten cents per task, they have little or no incentive to produce a satisfactory product. Companies shovel chores and pennies to workers, possibly resulting in mediocre performance and lost time for the company.

Furthermore, because of the limited contact companies have with microworkers, company-worker relationships are non-existent. This could result in data leakage due to non-informed security practices, or even a microworker badmouthing a company because of low pay.

And none of this even begins to touch on the ethical and legal issues. Companies may be violating minimum wage laws and running virtual sweatshops on a global scale, setting themselves up for law suits, fines, and terrible publicity.

To me, microworking offers no sustainable benefits for the enterprise. By committing to this micro-service, a company creates an expectation that the service is always available. Regular employees then presume that micro-work is consistently outsourced, and that their job does not require these outsourced tasks.

But what happens if the micro-trend dies out? Or when microworkers become fed up with micro-paychecks? And is the cheap labor worth the poor output and disgruntled labor force?

What do you think? Has your company hired a microworker, and what was your experience?

Enterprise Social Networking

Think you’re enslaved to social networking? Is work your only escape from the stream of status updates that are Facebook and Twitter? Well, hold on to your sanity because the corporate world is getting ambushed by business-focused social networking applications, and your work day is becoming a little more social.

Enterprise social networking gives corporate, non-profit, and academic employees the ability to collaborate and communicate in real-time with staff members across the globe. Similar to The Little Rascals “He-Man Woman Haters Club,” business-centric social networking is a “Work Friends Only Club” that allows employees to update work-related statuses, share documents, follow people, create groups, and chat one-on-one and/or in a group setting. Basically, a Facebook for the enterprise.

Leading the enterprise-networking pack is San Francisco-based Yammer, which has secured over 90,000 companies, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Originally designed as a Twitter-like micro-blogging service, Yammer expanded its features in late September 2010 to mirror those of Facebook. Offering file uploading, group creation, a company directory, profiles, comment archiving, and business-to-business third-party application development, Yammer looks to transform social interaction in the enterprise.

Yammer is available in two versions: free and premium. The free version offers all the aforementioned features, but lacks advanced security controls, a virtual Firewall, and data exporting — among other important needs. The premium version of Yammer is $5 per user per month.

Storming in behind Yammer is Salesforce.com’s Chatter. The “no software” enterprise cloud computing company looks to bolt its way into corporate social networking by offering Chatter free for Salesforce customers and $15 per month per user for the rest of us.

Marketed as a means to collaborate in real-time on documents and on projects with employees throughout the country, Chatter is hoping its 87,200 customers adopt the social solution. Chatter’s features are comparable to those in Yammer, but go the extra mile by suggesting friend and group recommendations and displaying dashboards and real-time analytics.

But I wonder. As enterprise social networking companies such as Salesforce and Yammer convince organizations that these social tools are necessary to increase productivity, eliminate meeting time, and facilitate collaboration, will these platforms eventually hinder production? Will employees begin to ignore work-related tasks as they explore employee profiles, follow status updates, and chat with one another throughout the day?

If anyone has ever succumbed to the powers of Facebook, getting lost examining profiles and reading wall posts, it’s hard to believe that social networking could be considered a productivity solution. But maybe that’s just me. What do you think?