A-LI-HA-HA . COM

iPhone 3GS

2010-09-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

my iPhone 3GS

image tagging..TagToo yeah!

2010-09-26T05:25:00.000-07:00

I"m testing a image tagging function.
Lets check out how it goes.

visit u-like in EAT!VANCOUVER event at Vancouver Convention Center

2010-05-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

cordially invites you

visit its EAT!VANCOUVER

Vancouver Convention Center, Canada Place

May 28-30, 2010

and to view an exciting new product

in u-like™ booth that adjoins the exhibit

We have prepared our most innovated product,

”u-like Extra Comfort Fingertips Reinforced Household Gloves” for you to try on, and don’t miss our Raffle Prize in u-like booth. Looking forwards to seeing you soon!

Feel free to contact us
Linda (Bio), 604.780.8163 , lee@u-like.ca
Jackie (Sally), 604.780.8162, sos@u-like.ca
Ben, 778.863.3111, ben@u-like.ca
Kimmy, 778.384.2136, kimmy@u-like.ca
or visit us at www.u-like.ca

Content Consumers Want

2009-03-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

Content Consumers Want

Content Strategies Will Differ By Target Audience

This is the first document in the "Branded Content" series.

by Lisa Bradner

with Jaap Favier, Evadne Cokeh

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As the economy continues to slide into recession, advertisers are curbing spend in all channels, including online: Publishers like AOL, Yahoo!, and the New York Times Company reported a decrease in online advertising revenues in Q4 2008, although year-on-year growth still appears strong. Whether softness in online advertising is a temporary or longer-term trend is up for debate, but even the specter of slowing growth in online advertising forces publishers to look again at paid content models. Forrester forecasts that US online consumers will spend $7.6 billion on online content in 2009, with two categories — video games and music — accounting for more than half of that spend. In most categories, only a small percentage of consumers are doing the spending. To reach consumers who are willing to pay for content, publishers need to understand the distinctions in demographics and attitudes of buyers in each category. Consumers who pay for online video, for example, fit a typical young, male, early-adopter profile, while those who pay to access services like Angie's List and Zagats.com are slightly older and less enthusiastic about technology.

see more details here http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,53810,00.html

Best Practices: The Smart Way To Implement CRM SaaS Solutions

2009-03-12T19:40:00.001-07:00

by William Band, Pete Marston

with Liz Herbert, Sharyn Leaver, Mary Ann Rogan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

CRM software-as-a service (SaaS) solutions have moved beyond their previous status as a specialized deployment option and into the mainstream. According to Forrester's Enterprise and SMB Software Survey, North America and Europe, Q3 2007, more than a third of IT software decision-makers in North America and Europe tell us that they are already using, or are interested in using or piloting, SaaS applications to support their customer-facing business processes. But CRM professionals worry about the true total cost of ownership (TCO) for SaaS, feel challenged by integration and customization issues, have qualms about data security, and find SaaS pricing models and contracts confusing. To understand the best practices for overcoming these challenges, Forrester interviewed CRM SaaS early-adopter companies and talked with leading CRM SaaS vendors and professional services organizations. Smart companies use five best practice strategies to succeed with CRM SaaS solutions: build a solid business case; negotiate a sound contract; use a proven implementation approach; establish strong data security procedures; and create robust governance and support structures

NOTES & RESOURCES

Forrester interviewed 16 individuals from user, vendor, and professional services organizations. User companies interviewed included: Citizens Financial Group, Equifax, High 5 Sportswear, IAC Search & Media, Polycom, Seagate Technology, Shaklee Corporation, and Symantec.

social networking audience is growing rapidly

2009-03-10T17:07:00.001-07:00

The social networking audience is growing rapidly. In 2008, 79.5 million people, or 41% of the US Internet user population, visited social network sites at least once a month, an 11% increase from 2007. By 2013, an estimated 52% of Internet users will be regular social network visitors. The steady stream of updates and news will become a weekly or even daily habit for many people. That stickiness is good news for social networks, which are still struggling to develop workable ad models.

