I was scanning through the posts this week, and once again I found Seths blog easier to relate to on Food Fun. It mentioned marketing throughout this blog, and this is an important part in the Business world. Without marketing a product properly, the success of the product is at risk. I remember when I went to elementary school and frequently ate fruit roll ups and dunkaroos. The marketing on tv commercials had an influence on me wanting these products. Or when I used to eat lucky charms because of the catchy commercials.”There’s always been a cultural desire to conform. The difference is that now there’s money at stake, so marketers push us to conform in ways that turn a profit. ” Profits are the main priorities of marketing. Michael Jordan has been an important reason in Nike controlling an important part of the basketball shoe market. Having a celebrity endorsing your product has proved to be successful at many levels for companies.There are many keys to successful marketing. Some keys are knowing your market, business, and successfully delivering the message to your consumer is important.  One company that comes to my mind of successfully conveying the consumer to buy the product is Pepsi.Without the proper marketing, businesses can go bankrupt.  I found a really interesting article on how Volkswagen is introuducing a new form of marketing online. “Today, Tribal launches the brand new site for Volkswagen.co.uk, providing customers with the most life-like experience of sitting in and walking round a new car without having to leave the comfort of their own homes.”  It took Volkswagen 18 months to create this site with a team of 50 people. In this article it says that research has been done that shows people do their homework on the internet before shopping for a new car. Keeping one foot ahead of the competitors in the automobile industry is really imoportant.I think that without proper marketing of products jobs are at stake. If a companys sales fall of expected because of entering the wrong market – than the companies employees could be at risk of losing their jobs.Mitchell Watts

I was reading the Long Tail by Chris Anderson, and came across an interesting post called The big lie about free.  Most of us have been acustomed to thinking that things we get for free are actually free.  “Whether it’s pop stars or Wall Street analysts, the biggest misconception of  free is that no cost = no value.” This makes a lot of sense because many things that we think are free are not. I was reading Chapter 4 and Linux is an example of this.  Many people put hard work into building this opensource software development.  People put there time, effort, and money through programs that they have bought to create Linux. Another example is downloading movies for free. There is a lot of money put into creating these movies – (paying actors etc.)I found another intesting article regarding people who thought they were getting something free,  but ended up having to pay for what they thought was free.  Someone clicked on an internet ads for a free iPod, and actually had to pay for it. Also a person who clicked on an ad for a free cell phone and never got a free cell phone.I did a bit of reseach on Linux. I have heard many people talk about this open source software.  Even some oversees governments are using Linux.I decided for this post to look into Linux, because I know the basics about Linux, but not much as I want to know  - and it mentions  it throughout our book for class. I found an interesting short article regarding the battle between Apple, Mircosoft, and Linux.  One of the main things I gathered from reading this is there are feuds between the companies regarding programming language. Computer ‘geeks’ are proud of what they have submitted to Linux. Its funny how it costs quite a bit of money to buy Microsoft XP, and Linux is free. I have read a lot of good reviews about  Linux. The main part I like about Linux is that people can contribute to this from anywheres around the world.  One question that I had was if I downloaded Linux could I run windows programs under Linux.  I found out that the answer was that people will most likely have trouble with this, but this are programs that you can download such as Wine to help make it easier.  A lot of people around the world are using this Linux for free – and modifying it.I am using Windows XP at home, and am pleased with it. I was just wondering if anyone uses Linux, or if people would switch over to Linux from Windows – considering Linux is free?Mitchell Watts

Facebook is a social networking website and it is being very popular to everyone. But the problem Facebook is having now, you have to visit Facebook website to access. On the other hand, look at Google, it supports its social network application (OpenSocials) initiative which will let people develop applications that can run on any website.

Recently Facebook has taken another step to becoming the defector operating system of the web 2.0 world. Facebook recently updated and releasing a JavaScript client library which enables you to add Facebook application to any site. Now you can use Facebook as a toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Wei Zhu from Facebook explains the benefits:

Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML. An application that uses this client library should be registered as an iframe type. This applies to either iframe Facebook apps that users access through the Facebook web site or apps that users access directly on the app’s own web sites. Almost all Facebook APIs are supported.

Check the following guidelines… how can you use Facebook toolbar into your browser?

