Become a friend with your Toyota

Posted on 25. May, 2011 by Goran Minov in Customer Utility

One could think, that there is no real need to develop an own social network, when you already have Facebook. But Facebook has everything and is surely not focused on your brand or your product. And who said you can’t be friends with your car?! Since yesterday there is a new way to go.

Reuters has reported that Toyota will start a new social network, called Toyota Friends. In the age of social connections, networks and car connectivity this will be a whole new and interesting – and for sure engaging – tool to interact with the car, the customer and/or the dealer. In the past brands have made extreme efforts to get to know their customers better in order deliver more accurate information to them.

Social networking services are transforming human interaction and modes of communication. The automobile needs to evolve in step with that transformation. I am always calling for Toyota to make ever-better cars. The alliance that we announce today [May 23] is an important step forward in achieving that goal. (TMC President Akio Toyoda)

Initially Toyota Friends will be launched in Japan in 2012. The first group of members will be those who own a Toyota electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHV). They will recieve standard information like product and service information as well as essential maintenance tips. But here comes the interesting part: via the network they’ll get tweet alerts in case an EV or PHV is running low on battery power or get a remote diagnosis from the garage, so the customer won’t need to go there.

The plan is to provide the plattform for all desktop and mobile devices. The communication to friends, families and others will be possible, even cross-plattform connection with Facebook will be possible.

Picture from: Telematicsnews.info

From my perspective this is a very smart step from Toyota, because it embraces the customers behaviours of connecting with friends, brands and products they love and support anyway. They comment on specific brand/product reactions (a.k.a. PR releases and infos), give answers on other customers’ questions and participate on brand development as far as they can go. Why not benefiting from that directly? Toyota doesn’t take that big step alone. Toyota Friend will be powered by Salesforce Chatter, a private social network used by businesses, which will run as a Microsoft cloud service.

Salesforce.com and TMC will each make investments in Toyota Media Service Co., which oversees TMC’s global cloud platform development. Salesforce.com will invest 223 million yen [$2.8 million] and TMC will invest 442 million yen [$5.5 million]. Microsoft Corporation, which on April 6 announced a strategic partnership with TMC to build a global platform for next generation telematics services, will invest 350 million yen [$4.1 million].

Source: Popsop

Tags: Become a Friend, Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce, social network, Toyota