For additional information on the above chart, see Endnote 101298 | 101297 | 101290 | 101296| 101295 | 101293 | 101294 in the Endnotes section.

helpful to group assignments - Bubbl.us

2009-03-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

SaaS is fascinating. The interests in SMEs sector is growing but the question is how an independent vendor captures this trend and is able to capitalize it. I have not found the way out either but I know it's a way the world goes, the direction that cant be ignore in the following decade.

I want to exposure myself a little bit more in this field, not only in business use but also in personal use. And I believe the trend will not be waived in personal computing soon while the handy tiny computing device - such as ePC, iPhone, and other smart phone device are sneaking to people's pocket and backpacks.

Here is a interesting application that i found in UBC IT division.

It's an introduction for people who are frequently needing a corporation platform.

Bubbl.us
Another website that can be helpful to group assignments is Bubbl.us. This free web application allows you to brainstorm and create mind maps online. With each click of the “bubble,” a new mind map is made. Each new “bubble” can be expanded or customized to your liking. You can choose to create your own mind map from a wide range of colours, and it can be saved in various sites, using embedded code in blogs or websites. And, since this all happens online, you can easily share your mind maps and collaborate with others in a simple, succinct manner.
http://bubbl.us/

2009-02-26T15:31:00.001-08:00

Posted using ShareThis

In-text advertising

2009-02-23T10:53:00.001-08:00

I installed a online advertising software called infolinks. It's a text adverstising service, sharing the similar concept with Google AD words but it is advertising by in-text keyword based on your content. I bet you have seen some content is marked by a bouble line beneath and embeded a link to some certain webpages. Ya, that 's it.

I will post another review after using this new advertising "toy".

Linked Taiwan Professionals on Linked In

2009-02-23T00:36:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking to do something for Taiwan for a long time. Finally I found there may be something I can do and it's related to what my expertise is - eMareting Taiwan by creating Taiwan professionals group on social media website.

Check it out if you are somehow have relationship with this lovely land:
check it out here

2006 Expansion Plan for Eat2Eat.com

2009-02-20T13:12:00.000-08:00

Issues and industry overview: Eat2Eat.com has started up for five years, built a good reputation in dining industries, and had a very stable technological operating system. The business model is sample but make sense that can generate a real cash flow from its operation income. However, it still has not reach its breakeven point for five years; therefore, a extra funding resource will be needed in 2006, and how to utilize this new financial support making a successful strategy for a long run business. Therefore, there are two main issues will be identified and examined as follow. One is for the financial alternatives, the other is the financial allocations.

Alternative analysis First of all, from operating perspective and under time and financial constraints, Eat2Eat.com should evaluate which cities have potential to increase revenue sufficiently then close the business where we cannot see any significant improvement in the future. We can evaluate this factor by calculate the contribution margin from single consumer from different cities and the contribution margin from each city to see whether Eat2Eat.com has a right segment positioning towards this regional market.(appendix 1 and 2)

Second, to determine how much effort we should make to different cities, we evaluate this figure by the contribution margin from 2004 marketing campaigns, to see whether the marketing events have significant positive influence on membership growth. (appendix 3)

Recommendation According to the case description, 7%-10% of consumers' bills constitute 40% of eat2eat.com revenue, which is US$478,000, therefore, once we close the operating insufficiently cities, then allocate the new funding to improve the performance where illustrate a highly acceptable behaviour for online restaurants reservation. It will be easily to reach breakeven point. For example, Bangkok is the lowest ranking of all cities, and constitutes a big lost in 2005.

Therefore, it should be shut down immediately. Shanghai and Singapore are suffering extremely loss too; however, the revenues are remaining the same while cost went down rapidly. Those two cities can be put into probation status for one more year to see the performances after implementation of new marketing events and additional sales force. We can see the amount of money of per consumer spends in two cities, Shanghai and Sydney are much higher than others but they are still suffering from huge loss in operating net income, which means the expenditure of per consumer in fine dining is positioning in high-end segment rather than general public; therefore, a re-positioning in marketing segment is crucial from those two cities. Once we make a right positioning in potential market, it could have opportunity to become a golden cow.

