Web 2.0 Implementation Strategies - Case Study Example

It was launched in 2008 in November and has since grown significantly since then. The website was founded focusing on collective buying power. Today it serves over 150 markets locally and over 100 additional markets all over the world. Today it has more than 150 million subscribers around the world and over $ 4 billion dollars in revenue (Kim, Lee, & Park, 2013).As an internet application, the platform must ensure that it has a competitive advantage over other online platforms. Ensuring that users have a way of adding their own data to what the platform provides is significant because it enables participation that could market the platform further.

The platform has harnessed collective intelligence by creating an architecture of participation for the users both implicitly and explicitly. For instance, the website provides discounts on products manufactured by different companies throughout its markets. To ensure that these companies directly interact with customers, the website has provided a way of customers interacting with these manufacturers by providing a way for customers to use discounted gift certificates in local or national companies.

This puts the customers in a position to directly make comments about the products they buy to the companies and improve product quality. The platform has also provided a way for customers to put comments on the website about the services they receive. The platform has also done this by allowing merchants to put their won descriptions and products. This platform depends significantly on the experiences of consumers with respect to the services they get and on the experiences of the companies that they deal with.

Any negative experience could affect platform detrimentally. Therefore, harnessing collective intelligence is key to the platform's continued success and to ensure that negative experiences are resolved with immediate effect to ensure that the company is not brought down. Harnessing collective intelligence is key to the platform and has been used since its establishment to ensure customer and company participation as important users in the development of the platform (Barringer & Ireland, 2012).