Facebook Toolbar for Internet Explorer:

http://mashable.com/2007/12/18/fbtoolbar/

Facebook Toolbar for Firefox:

http://developers.facebook.com/toolbar/

More about Facebook application: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/JavaScript_Client_Library

I have not seen yet anyone to use Facebook as a toolbar into any browser. But I think it is a great move by Facebook and it will enable Facebook to get competitive advantage.

—Romiz

I did a bit of research on Facebook and found out that employers search their applicants online and reject job seekers after discovering secrets only their friends knew!

On the other hand, there are ways to use Facebook and blogs to make a job application appealing. Hundreds of students are having their job hunting hopes crashed because of their profile on Facebook. Why? Companies are using google to search candidates and finding hisher profile under the name with pictures from the weekend and unprofessional put on thier Facebook walls. Fortunately, this can be fixed by you using social media to put you ahead of other candidates.

There is a deadly cocktail going on: declining privacy thanks to the Internet is combined with employers who are getting quite savvy at Google. And the result of all this? Students are not getting hired. A survey found 63% of hiring managers have admitted to not hiring someone based on the information they found online.

http://www.news.com/2100-1025_3-6171187.html

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061208/8facebook.htm

Companies search their applicants before they come in for an interview or just before an offer to be signed, so they can find out if there is any information a candidate might not have divulged at interview.

Steps to clean-up your Facebook profile:

First, adjust your privacy settings. Facebook, recently allowed profiles to be searched on Google so make sure only your friends can view your page. That is not enough; do you know who all your online friends are? Some employers are using some of your as a trap to sneak up on job candidates online.

Second, Pictures of you with family or doing hobbies are fine but take down pictures of you and your friends drunk on the weekend. Make sure your blog comments and other comments you post present the kind of image you would like to project.

Classmates it is never too late as I mentioned at the beginning of my post hit your privacy settings and delete all your pictures from last night pub crawl

Z

Another week has gone by and there is still little news, I guess its’s back to Seth’s blogspace and the talk about digital downloads. Currently there are a few businesses that provide movie downloads. Apple has just recently joined this venture along with  Netflix, Amazon’s Unbox and CinemaNow Inc. and Time Warner will also offer this service through HBO.

Although this type of service is growing rapidly ,there are some questions about the the time it requires to download the movies and how long you can view the movie. Right now it requires about one gigabyte of storage space and a fast internet connection, preferably a cable connection over DSL. Prices vary with each company but for the most part it costs about $3-$5 per movie. This price seems a little high considering they don’t have to pay for labour costs, advertising and the other costs associated with a retail store. I agree with Seth that offering them for free would not be the way to go for the industry, however offering them for a minimal charge would definately curb the desire for pirating. This was mentioned in Wattsy’s post earlier this week and I think he hit the preverbial nail on the head. Hollywood still has to make money from the movie industry. Therein lies the question is it better to charge less in hopes of attracting more customers or to charge more in hopes of making more profit? Quantity vs. Quality?

Seths post called How much for Digital?, was interesting to read.  I think that downloading movies will be a big part of the future.  But, I think the price companies charge will have a huge impact on determining whether this will be a big part of the future.  It will more than likely take a while for this to become popular.I think there is a big opportunity for companies to step forward and offer movie rentals online at a small price.  We as the consumer have become acustomed to paying $3 and $4 for a movie rental.  Why not offer these movies at a price of $.50 or $.75 cents and see how many people would download the movies at this price.  More people are more than likely willing to pay for downloading movies if they are at a small cost.  There is nothing more annoying then paying late fees, and having to return a movie the next day after renting it.  Or getting to a movie rental store – and the movie your looking for is rented. I really like the idea of convience for online movies.”At fifty cents a rental, all desire for piracy goes out the window, replaced by convenience, ease of use and a clear conscience. More important, entire new services show up, habits are built and the studios end up with a direct relationship with consumers who want to hear from them.” The amount of piracy might drastically decrease if the price is cheap to download movies.  It probably would just be a step in the right direction to limit piracy.  But there are always people who would still download movies for free. HBO is jumping on the wagon and adding downloading movies to there resume. I am not familiar with the process of downloading movies from these sites. In dealing with how many times you can view the movie, or how long it is saved on your computer. But it almost seems to bring the topic of the Perfect Storm up from Chapter 2 in dealing with how Sony installed software on music fans computers. I know I wouldn’t want companies installing secret software onto my computer if I paid to download movies.  I found an interesting article called Time Warner: Download Too Much and You Might Pay $30 a Movie in dealing with rate plans they charge customers.What price do you think companies should be charging for online movie rentals, and why do you think this? Mitchell Watts

From last week last week reading Seth Godin’s blog “Music Lessons” and while navigating Chris Anderson blog I found “China: the future of free? “ Which kind of ties to Seth ‘s post.

