startupi

One of the most repeated themes in lectures when I was in college was something like “give a man a fish, or teach him to fish.” The idea being to instigate discussion about whether we should offer social aid to the needy (family funds?) or if it would be more correct to give them a job, teach them a profession so they can turn themselves around.

One of the new things arising in social media is the fact that users generate their own content. It’s pretty easy to create a blog, put videos on YouTube, photos on Flickr, etc…. For those who want them there are productivity tools like Google Docs and that’s just an easy step.

But what about businesses, how do they see all of this? In general they don’t know how to deal with the so called social media. Maybe there’s a guy on their payroll who’s well-versed in this new world, but no overall business strategy because of lack of familiarity with the power of the tools available.

Peabirus launched recently a service that comes to fill this niche of explaining social media tools to the corporate market. I’m talking about Web 2.0 Fácil (Easy Web 2.0), a consulting service on how to use every type of web tool. The system functions on the freemium scheme. There’s a catalog of applications available for free. The complete catalog, consulting services and a news service are available for a fee.

Speaking to Rodrigo Mesquita, partner at Peabirus, I discovered that other tools “of aggregated value” in his words, are to be launched with this intention to educate the market about the use of social media to meet the demands of the corporate world.

It’s different than what the social media agencies offer. Instead of a quick packet and a lot of expense, Peabirus and it’s aggregated services like Web 2.0 Fácil teach companies to fish. Great for those who have a smaller budget and want to enter this new environment.