Google’s Prediction Markets

Is it a good idea to encourage ALL employees to trade in these markets? Should insiders and/or highly uninformed people be allowed to trade? Do they help or hurt the market?

Yes, everyone should be encouraged because the idea is to get the masses knowledge to predict an outcome. The more people that contribute the more accurate the prediction. Insiders and highly uninformed people should be allowed to trade. The idea behind the prediction model is that masses knowledge is better then the smartest person in the mass. The one googler commented that she already knew the outcome of one of the predictions for one of her group’s project but that the outcome just confirmed her intuition. Having uninformed and highly informed people help the market because the more people that are in the market more likely the prediction is to be correct. Highly informed people are likely to move the market closer to the correct prediction. Uninformed people are either going to go along with their gut feeling or they are going to be convinced to go one way because the market is going that way. At google 13 people accounted for 48% of the trades so you see they may be the market movers and could move people to act in a certain way, much like the stock market. When one big bank sells a stock because they know something you don’t it generally drives the price down then everybody else starts selling. Prediction markets probably function about the same way.

Threadless

In what other industries or areas would Threadless’s community-driven product development model work well? And not so well?

The community-driven product development would probably work well in the music industry. It may also work well in art like paintings and photography. I think any industry that is some what artistic would work well with community driven development because people like to create things and people like to find good art. Community driven product development also seems to work well for open source software but one thing that is needed I believe for a community development to work well is a passionate community. Without a passionate community the products created would be poor. Also, community development of applications on facebook and the ipod have worked well at increases Apple’s revenue and gives the community a chance to also make money.

Community based development would not work well in highly specialized businesses were special knowledge is required. Businesses that can’t provide monetary value to the crowd may also be less successful because there is little incentive other then the communities passion for solving the problem.

MBA 734 – Social Networks Discussion Question

Online social networks have become ubiquitous in the past few years. What forms of value do users get from these services and who is most likely to sign up on LinkedIn versus other sites?

Social networks allow users to stay to update with people they have relationships with, allows you to have more “friends”, social interaction, allows you to connect with old friends or those you lost touch with over the years, helps organize events and may make you feel that somebody other then yourself cares about your life. A lot of times social networks have little games you can play to waste your time and the site lets you to send them to your friends so you can waste their time. Some of the value is having all your friends organized in one place and being able to communicate with them easily in that one space. The other value is it can keep us entertained.

LinkedIn is one of the more useful social networking sites because it lets you connect with co-workers and other people that may provide job opportunities or business opportunities. The people most likely to use LinkedIn are people who are looking to make money or want a good business network. The value of LinkedIn is the chance it may present some business opportunity. It also has features that may increase your reputation as a good employee because people can make comments about you and whether they would recommend you. You can also ask people that are experts in their fields questions. I have done this in the past to gain marketing info and it was quite useful for an MBA project.

DRKW

What are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing internal versus external employee blogs in a corporate setting? Are there certain industries where one of these strategies makes more sense?

The advantages of implementing an internal blog is you get increased employee communication, propriety/sensitive information not shared with public, relevant information sharing, less potential legal problems and internal knowledge sharing. The disadvantages of implementing an internal blog is loss of a greater body of knowledge from the public.

Industries were the trade secrets or proprietary information must be guarded are more suitable for internal blogs. I would think a financial firm would be suitable such as an investment bank that trades securities for an internal blog because of insider information being leaked or investment strategies. I would also think highly scientific or companies that focus on a very specialized knowledge would benefit from an internally blog because the external base of knowledge may be very small and the company may give up technology advantages.

Has the digital music market irreversibly tipped in Apple’s favor?

I wouldn’t say irreversibly but it would either take a new technology that gives the user a better experience then iPod or a totally new business model. Neither of these do I see in the near future. iPods took off because of the marketing, iTunes, design and functionality of the device. We have seen different industries (cell phone, device companies, software companies, computer companies, eRetailers (Amazon)) all make attempts to dethrone Apple’s iPod and iTunes and none have been successful. The power of Apple was demonstrated in the case that they were able to limit the amount of songs the Rokr could store.

Apple’s digital music showdown
This article talks about the possibility of itunes shutting down because record companies want more royalties and Apple refuses to operate iTunes at a loss.

iTunes Store May Capture One-Quarter of Worldwide Music by 2012
Its going to be very difficult for any company to compete with essentially monopoly. But one way to potentially compete is to compete on legal issues such as monopoly. It may be possible to question whether Apple has become a monopoly in the music industry.

Twitter Business Model

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2008/08/portfolio_0804

Seems there are two ways they plan on capitalizing on twitter ad revenue and selling the service to companies as way to keep in contact with it’s customers.

“The most obvious solution to how Twitter can make money would be to serve advertising directly in a user’s Twitter feed (or “timeline” as the company calls it), or elsewhere on the site. But Stone and his fellow execs are wary of alienating Twitter’s hardcore user base, which has grown accustomed to an ad-free service.”

