Archive: October 2009

Ever since the open source software movement started in 1998, businesses across all industries have learned the benefits of cooperative activity and collaboration. And with the recent growth of Web 2.0 technologies, cheaper creative tools and a cost-saving mentality forced by the recession, it is no surprise that there has also been a trend of leveraging the mass community -– crowdsourcing, as some call it -– to achieve business goals in innovative ways.

The Landscape
Back in September 2008 Lehman Brothers collapsed. The resulting shockwave had immediate and damaging consequences across the financial markets and, ultimately, the entire economy. An already struggling automotive industry was pushed to the breaking point.

While car dealers on Facebook and Twitter are nothing new, an increasing number of those retailers are using their status updates to list inventory. There is now software that can automatically update Twitter, Facebook and other social-networking websites to include a dealership’s entire inventory. Rather than treating the status update as a classified ad, the real value in joining these social networks may be in the opportunity to create relationships with both customers and colleagues alike.