From other functional division’s perspectives, marketing and technology divisions are going a good job; however, Eat2eat.com still need some innovation to keep the competitive advantages; otherwise, the official websites host by restaurants their own are likely replace its position, and since web2.0 and blogs are so popular now, a buzzing blogs hosted by local food critics could easily have impact on advertising buyers’ willing to pay advanced advertisement provided by Eat2Eat.com. Eat2eat.com could also consider develop other business related to food ranking content but get involved more OFFLINE applications as well, for example, making partnership with credit card organizations, selling fine dining information to tourists publications etc. to utilize the restaurant inventory.

Implementation Raising capital immediately, it does not matter where the resource come from, and then allocate $ 0.8M on marketing on cities who has potential profits according to contribution margins. Using high technology ex WAP enabled ordering system to build higher entry barrier towards other competitors.

Whether the Internet is an Ppportunity or a Threat for Recording Industry

2009-02-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

A case study in eBiz class in Sauder Business School.

Industry analysis: The recording industry is one part of the value chain of music industry. Basically, the revenue is generated from the wholesale price of the CD or cassette. Meanwhile, the record companies play a role as a centralized value distribution centers, they collect money from retails and then pay royalty fee to artists and the publishers. Although they have some contracts protect its own profit ex. a system of “recoupable costs”, they still bare lots lose while the consumers behaviour shift to downloading digital music rather than buy physical CDs. However, the Internet is not the only disruptive technology that music industry encountered; the point is how to turn the threat to the opportunity.

Recommendation: The need of human to enjoy the music is never changing. The variability comes from the way people enjoy music or the cost they willing to pay. To solve this discrepancy, we should consider the relationship between cost and effect in music industry and consumers behaviour. The Internet is a great platform for companies to reduce their cost from many perspectives, for example, reducing cost by delivering music in digital format, reducing expenditures of marketing event by hosting virtual activities rather than the physical campaigns. The costs that record companies save can return to compensate the retail price for consumers. Once the record industry can offer a reasonable retail price to consumers and provide more benefit for them, the competitive advantages emerge and definitely take the piracy down.

Moreover, as mentioned above, the record companies are the central role of whole music industry, involving with different functional segments, for example, they have their own staff of marketing, distribution, manufactures, and even artists. Therefore, they can broaden their product lines, generate income from other part of the industry value chain. For instance, gaining low margin but high reputation online in order to gaining high margin in physical show performances, or develop by-products of famous singers. This movement may change the business model significantly, either moving to upstream of music industry to play the role as publishing companies, recruiting artists and musicians, taking advantages of feedback from the retails, utilizing the analysis of sales, trying to cooperate with artists and musicians then designing the exactly preference needs for customers. On the other hand, record companies can also build their own online contribution channels, both for the physical CDs and the digital format songs. Although there are burdens on the way to success, the very successful case regarding to collect real payment from internet just happened: iPod and iTunes (one product line of Apple. Inc.).

The business model is selling the mp3 players then extending their service through online music database. By providing the very reasonable price and friendly user interface of online digital music purchasing, Apple Inc. overcome the burdens on the way to make consumers used to pay the copyright music online. Apple experience should bring some idea to deal with this case; thinking out of box, the solution may not lay on the industry itself rather it may come from other innovations.

Awesome People I Met

2009-02-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

If you ask me what's the most valuable thing I have for those two years, I will say : bunch AWESOME ppl I have met! I feel happy that I am able to meet up with from friends form so many countries. Since i'm not a social person, I say what i truely feel.

