UPEI - BUS442.0

There has been a lot of coverage regarding successful companies like Google and Apple who have climbed the ladder of success using business models contrary to the traditionally proven models. Now that these companies are becoming more successful, other companies are beginning to emulate them, or are in the process of investigating how to become like them. A main component of this recent recognition stage is the documentation of these companies. Wired published an article on how Apple made it’s way to the top by breaking every rule. Siva Vaidhyanathan , media scholar at the Univeristy of Virginia, is in the process of writing a book called The Googlization of Everything. Also, Jeff Jarvis has recently been contracted to write a book about Google’s business strategy relating it to other businesses and industries, aptly named: WWGD - What Would Google Do? It is expected to be published next spring.

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Chris Andersen’s Wired post really made me think. What exactly these days constitutes free? In my honest opinion, everything has a price, whether are not you are paying it directly or not.

It cannot be denied, the web is in a sense a commercialized gateway to the entire world. If you take the ability to make money off the world wide web, it falls apart. While many of us use services like Google or Gmail daily for free, SOMEONE out there in cyberspace is paying for our usage. It is the advertisers on Google that make it successful. If there are no advertisements, there is no income, and if there is no income, there is no money. If they have no money they can’t operate, and Google is dead. It isn’t free to run that company, their computing and intellectual resources cost millions of dollars yearly.

Google is a fantastic example. Likely millions of people use it daily, yet no one pays for the right to use it. For us, it is free, but that is just a benefit most of us take for granted in this Web 2.0 world we live in. We as a society need online commerce and business just as much as the companies who run the sites need it to reach their financial goals, because really these sites MAKE the world wide web what it is today.

In terms of consumer products available for free online, I am still sticking by my title of this post: Nothing is free these days. Personally, I think you can think of it in two ways:

1. You are either paying shipping costs or some membership fee of some sort.
2. Even in the case like the free ebook from Oprah, many are likely to continue buying this authors works.

Those are two examples I can think of. I think in 90% of all cases, if you get something “free” you really are paying for it someway or somehow.

My personal favorite example of this are the “pyramid” free iPod deals. Sure at the end of the day you may get an iPod you didn’t pay for, but at what cost? You likely had to sign up for a few offers that had to pay for, then you had to recruit friends to do the same. The companies who you signed up for paid for it. Like my previous Google example, “It’s not free, someone else paid for it.”

The Internet is intriguing in that sense. Overall, it seems free. You could entertain yourself for days and not pay for it, but like i’ve said countless times in this post “Nothing is really free.”

-dc

I was just going through Google’s site and I came across some interesting stuff. Most notably I think their 411 service is very impressive. All these years I kind of always wondered what the point was to have such a thorough index of companies in their Google Maps system. If you ever noticed in Google Maps, you can search for places such as Pizza places and it will find you the closest one.

I think Google does a very good job at using their existing technologies to implement new ones. While Google 411 (1-800-GOOG-411) still has some bugs to work out (No canadian service, business listings only) I think it is a really intriguing concept. For the first time, Google has developed a service that doesn’t compete with traditional online companies. If they can perfect this, it will pose a major threat to telephone company directory assistance because it is free and it’s more intelligent than the 411 that we have today. Google’s service lets you find companies by category as well. In the future they could also integrate this with the GPS that is in cell phones already to make the service even better, but I doubt this will happen since privacy is a major issue here.

I think Google has already conquered the online world, not many people can deny that. I think that since they have done mostly everything there is to do online, they will move to more “offline” products and services. They already have the brand recognition, resources to develop new products and services and not to mention a team of the worlds best engineers at their disposal. I believe they are moving now towards Mobile technologies. One example is their Mobile Product search, which allows you to search products for sale on your cell. They are also developing their own open source mobile OS called Android, which I have previously made a post about .

Sorry Mitch, I guess I’m going to be talking about the same thing as you. I had it half written when I noticed yours went up and I really don’t feel like choosing another topic and researching that one too. I guess if we have to write on the biggest news of the week there will be some overlapping anyway.

So the big news I’ve been hearing about is AOL’s purchase of the social networking website, Bebo. The price? $850,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros. Especially when AOL is slowly dying a painful and horrible *potential* death. I’ll go into a little more depth on both companies.

AOL (formerly America Online) was once mainly in the Internet Service Provider industry, with 30 million subscribers (down to 10.1 million as of Nov. 2007). Due to the dramatic decrease in dial-up (resulting in a decrease in their subscribers) the company has been trying to change their image to an Internet Content Provider rather than a service provider. As of February 2008, there was an announcement that AOL would split into two different sections: internet access and advertising. This is where the acquisition of Bebo comes in.

