Week 6: Journal 2

Marketing and Second Life

This is another great podcast and with loads of information. This is the first time I've heard of about second life. I enjoyed the whole discussion around the second life and how company are trying to use it for marketing. The most striking thing in the discussion was , how companies are not really successful in marketing in the second life or in other words I would say companies didnt find the right technique to be successful in the second life.
After listening to the podcast I created my profile in the Second life to feel how it looks like and to experience the second life , following are my observation

• Number of users in second life are very less compared to the other social networking platform like Facebook and twitter.
• This is more like a game/role play rather than social platform to chat with friends
  
• For me second life looks more like a fantasy land(Avatar) rather than getting connected with the real friends. So people might not be logging in often like facebook where they connect with the real friends and know what is happening around them.
  
• Lack of awareness about the second life.

Also as a company it is hard to sell it to the advertising customers when there are very less volume of users login on daily basis. and the customers will not be able to recognize the ROI


Charlie Rose conversation with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google

This video is one of the great discussion from Charlie rose, Google's model of integrating Ads into their search has helped the company to grow into an advertising company.As Eric Schmidt mentioned in the discussion google's 98% of the revenue is from advertisement.

Also it was interesting to listen to the conversation about the future innovation and the products that google is working on. Intelligent search concept by using the user data will be a great innovation. All the Google's product are targeted towards the end customer and user friendliness, makes easier for the end customer to use it, More the customers use google's product, it is better for the Google interms of generating revenue.

There is always a concern of data privacy, but my take away is, it is upto the users to control what data they wanted to put in the internet. Company like Google should use as much information available about a user to generate more personalized and intelligent search result.

Week 6: Journal 1

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability

It was a very informative article about the online auction and to learn about the algorithm used by google for calculating the bid cost. Google's introduction of Adwords for selling online advertisement has changed the way online advertisement works. With this method anything which increases the usage of Internet and usage of google products will help Google to generate revenue

Below video is the Introduction to the Google Ad Auction given by Chief Economist, Hal Varian

Advertising in Video Games
I watched the video presentation about the advertising in the video game.

Working for RealNetworks has helped me to understand game development and how the advertisement work in the casual game industry.RealNetworks has its casual game site as www.gamehouse.com. In addition to the list of companies that was shown in the presentation recently United airways has introduced its casual game platform at http://www.optathlon.com/, united airlines is the first to introduce it in the airline sector. Advertisement in the games has helped to reach the targeted audience. sometimes having the advertisement beginning of the game can annoy the users but carefully placing the ads at the right spot will help to get the attention of the users

Below is the short video that will show how the advertisement works in the casual games

New Advertising Network for Casual Games

Week 5: Journal 2

Brief History of the Internet:

It was a Brief and informative video about the history of the Internet and how the transition of web happened. In my personal opinion I would say Internet has revolutionized the world on how the people communicate.Growth and awareness of the Internet has grown substantially high in the last decade primarily due to the increase in the social media and web 2 technology.Also mode of Internet access is continuously changing, in next 5 to 10 years the Internet will be primarily accessed via smart phones and tablets

Below is the short video showing how Internet traffic works



Kimberly Clark and Virtual Reality Simulations:

After seeing this video I really felt i learnt a new concept today about virtual reality simulation. In my opinion even though Simulations are going to help the retailers in the way they can organize their store and also help in many planning activities, but I still think doing a grocery shopping totally in a virtual mode is not possible, visual simulation are ok for packaged products but if in case of someone needs to buy the vegetable or meet the customer would like to touch and feel how the product looks like. Also it is not clear to me where these virtual environment will be setup for the customers.

The Future of the Internet; from the Pew Internet & American Life Project

I read the article 'The Future of the Internet III' , it was informative. It is very clear that Internet is going to touch every electronic device that we will use. the primary mode of the Internet access is going to be hand held devices. the primary interface for accessing the information will be by touch or voice recognition. There is always going to be concerns about the privacy but companies should take necessary steps to have proper privacy control established.

