WEEK EIGHT - TO MARKET TO MARKET TO BUY A WEB 2.0

This weeks lecture was delivered by Alexis Barlow and was on marketing - concept and orientation. How Web 2.0 is transforming marketing techniques. We looked at the 5P's of marketing, all of which were covered in college (however I appreciate that not everyone in the lecture has this background) Product, Price, Place, People and Promotion. Business Dictionary defined Marketing as 'The management process through which goods and services move from concept to the customer.' As a philosophy marketing is based on the business in terms of what the customers want and delivering their needs. Web 2.0 Marketing doesn't appear to be much different and the principles are pretty much the same as we looked at leveraging Marketing and the elements of the Promotional Ps and the use of e-technologies. E-marketing is defined slightly differently to Marketing as it uses electronic communication technology to achieve marketing objectives.  I found an interesting article on Google Scholar - Web 2.0 Storytelling Emergence of a New Genre.  This article suggests the pattern is changing and that social media marketing is open-ended, branching, hyper-linked, cross media, participatory, exploratory and unpredictable. So how can we control Marketing on-line? Simple answer we can't but we can perhaps guide it in a particular direction.

From this we were able to discuss ways in which we thought that the Internet has impacted on the 5 Ps:

Product - Introduces a digital version such as the iPad, Kindle or Tablet. Improves the product for example, the anticipated iPad 3 with voice dictation!
Price - Has become more competitive perhaps due to less overheads so companies able to lower prices. Differential pricing. Price can also be adjusted to meet the market, example given was BA flight prices in comparison to Sleazyjet.... eh Easyjet. You get what you pay for!
Place - Geographically can be reached globally and provides opportunities for new channel structures. Also virtual space is all that is required, for example eBay who rely on items being sold by customers and they do not need to offer catalogue, shop or warehouse space.
People - how you personalise with the use of customer service and advertising the image of your company.
Promotion - Emphasis being on promotion and how you tell people about your company. This was discussed further in the lecture.

Actually found this lecture really interesting even though I had covered marketing before - e-marketing is on a whole new level and I enjoy seeing things from another viewpoint and perhaps thinking about things I wouldn't have before.

We then went on to look at Integrated Marketing Communications where an organisation would use a mix of agents and traditional & internet promotion mix and how this is affected by Social Media. MMC Learning suggest that Integrated Marketing Communications is just a method of ensuring all forms of communiaction and messages are carefully linked together by integrating all promotional tools to ensure they work together. There are a number of definitions for Web 2.0 Marketing which we looked at but linking back to last week and the documentary we watched 'Mark Zuckerberg - Inside Facebook' we were able to see how social media had progressed to take members of virtual communities and how individuals link globally, to the extent that in November 2011 The Telegraph reported Facebook have suggested that the average number of connections between people has dropped from 6 down to 4!! Isn't that a bit crazy? Web 2.0 therefore creates a new and dynamic way to communicate and companies can effectively jump on the band wagon and use social media to communicate to customers, customers can communicate with each other and allows consumer participation in the form of feedback, discussion and debate. A short YouTube video simplified the process in four steps:
STEP 1 - Find interested people
STEP 2 - Deliver quality content
STEP 3 - Capture information
STEP 4 - Stay in touch and enables you to sell stuff!