Bebo (Blog early, blog often) is a social media network (much like MySpace, Hi5, and Facebook) that has a substantial claim on the market. Although they aren’t quite as big as Facebook or MySpace in North America, it is extremely competitive in other countries, such as Britain and Ireland. It is actually the 66^th most popular English-language website (MySpace = 5^th, Facebook = 6^th, Hi5 = 8^th) according to Alexa Internet. *Sidenote: There are a few porn sites in the top 100, as well as Google having a bunch there too).

What makes this such a dangerous merger for other social networks is that AOL has the software that Bebo needs to grab top market share. AOL has the 10 million subscribers that could extremely benefit Bebo’s population, as well as the advertising software that Facebook has been struggling so much to make effective. With AOL’s AIM and ICQ potentially growing Bebo, and with Bebo a great site for mass advertising, this could be a great way for AOL to rebound and become one of the star online advertising companies.

A problem with this merger is that Yahoo runs the display advertising for Bebo in the UK and Ireland. If Microsoft is successful in the bid for Yahoo, what will be the outcome? Microsoft has put heavy support behind Facebook with their 1.6% purchase, so how can they justify a part of their company (if Yahoo is purchased) supporting the rival of their Facebook? Can Microsoft support two social networks?

Also, with Yahoo running the advertising display for Bebo, Google running the advertising of MySpace, and Microsoft running the advertising for Facebook, it makes the market pretty competitive. If Microsoft purchases Yahoo, then it gives Microsoft a great deal more advertising power, controlling both Facebook’s and Bebo’s advertising. Will this finally make Microsoft competitive with Google’s advertising power? I guess we will see in the coming months.

*UPDATE* Facebook has just announced that it will be having an instant message service built right into Facebook.  This is announced right after AOL has been talking about combining their AIM service to Bebo. *

Cheers,

David McKenna

I was just reading Mano-a-mano with Steve Ballmer by Guy Kawasaki that had a video from the MIX08 conference held in Las Vegas from March 5th -7th. It is a conference for developers, designers and business professionals, or so the website says. The video was of the Keynote speaking with Guy Kawasaki as host, interviewing Steve Ballmer. Incredible. It was over an hour long, and I watched all of it. I think anyone who has the slightest interest in Microsoft vs. the world, then you should watch this.

One of the things that made this keynote so good, and why I watched most of it, is because of the bantering going back and forth from Kawasaki and Ballmer. Steve Ballmer is now the CEO of Microsoft and was one of the original Microsoft guys (starting in 1980), whereas Guy Kawasaki was one of the original Apple guys which leads to much playful banter. In some cases, it is absolutely hilarious, one of which Ballmer threw Kawasaki`s Mac AIR on the ground (timing in video is given later). I laughed nearly the whole time.

Here are some of the topics (and the times they played) that was discussed:

Yahoo potential merger @ 2:30

Google competitor @ 4:30

Microsoft is an underdog @ 7:18

Anti-trust @ 7:35

Apple (Ballmer gives Cudos) @ 7:48

Facebook @ 9:28

Microsofts millions @ 10:40

Receiving mass email (or not) @ about 15:00

Bill Gates leaving microsoft @ 16:45

Hiring at microsoft @ 18:40

Silverlight @ 24:35

Vista (dodges topic by throwing Kawasaki`s Mac AIR on the ground) @ 26:45

Microsoft losing focus @ 28.30

Firefox vs IE @ 32:40

I think anyone who is interested even slightly in Microsoft, or even if you hate Microsoft and want to see their views on Google and Apple, you should watch this video. It is long, but well worth it.

After watching over an hour worth of video, I could write for forever on this topic, but I guess I can only put so much. Maybe I`ll make another 10 posts all dealing with this video. Thats all for now.

Cheers,

David McKenna

In class, we have briefly discussed topics concerning how to organize your web content through the use of bookmark sites (Del.icio.us) and RSS feeders. Competitors Yahoo! and Microsoft have taken content management to a new level by answering the need for management of mobile content. Yahoo! announced today its mobile-content management solution, onePlace. The tool’s objective is to create a better system to organize web information, similarly to RSS and bookmarks tools.

onePlace’s main objective is to strive for simplicity; the tool operates using a system similar to tagging and grouping, which allows users to create a category folder and link all relating information to that folder. The example Yahoo! is promoting is for traveling. Say you were traveling to Europe, you begin by creating a Euro-Trip folder. Then you can link to all the travel sites (ie recommended places to visit), related music, video clips, photos, search queries, etc. It’s like having your Del.ici.ous account only with more features, all available on your mobile phone. onePlace facilitates content portability even more, because now if you want to add useful information to your trip folder, and a computer is not close, you can just use your cellphone tool to add to the folder. Being that the phone is connected to the internet, onePlace also keeps information updated. So if your flight time was altered, onePlace would make an automatic update. Here’s a link to the press release, it includes all of onePlace’s anticipated features. Below is an idea of what the screen will look like.