Social plugins and a new kind of The web ‘coalesce’ phenomenon. A Study

7/29/2019 Social plugins and a new kind of The web ‘coalesce’ phenomenon. A Study

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/social-plugins-and-a-new-kind-of-the-web-coalesce-phenomenon-a-study 1/11

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. Ver. Rev. :

Authorized by: Signature/:

Date:

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© 2010 Infosys Technologies Limited, India




© 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 LimitedHosur Road

Electronic City, 3rd CrossBangalore 560 100

India.Telephone: (91) (80)28520 261-270

Fax: (91) (80) 8520 362Website: http://www.infosys.com


http://www.infosys.com/

http://www.infosys.com/




Guidelines to the author:

1. Please keep the content short and concise with concentration on project

experience/learning.

2. Text within '[ ]' can be removed.

3. Text within '< >' is to be replaced by the correct value.

4. Notes to the Author are in Blue within '[ ]'.

5. 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 hasn’t got any, there’s a great chance you might be loosing your opportunityto 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 websitedirectly.

We analyze here, what actually are they, how are they used, how websites are takingthe benefit of it and reaching to more numbers of users that actually visit them and

what’s the future trend looks like for them.





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 boththe 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 and Twit plug in

Scribd





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.





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 asappears on your

Facebook profile

You can see a link

within this feed that

points back to theScribd 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





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 youto 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.





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 potentialvisitors, 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 don’t 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.

Cycle B Cycle A

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


Facebook

(Consumer)

Scribd (Producer) Scribd

(Consumer)

Facebook

(Producer)




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





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 don’t believe me, have a visit to <http://gold.insidenetwork.com/facebook-

marketing-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,

Let’s 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 let’s 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





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 1 1: 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 theirwebsites.

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.


Social plugins and a new kind of The web ‘coalesce’ phenomenon. A Study

Documents

Transcript of Social plugins and a new kind of The web ‘coalesce’ phenomenon. A Study