I recently came across the new book “The Social Organism” by Oliver Luckett and Michael Casey, a groundbreaking piece that illuminates how social media and networks function on a global scale and how business and life are evolving with it.

Luckett and Casey offer a revolutionary theory: social networks, to an astonishing degree, mimic the rules of biological life. In sharing and replicating packets of information known as memes, the world’s social media users are facilitating an evolutionary process just like the transfer of genetic information in living things. Memes are the basic building blocks of our culture, our social DNA. To master social media (and to make online content that impacts the world) you must start with the social organism.

It is all about sharing and replicating information and creating exponential organizations and networks (beyond proprietary idea generation and implementation as well as predict & control). Therefore, the most important objective of any organizational design is to facilitate efficient communication flow with suppliers, manufacturers, customer & retailers etc. in order to optimize decision making and maintain a competitive edge and... to build an accessible & industry-specific global brain. Social media is the answer.

The scope and pace of social media has now also affected traditional e-commerce and we see an inflection point. The inflection point e-commerce is going through today has many parallels to previous technology shifts that revolutionized web-based apps and services. Therefore, future e-commerce must go beyond transactions.

This is what we do at Balluun… we do already Social Commerce. Our product is a unique combination of discovery, engagement and commerce... coupled with industry-specific communities that leverage social networking to connect and build their business network (in a first step) and to do business/transactions (in a second step).

On our roadmap we also have a special strategic component which is to turn our industry B2B marketplace into a B2B2C marketplace and thereby become the single place to go, both for B2B players but also – and more importantly – for end consumers interested in purchasing goods from that industry which is represented by all the industry players (multi-tier distribution selling).

“Social media is the most obvious recent way that human life is being forever changed by technology. This book’s brilliant unifying metaphor, the Social Organism illuminates how the ground is shifting beneath our feet. As Luckett and Casey conclude, social media will begin to act more and more like a global brain. The implications for our way of life, our governments, and our businesses are immense. I cannot recommend this book enough.”

– Ray Kurzweil, inventor, author, and futurist about "The Social Organism"