This is one of my new friend, whom I met cuz they want to sell their business.
I'm so happy that i can do something for them and they are happy about the things going. One of them told me about a traditional celebration for winter.....
here is her email:

Hi, Kimmy:
I'm emailing you from my personal email!
It's Groundnog Day today. Has anyone told you about it? Every Feb. 2nd we put our faith in a groundhog to determine the course of the weather.
If the groundhog, named Wiarton Willy, emerges from his burrow and the weather is overcast, then we will have an early spring. But, if he sees his shadow, he crawls back into his burrow and we are to have six more weeks of winter. Personally, I think the groun hog must be afraid of his shadow and that's why he goes back into the burrow. It's a silly tradition, but it is also fun.
Wiarton Willy saw his shadow today and so we are supposedly in for another 6 weeks of winter. Yikes!
Hopefully you can see the background wall paper I made with the "Happy Groundhog Day" picture. Gmail has a more restrictive format than Outlook Express though.
Thank you again for the wonderful green tea. It is lovely and mild and I'm really enjoying it!
I hope we can see you again soon! How is work going for you?
As always,
( ______ singanature is delted due to personal privacy)

What I want in My Business

2009-02-20T08:58:00.000-08:00

I'm going to write down my ideas here.

Maybe one day, I can sort things out, developing into a feasible business action plan.

Foots on the ground, I list only couple things that can be associated to what I'm doing right now.

What I want my business:

Green business

IT solutions Business

M&A an non-for-profit organization for Asian GLBA professionals

What are my personality & characteristics associated with my goal?

No difficulties to relocate myself.

Strong adaption to new challenges.

Willing to take risk and manage it (well, although Im blind bold sometimes.)

Language: Mandarin and English speaking population takes account of over 50% of whole population in the world.

Short term goal:

Having Project Management Professional certificates.

Immigrant

Beauty of a New Micropayment Idea

2008-11-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

I have been a long time not seeing exciting web service that has capability of generating a real income right away. But, here is the one.
Event Brite.com

By providing Event Organizing service and promotion, "collecting the event fee for you" entices event hosters to join the membership and to use its advanced service. We can see that the key killer application or function in a Internet Service Providers is usually related to "payment collection", which seems to be the top one burdden encountered by users.

With a clear mission, Event Brite position itself as a service provider, who "helps businesses and organizations of all sizes manage, promote and sell-out their events."
After a easy sign up process, you can easily start designing your event announcement by choosing some classic templates (as easy as what you do in your blog theme), configuring tickets fee, payment measures, and then send out the event webpage to your potential attendees. While your attendees receive your invitation, they can simply click the link to finish RSVP and pay the ticket online by credit card, paypal or mainstream ways.
here is a comprehensive online tutorial prepared by Event Brite. enjoy it. and you gonna find a beauty of a new micropayment idea.

Identify the IT Project Mistakes

2008-10-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

We can find the classic mistakes happened from people, process, product, to technology. The mistakes are identified and categorized below.

1) People: although IT talent pool is not so scarce than before, how to make IT people work sufficiently and productively is still a big issue especially in a project with large scope. The working atmosphere in the team apparently brings out the workers relationship issue. One of the teammates is isolated from others and bad communication between subordinates and project manager while project manager cannot solve the personnel problem in time. Later on, the teammates started complaining Mike because he failed to deal with the problem worker, who is less likely cooperating with others. Moreover, it raises the untrusted perception to his teammates. It eventually resulted in a delaying project later on and catalyzed a following mistake- thinking that to add workforce in a late project can speed up the projects. However, it is usually hard to reach the goal in that way. Moreover, when a project is far behind schedule, Mike cut the testing time and eliminate design and code reviews, and just performance a minimal testing. He also cut the training time too. Stacy complained that would not give QA enough time to test the software. It is not a good risk management because shortcutting just one day of quality assurance early in a project is likely to cost 3 to 10 days downstream. On the other hand, in the beginning, although Mike has had the support from higher management, he seems not having a good stakeholders’ communication plan to avoid the further political changes or some stakeholders abandon the project in midstream. Along with the bad communication, Mike also failed to communicate with his teammates either while the project was delayed by the reasons above. It is the nature tendency that people feel frustrated while a project keeps delaying the releasing time. Therefore, undermined motivation syndrome occurred within the team as well as weak personnel.