Google's View On The Internet's Future, Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, "The Father Of The Internet" and VP, Chief Internet Evangelist for Google

Week 5: Journal 1

Numerati:

Even though I knew the concept of how internet captures our day to day activities and predicts our behaviors using the mathematical model but was not knowing the terminology 'Numerati' until I read the article.

Company like google or yahoo tracks the persons behavior over the internet using the cookies and use these data points to predict outcomes and project the effect of stimulus on the group. these data points can be also used to posting advertisement based on the users interest and behavior. One of the concept that Google uses to target the advertisement based on the search result is via AdSence. AdSense for search uses Google search to return search results to end users. The search results that appear on a AdSense for search results page will be very similar to those that appear on Google.com. Google ads are targeted to these results based on our targeting algorithm, which takes words and phrases included in the query and matches them to relevant ad campaigns.

Below is a youtube video of Stephen Baker, The Numerati

As mentioned in the article the information collected by the Google or Yahoo are used to analyzing the user behavior over the internet and not to know more about the user himself. It is a system/technology that is analyze the data and there is a very minimal user interventions. Below is a short video from google's Perter Barron, Director of Communications, Google Europe. He explains in the video how uses the data collected

How Google Uses Your Information - Peter Barron

Week 4: Journal 2

Will Twitter Ever Make Money? Twitter CEO Evan Williams Responds

I watched the video of Evan Williams, the question was little tricky that how Twitter can make money. Personally I feel twitter has a tremendous opportunity similar to facebook where they can generate revenue by advertisement based on the user behavior. Below is one of the video how top companies feels about facebook. I believe twitter will also be taking the similar approach to increase their revenue

Business Models for Social Media Startups:
(http://mashable.com/2009/07/14/social-media-business-models/)

I read the article about the different models for the Social Media startup below is my analysis on the models described in the article.
Freemium Model is one of the key model that will used by most product based startups but the challenge is company should have a clear strategy how they can convert the free service to the subscription bsaed or in simple how they can make the customers to pay for their service. for example as mentioned in the above video Twitter is a free service but the company is yet to come up with the solid strategy for their money making strategy
Affiliate Model is an easy to implement but here the challenge is how you can make users to trust your recommendation and the most important challenge is making the users to come back to your website again and keeping it in pace with the market.
Subscription Model, in this model the challenge is how you can able to provide incremental benefit to the customer and make the customer stick to the service provided. Customer service is a key for this type of model.
Virtual Goods Model, this model is a very challenging model and the company should be creativity and should be able to produce what the community wants and also keep an eye on the competitors products.
Advertising Model, to be successful in this model depends on how much traffic your website can attract and what kind of audience you are targeting.

Week 4: Journal 1

Online Business Model Video: "Gil and Frank Discuss Business Models"

It was a very informative Video where different type of Online business model were discussed. I work for RealNetworks and our main business is online digital music and online games. and our media platform is RealPlayer. Our business model is Subscription based for music via Rhapsody and games through gamehouse.com. in our model we give access to unlimited music access with a fixed monthly cost.

One of the interesting topic that was discussed on the video was the advertising on the youtube. Recently Google has started adding the 15 second advertisement before a video can start, this is new but people got used to seeing video directly without any advertisement this creates little bit of user frustration similar to what was explained in the video where companies provide their free service in the beginning and latter they change their model.


MANAGING THE DIGITAL ENTERPRISE > BUSINESS MODELS ON THE WEB

s. The article has explained in detail the different type of online business models. Manufacturer (Direct). I also found an interesting video in youtube regarding the Online business model, I just wanted to share it in this blog. Another important concept explained in the article is about Auctions, The Web has popularized the auction model and broadened its applicability to a wide array of goods and services, eBay is one of the solid example which allows the common users to participate in the Auction

Week 3: Journal 2

Charlie Rose conversation with Evan Williams, Co-founder of Twitter.com

Now twitter has become the new form of communication for the companies and individual to let their followers know what they are currently doing or to provide any status updates. As Evan motioned in the conversation it is very interesting to see how Twitter is differentiated from the social networking sites. Twitter is more of an one way communication rather than the two way communication.