Some add-ons we forgot to talk about during our discussion last week on “Music Lessons” how the new music industry is reforming? Here are few facts about music in China today:

- Sale of music is via ringtone market, which generated $1.5 billion in revenues for China Mobile this year.

- The other big winner in digital music is Baidu, the search engine that has defeated Google in China. Baidu is the place to go for free music search!

- There is very little Long Tail effect in Chinese music.

- The indie music scene is also very small.

So how musicians make money in China?

Musicians in China get a small cut from their ringtone sales and mostly from corporate and promotional appearances, few concerts, and some endorsements for advertisement and the Day Job.

In near future, the CD business will no longer exist so I ask my fellow musiciansartists to wake-up and start looking at investing their music in similar ideas to China Mobile and Baidu, as a fact they are making around $2 billion a year indirectly from music but will it reach all artist? And makes wonder if musicians in North America get a cut off ringtones sales from phone providers (Rogers Communication, TELUS and Bell)?

I was reading Anderson’s blog and I found it very interesting. Anderson’s theory is a big tag to change the world of business. Anderson’s theory on the internet is “it is very easy to sell unlimited choice of products through the internet to the billions of people which are transforming a consumer culture based on big hits and best sellers into one that supports more idiosyncratic, specialized niche products”. He wrote “With online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound”. Time magazine said “If Anderson’s thesis is correct, most media and technology companies will have to do no less than rethink the core of their business”.

Big companies are convinced with the long tail and it is very relevant for any business. For example Microsoft relies on monster software hits like office. Long tail is the perfect way to look at any open source software and understand how it is going to save the time.

Question can be asked, “Should price get lower or higher as you more down to tail?”.

After reading the blogs I have found, for thing people want like entertainment, the price should be lowered to encourage exploration and for things people need like information, you can raise the price.

..... Romiz

The blog called “Vestiges”http://http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/vestiges.html by Seth Godin was very interesting to read – many vaild points were made.The internet has created a lot of jobs, but at the same time it has eliminated a lot of jobs.   EMI http://http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSL151812420080115  is facing about 2000 job cuts because of the digital environment that has been created. It could be argued that these jobs could have been saved by adapting quicker to the digital environment in todays world. Which I think is quite possible to do. But in the end it is EMI’s business and they can run it the way they want. From this article Seth goes on to say that  “the production values of an HD TV show are lost in the YouTube environment, yet plenty of studios and advertisers are having trouble giving up the staffing and hierarchy that served them so well in the other medium.” It would be hard to let employees go who have been with your company for years. There might be easier ways to get the work done with the changing technology, but loyal employees who have been with you for years are usually a main priority.Some businesses mind find it hard to make the switch over to new models, and start a new model. Ex. If you are a company that has had 15 employees since you first opened, you would probably find it hard to let a few employees go because of a new computer program that came a long that could do those employees work for free. Although the models might change, businesses are all on the hunt for profit.The internet has made it easier for businesses to get running. By letting them set up a server, blog, and wiki costs can be saved as discussed in Chapter 2 of Wikinomics.  One of the main things I think Seth was trying to get across was no matter how much marketing done, the old model reflects the new model in some way.Mitchell Watts

I don’t have a lot of time at the moment so I’m just going to do a little post because I’m intrigued. Doesn’t really have a lot to do with the course either because it’s more about a physical product, aka. its a laptop. A disgustingly thin laptop. For those of you that don’t see the difference, here’s a tip, the laptop is sitting on top of their old Macbook pro. Just scroll through the pictures. It’s like a piece of paper folded in half.

Anyway sorry if this wasted your time, but I was just really surprised at how thin it is. You know it has to be good when an ex-Microsoft employee (Scoble) is excited about it.
P.S. Hopefully my link words

Cheers.

David McKenna