2) Process: there is a significant time constraint here while the executive committee shrinks the schedule from 12 months to 6 months. On the top of that, Mike did not communicate with them and tell them the necessary of appropriate time to complete the project and make sure that the quality control is performed in a reasonable level. As a project manager, Mike underestimated the resource requirement in terms of the amount of code lines, development time, workforce, and the capability of his personnel. Although Mike was trying to solve the problem by changing contractors, it eventually leaded to another uncertainty and made the project involved other potential risks that may not take into account in the beginning. The lack of setting the project boundary first resulted in an ambiguous project scope and while the teammates were keen to try out the emerging technology, Mike didn’t conduct a comprehensive analysis about its cost and effectiveness, leading a potential problem in product side.

3) Product: the automation insurance program is initially an internal program that aims at providing a sufficient operation towards its clients. As time went by, it seemed like changing the scope to a broaden objective. It resulted in an unnecessary product size and characteristic on the front end. The final product was determined to consist of about 40,00 nonblank lines of code in C++.

4) Technology: the team overestimated the saving from new tools and advanced coding language while Carl proposed C++ and object-oriented design, wishing to shorten the development time but ignore the fact that whether it can be compatible with legacy system since the committee were asking them to convert the existing data into new system. Mike thought that sounds good because a new report-building tool that was supposed to cut development time in half.

As we learn from the class, the mistakes tend to be people or process-related, as opposed to product or technology- related. Indeed, technology is a tool to facilitate human operation, but the main element to operate the system to carry out the project is tied with personnel and management ability of its project manager, which is in light of the importance of a good IT project management.

------------------------
reference:
i. Jone, op.cit.1994
ii. MIS Quarterly Executive VOL. 6 NO. 2 / June 2007 77

The Things I Learn from eMarketing Tradeshow

2008-10-06T23:25:00.000-07:00

it's really a good experience that do the trade show and arrange a booth to demo what we learn from course, talking to people about what you found and so on.

I also hear some good thoughts from guests too;
for example, one of the participants is a Skype heave user and knows lots of Internet application. After seeing our project, he said that Skype Premium is really cool; however, it still asks users to install Skype first. And then i said i believe they can do it without installation in very near future, cuz the program can use javascript to embed in website. then he showed me a very cool website called http://www.viddyou.com/ this website is similar with Youtube, but the most cool thing is that viddyou.com can RECORD the video right away via your webcam even without any installation.

that's truely CONVENIENCE and that's the way a software can really increase the customers' satisfaction.

in the end, we would like to thank all of our team mates.
well done guys!!

SHINE A SPOTLIGHT ON YOUR BUSINESS (2)

2008-10-06T00:42:00.000-07:00

WITH OUR 10 LOW-COST MARKETING MOVES.
What’s our way to “Highly Utilize the Internet for Marketing”!
check out SHINE A SPOTLIGHT ON YOUR BUSINESS (1)

6. E-MAIL ABOUT IT
You cannot believe how many emails fly in and out through your company’s mail server, back and forth all the day. Why not attach the company’s news or significant event attached in the email while employees send out the email, just like Hotmail does.

7. START SURVEYING
Knowing what your customers want is absolutely the first step of launching your new product. To conduct an online survey is not hard as you may think. Here is a online survey service website called SurveyMonkey.com, which offers a free version and a advanced version for $19.95 per month. Even thought a free version, it still provides some professional function that helps you to calculate the participants’ preference and gather other relevant customers’ opinion for you.

8.EXPAND YOUR BUSINESS NETWORK RAPIDLY
In addition to FACEBOOK, LinkIn, a social website that focuses on business networking, is where you can expend your business network significantly. We suggest that the quality of your virtual friends here is weighted much than quantity. Even better is that try to make those contacts real by host gathering with those people.

9. MSN IT
Although the maximum contact list capacity of MSN instant message is around 500, the marketing influence is still huge. Why? Think about who are in your msn contact list, they are the most frequently contact clients in your business or the businessmen who are working in the same industry with you, aren’t they? Simply to input the little “personal message” beside your ID will generate the great feedback while the message is read by those people who have had a strong relationship with you.

