You may have read
the line 'We love the Internet' as part of our cultural definition. However,
how many of us really do? Sure, we all use the Internet to access information,
send emails, play games & network (which many of you usually do:-), book
airline tickets and so on. But, if you have to ask yourself, if the Internet is
a way of life for us, many of us would come up short. To really love the
Internet, it must become a way of life for us in every way. As an organization,
everything that we do, our process, systems, workflows, etc. need to be built
around the Internet. As individuals you should be getting your news, weather,
real-estate services, matrimonial connections, ringtones, gaming, and whatever
else that it is you do from the Internet.
If you don't use Facebook or Twitter actively, you are missing out on a free front row seat to the social web in the making, a truly historic and revolutionary change that will impact our lives, careers and opportunities forever. What we are seeing today on the Internet will be 10 times more impactful than the change portals and search engines brought to our lives and businesses and if you don't try to understand it while it is happening you will have compromised your skills forever.
Besides helping you
understand your jobs better, active consumption of the the Social Web can help
you understand customers better. It can help us engage with our customers in a
multi-faceted way that can leave them delighted with our brands and with us as
people. Positive word-of-mouth is the holy grail as far as the Internet is
concerned and together we can create an incredible impact.
A quick example - Say somebody tweets me on Twitter saying 'Makaan.com is not showing listings for Mumbai'. Before I can retweet, Saif from Makaan.com dev tweets back saying 'looking into it', after 10 minutes Aditya tweets back saying it was a minor bug but is up and running now. I then end by retweeting, thanking the person who made us aware for the feedback. Turns out the customer has 2000 followers and so tweets my message which eventually ends up reaching 50,000 people though the various networks associated with his networks. This delights a handful of people and prompts them to send us suggestions to improve Makaan.com. What a wonderful virtuous cycle! But not possible unless you love the Internet.