Below is the short video about twitter



The Point of Twitter (from NPR "On the Media")

The podcast was interesting to listen, mainly few of the terms that used in the podcast like twitter refereed to as the heads up engine and a platform for delivering the news real time. It is also interesting to see how Twitter was refereed as community.

following are the couple of sites that can be used for the tracking the retweets

http://www.retweetradar.com/
http://www.retweetrank.com/

Week 3: Journal 1

Origins of Social Media:

It was an interesting article to read and know how an information can go viral in the internet via social media. The article also clearly explains how the internet transition from the 'Real-Only' to 'Interactive Web'.

One of the main benefit of Social Media is how a common person can able to bring the worlds attention towards him like the example mentioned in the article about Ferrari for canceling his AOL account. In recent times every company started having its own official blog to provide information about their product , now these Blog has become one of the reliable source of information for the consumers. Another example is the customer reviews for the product are one of the main source of information every consumer would like to read before buying the product.

Below is the video from youtube which explains Social Media in Plain English

Week 2: Journal 1

Crowdsourcing: The Dawn of Human network

This is the first time I heard about the term Crowdsorucing, It is an interesting chapter to read and understand how the human network can come together in the common platform to generate the content. I also see crowdsourcing as the platform for young talents to showcase their ideas. Below is the interesting video about crowd sourcing

One of the example I would like to mention in the blog is opening up the iPhone platform for the developers to develop apps for the iPhone, this has opened up a tremendous opportunity for both Apple and other companies/ individuals who develop the application for the iPhone platform.

As another example mentioned in the chapter was about the how P&G was successful in creating the initiative of 'Connect and develop' and their collaborative website InnoCentive was helpful to achieve their goal.

I would like to quote following line from the chapter "Crowdsourcing capitalizes on the deeply social nature of the human species. Crowdsourcing uses technology to foster unprecedented level of collaboration and meaningful exchange between people from every imaginable background in every imaginable geographical location."

Week 1: Journal 2

Charlie Rose program with Panndora Founder Tim Westergren

I watched the video of Panndora Founder Tim Westergren, It is really interesting to see the business model and the platform that panndora provides for their customers to advertise. The concept advertising based on the targeted audience. This concepts of advertising is much different from the traditional method of advertising in the radio,where everyone listening to one channel will have to listen to the same advertisement. This unique platform provided by the Pandora will help the clients to come up with the innovative marketing advertisement.

W NYC Podcast: Bob Stein :Institute of future of book

Interview of Bob Stein was very thought provoking about the future of books. It is so very true that in the world of social networking and Web 2.0 collaboration between writer and the reader is a very important aspect. As pointed out by Bob, instead of waiting for multiple years for a book to be completed, it is very effective if the reader could able to subscribe to the writing. this helps reader and writer to collaborate and provide the better product.Now web has become an inevitable platform to share information and people wants to know the results quicker and on-time. This message also related to the Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos interview with Charlie, where Jeff mentioned that Kindle team is working with authors where they will be able to publish the content as the materials are prepared in a subscription model. Multiple products in the market like, Kindle from amazon, iPad from Apple, Sony Reader PRS-700 from Sony, etc., helps to boost the ebook market.

A conversation with entrepreneur and software engineer Marc Andreessen

Being an software engineer and an IT profession myself this interview with Marc Andreessen was one of the best interviews i've heard in recent time about the Internet. one of the common theme i hear in the interview is everything will ultimately be replaced with the technology and internet from healthcare to Banking industry and Internet has no limits. Again in the interview when Marc talked about Kindle and other portable products that will be replacing the news paper business or the hard copy text book. I completely agree that electronic reading is the future and there is no point still when news paper is still printing papers and complaining that they are not making money.