10. HOST A LOYTALTY CLUB
To maintain a loyal fan club of your product, the classical social media-- FACEBOOK is the best way you can accomplish this goal. Go create a corporate account on it, emphasize the unique attributes about your product, keep updating the events related to your company, and then see the amazing effect that is cumulated from it.

WE EMPHASIZE CREATIVE AND INEXPENSIVE TECHNIQUES TO PROMOTE YOUR COMPANY.

SHINE A SPOTLIGHT ON YOUR BUSINESS (1)

2008-10-06T00:41:00.000-07:00

SHINE A SPOTLIGHT ON YOUR BUSINESS
WITH OUR 10 LOW-COST MARKETING MOVES.
What’s our way to “Highly Utilize the Internet for Marketing”!

1. VoIP, DELIVER YOUR VOICE WORLDWIDE
VoIP application is replacing the traditional phone call gradually. Most businesses find a way to reduce the long distance call fee but even more, the most cleave businesses use it to provide further service to their client. The best practice is done by language learning and consulting sectors so far. Please check my other marketing workers’ blogs to find the details and example:
http://ruibsilva.blogspot.com/2008/10/use-voip-to-improve-marketing.html
http://yuritaira.blogspot.com/2008/10/deep-potential-in-voip.html

2.BLOG IT OUT
Blog, it’s such a buzz word now, but you may wonder whether it is expensive to have one? There are several free blog such as Blogger.com and MSN Space are out there for you to launch a business blog just like 1-2-3. If you have no time to maintain it, you can embed the NEWS seed to get the related information for your audience or invite guest blogger to write it.

3. POST A ONLINE VIDEOEven you don’t have millions of dollars sitting around to spend on advertising, you still can have a commercial video clip podcasting online by uploading it to Youtube. Especially if your target consumer is ranged from 12 years old to 30 years old, Youtube is definitely the place where you should go.

4. DISTRIBUTE CONTENT
Have you heard about CMS (content management system)? It refers to a kind of open source web development module which can be setup in various database environments, such as ASP, Linux, Unix. CMS provides very well a developed function that is never less competitive with any commercial content website. Check out one of friendly CMS on XOOP.com.

5. ONLINE TEXT MESSAGES
The Internet is not the only place to sending your digital commercial message. Don’t forget the other little device—mobile phone-- that people almost carry them with him/her every day. Therefore, how about deliver your commercial message via text message; the most barely ignored way to contact your consumers. But, please don’t bug your clients too much and we suggest that the receivers list should come from your membership rather than a random list.

continue

Why Named it A-LI-HA-HA?

2008-10-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

Why named ali-ha-ha?

my favorite eCommerce website is called alibaba.com, a b2b website, who dominates b2b online transaction. i witness its startup and rapid growth. And now, i will have a opportunity to carry out a b2b project in Latin America. It reminds me how i'm excited about this project!

SELL ur EXPERTISE WORLDWIDE

2008-10-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

here is the most awesome function that we want to introduce to your company or business. SKYPE PREMIUM!!

it's a function that you can sale your expertise worldwide by providing your value skills by call or by video call via Skype. Skype will collect the payment from users for you and then send the money to your PayPal account(see footnote).

the most successful application is LANGUAGE LEARNING SERVICE or IT SUPPORT CONSULTANTs; sounds good? check it out on our booth in the trade show.

our trade show topic: HOW TO IMPROVE UR BIZ VIA VoIP

2008-10-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

here is our topic on Internet Marketing trade show.
we will tell you what the most fashion VoIP (Voice over IP) applications and implications.
we will also show you a appealling ALL-IN-ONE Internet Marketing concept that can give you 10 tips about how to highly utilize the Internet for marketing.

"SHINE A SPOTLIGHT ON YOUR BUSINESS
WITH OUR 10 LOW-COST MARKETING MOVES.
What’s our way to “Highly Utilize the Internet for Marketing”!