“Another possible revenue stream is corporations paying to use the service to stay in frequent contact with their customers. Several large companies, including Dell, Whole Foods, and JetBlue, have already set up corporate presences on Twitter to let customers know about special offers and even answer customer questions.”

“In Dell’s case, the company says it’s made “well over” $500,000 in sales from sending special offers from its Dell Outlet store to its Twitter group, which it began in June 2007. The group has almost 1,500 “followers” who receive its messages on a regular basis.”

BrightCove

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Brightcove’s business model?

I’m not really sure I see any strengths because I think they are trying to get into the distribution network too early without having established themselves. They tried to compare themselves to google, apple and msn. Apple and msn were established companies that had a built up user base from other things it sold such as the windows os, office suite, apple computers and the iPod. Google built up a large user base first by licensing its search software and through the google.com website. Google started generating revenue off of advertising after building up its own user base and capturing a significant portion of the search market. The other problem is it is a very competitive market technology and price wise.

“A sense of urgency marked efforts to augment the existing revenue stream with new revenue
streams. Scot Rosenblum, CFO, and other executives worried that CDN retail prices would soon
begin to fall, undermining the viability of Brightcove’s early business model. Even more worrisome
was the specter of commoditization in the market for video-enabling platform technologies.”

Falling prices of CDN and commoditization of the market means low margins.

Docomo & Google

1. Is DoCoMo wise to offer its existing mobile phone rivals access to FeliCa?

Yes it is very wise. They are looking to make money off the transactions generated by the system which should be more then the revenue from just license fees.

“The plan was for FeliCa Networks to have three sources of revenue.”

1. license fees
2. download application fee
3. application provider services transaction fees

They also wanted to make money off a payment system. So the more people that have FeliCa the more transactions they are going to produce. License fees are It would also help increase momentum in getting retailers to adopt the payment system. If everybody has FeliCa and people are using it they may be losing business to other retailers that have adopted the payment system.

2. Is search a winner-take-all business?

Great article about a Russian company that controls search in Russia because they use advanced linguistics in their search and they also have advanced features for images.

I don’t think search is winner take at all. I think there are high entry barriers(servers cost,maintenance cost, algorithm, user base, intellectual capital(smart people)). I think history shows search is not a winner take at all because there were search engines before Google that had huge market share in terms of users and paid for click. If another algorithm comes out that provides much more useful results then Google either people will use that company’s website or a large company such as yahoo or Microsoft will buy the company, license the algorithm or partner with that company. Also, if a company comes out with a better way to place ads, they should get more business from advertisers. Also text search is pretty basic, I think there is a lot of room for growth in searching images and voice.

EA Sports

Since the writing of the Electronic Arts Case the Sony Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii have been released and both have online gaming capabilities.  What’s your assessment of the current online gaming market?

In terms of consoles, I think Xbox 360 is dominating the online gaming market with xbox live, this is from my own personal experience.  I think the user experience on Xbox 360 is much better then both Wii and PS3. Smaller game developers can sell their games on Xbox live marketplace which offers a benefit to those game developers that don’t have million dollar budgets.

Online gaming is growing at a fast rate.  ”Online-gaming subscribers have tripled to about 16 million in the past three years” http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6547335.html

“About 90% of online gamers use a personal computer to play online, NPD said. Of the one in five using videogame systems, about half use Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. Portable-system users spent the most time per week playing online, according to NPD.”  http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6547335.html

This is an interesting read on a PS3 forum. Even PS3 owners recognize that xbox live is a better online media/gaming experience then the current PS3 online format PSN. http://www.ps3forums.com/showthread.php?t=63613

I don’t believe Wii is focused on the online gaming experience as much as Xbox 360 or PS3. The are more focused on game play and making gaming fun and simple.

Netflix

Since the publishing of this case, Netflix has entered the video on demand (VOD) market. What is your analysis of how Netflix has attempted to update their business model with VOD?

I think this is a good business model. I think it gets rid of a lot of problems they had before with delivery time, distribution, inventory(DVD) and an overall better customer experience.

1. With cable, dsl and now fios delivery time for VOD will be reduced significantly
2. DVD invetory should be reduced as people adopt VOD
3. VOD Bandwidth should be a lower cost then mailing DVDs
4. Inventory management costs should be reduced
5. No more late fees or DVDs to return!
6. Lower costs to Netflix should hopefully transer to customer

I think this is a good strategy with devices like xbox 360, playstation and even the computer being able to be hooked up to the tv, Netflix should have enough devices that they can get their service into homes. Netflix already offers VOD on xbox 360, my brother has switched and loves it.

This is an interesting link, Netflix is offereing a device for VOD similiar to Apple TV. Like one comment said here. The real winner will be the one with the best subscription model

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/05/netflix_hitting.html?campaign_id=rss_tech