Sauder eMarketronics 2008

2008-10-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

i'm ao glad to tell you that our "Internet Marketing" couse will have a trade show in Robson Square in this coming Monday. We will have several interesting topics, emerging trends, and most cutting edged applcaitions demostraded here.
i would like to invite anyone who is intersted about this topic to our trade show.
please leave me the message and i will send you the invitation asap.
Look forwards to seeing your participation.

An eMarketing Trade Show

Event Info Host: Sauder School of Business
Type: Meetings - Convention
Network: Vancouver, BC
Time and Place Date: Monday, October 6, 2008
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
City/Town: Vancouver, BC

DescriptioneMarketronics 2008 is hosted by MBA students of Sauder School of Business, and is intended to showcase academic projects in Internet Marketing.

REQUEST an invite: e-mail: eMarketronics@hotmail.com OR
paul.cubbon@sauder.ubc.ca
Project topics include:
* In-game advertising
* Online-offline synergies and failures
* Genuine Conversations - how optimize the customer blog experience to draw customers
* How to Measure the Success of the Business Objects Technical Community
* Marketing the Brainify.com Web 2.0 Application
* Advertising on Emerging VoIP Applications
* Changing the cellular phone landscape
...and more!

Check back with us - more information to come!

Business Model for Content Provider [social media]

2008-09-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

While the press media and music industry are still struggling in copyright violation on Internet, whether a emerging Internet media like Youtube could be a monster or be a angel to content providers is still a question. From traditional media point of view, the media creates the content, plays a role on producers and distributors, and has the right to gain the margin exclusively. When we apply the producing process into an audience-driven business, publishers need to take follow mindset into account.

1. The content is no longer the center of publishers’ model.
Usually the newspaper or magazine websites are hard to generate enough traffic by their own to gain the profit on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis. (Epps, 2008) Therefore, the nature of content on audience- driven media becomes “aggregated”, “syndicated”, and “social”. “Aggregated” means that publishers should develop the function or interface for audience to bring their content or from other source, which may be needed by others, to the website. “Syndicated” means to extend your usefulness to where your customers spend the most time because the publishers should deliver content to your audience members wherever they are. (Epps, 2008) ex. BusinessWeek publishes its content to BlackBerry users by converting its content into mobile friendly interface. The last one, “Social” means that the new role of editors and journalists are no longer produce content but are likely the moderators and curators.

2. The required capability to evaluate the performance.
Social media usually generate the intangible benefit rather than tangible profit. Therefore, how to evaluate the performance is not straightforward as traditional media. The effect metrics could be a means to address this issue. Publishers should create its own metrics that is meaningful and suitable for its core business or the features that its customers are willing to buy in. For example, an e-commerce website captures margin by selling goods online and it needs the repeating visits from it customers. The simply products information is not strong enough to attract people visiting again and again. In such, the publishers can provide their content associated with the e-commerce websites who share the same target audience profile, creating incentive for their members to establish a more frequently visiting habit.

[Bibliography]
Epps, S. R. (2008). What Does An Audience-Focused Model Really Mean For Publishers? Massachusetts: Forrester Research, Inc.

can online publishing replace press media (from comic books' parctice)

2008-09-22T18:19:00.000-07:00

[this is a project that i worked with a US based online magazine publishing solution company, we cinverted the press media to digital version]
No matter how technology develops, the crucial part of a successful application is always aligned with users’ behaviors. I saw lots fantastic online publishing solutions try to mimic the experience of reading a real book, with all fancy effects such as highlight, flipping, adding comments beside the books; it still doesn’t work out very well. Some hardware device manufactures develop the tiny portable digital documents readers bundled with digital books publishing service. However, there is no good practice as iTune + iPod in music industry.

This article sited a comment from Dan Buckley, the president of publishing at Marvel Entertainment saying that "Ours is different from video because their final product looks exactly the same."
I really doubt it because of the barely replaceable experience that happens while people read a real book. You may say “their final product looks exactly the same.” In music industry, but it’s not the case in press media industry.

the original article:
Comic Books Evolve, from Ink to Internet
Although print comics are still thriving, Marvel and DC Comics are getting a head start on finding digital outlets for their properties
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc20080821_870628.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_digital+entertainment