But to what extent do companies shape discussion, surely Web 2.0 is a critical access point to reach and engage online audiences - Facebook have 800 million users at the last count! By using Facebook as an example it can influence consumer behaviour. Using my own experiences with Facebook I am often made aware of events that are happening through the use of Event Invites by my friends. My friends also post links to news or youtube videos which keep me up-to-date with things that are happening and makes me aware of whats happening as well as things they are interested in. For example my cousin sent me an invite to Cover the Night - Kony 2012 in April, but its not an event! It's just to raise awareness of a man who has spent 26 years abducting children and on 20th April they want people to wear red in protest!! I'm also guilty of asking for peoples opinions on Facebook, for example I asked my friends if they could recommend a new fitness class to me that wouldn't see me pass out 30 minutes in!!!! The response was phenomenol and I'm now booked for Cross Fit at Primal Legion. Yeah the pictures look a bit scary but I'm willing to try everything once! Now I'm also quite nosey and my friends are guilty of checking in wherever they are and shops they like or items they like and I like to follow that up and check it out! So how do Social Media sites influence this? By selling our information to advertisers? But another factor to this about is how safe our information is, do we expose ourself by revealing information in online communities such as Facebook? I read a new article in the Daily Record about a student who was writing a blog as part of her University Degree....sounds familiar! She was obviously a bit better at it that me and she attached her photo to the blog, but later discovered her picture on jumpers which were sold in Tesco!!! Now should she not be flattered that someone other than the lecturers read her blog?

WEEK SEVEN - BUSINESSES ON T'INTERNET

Today's lecture was given by Alexis which detail how the web is changing. She started off by explaining Web 1.0 which was all about accessing and reading information which has progressed into Web 2.0, collaboration using a mix of existing and emerging technologies. This has evolved due to web technologies such as WWW, HTTP, HTML and XML. Yip sounds a bit foreign - but on further reading I discovered that actually it was just different ways in which to transmit information and some of the technologies we've already covered (Wikis, Blogs, Pod casts) ...... okay maybe not that simple!

Not this Ajax!

The lecture then went on to discuss all this further, discussing Rich Internet Applications which is based on interactive web applications (maintaining features and functionality of desktop applications) and will provide the end user a more effective and responsive experience. All of which I read about on a blog! Next we discussed Ajax, not how I remembered it! Was this not a cleaner? Apparently not, its a fancy technique of web development. I amaze myself that I'm still learning!

Application Programming Interface (API) was next on the agenda and by this point I'm feeling a bit bored, hoping that this won't form part of our assessment. I'm a practical person, ask me to do and I can do - ask me to tell you how to do something and you'll get a different result. Further reading and I discovered that APIs can be used to share content and data between communities and applications, for example Twitter comments can be shared on a Business Facebook Account such as City of Glasgow College. So links back to week five - Fishfingers beans and mash - eh I mean RSS, FEEDS and MASHUPS. So I find myself asking, 'Why do we need it?' I suppose the answer is that it forms part of the Web Technology evolution, as more and more people are using gadgets such as SMART phones, tablets, iPads etc and it appears we spend more time on the Apps available for these gadgets than we do surfing the web!

Lots of content in the lecture this week as we then went on to talk about Cloud Computing which Alexis informed us that Cloud Computing together with SaaS are one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry and allow delivered host services over the Internet. Now believe it or not I had a recent conversation with a good friend of mine who had attended an event in London to contribute ideas in the creation of a Cloud platform which would be tailor made to lettings and estate agents - London Cloud! The idea that the valuers or sales people who are perhaps losing productivity time whilst attending appointments or between appointment times could improve there productivity with the use of an iPad and Internet access is quite liberating! Having worked in this industry as Administration Manager I can see how this would benefit estate agents. Valuers had wasted journeys back to the office after every valuation just to download the images and leave the paperwork for processing. Using a Cloud could reduce costs, time and improve efficiency!

In the lecture we discussed Public (sells services to anyone on the Internet) 'V' Private (a network/data centre that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people.Categories are:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Further research identified Hybrid Clouds where a company with a Private Cloud merges with a company who has a Public Cloud and they work together.

We then went on to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Cloud Computing.

ADVANTAGES

• reduces cost in the long run for hardware, software, networking equipment and administrative costs
• reduces business risk associated with owning and managing computer technology
• existing IT staff can focus on other areas
• maximises business productivity with anytime, anywhere availability for users
• built-in state-of-the-art business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities
• financial flexibility and control over IT spending

DISADVANTAGES

• security will be dependant on the provider
• loss of control to the provider
• unstable cost structure
• potentially decreased business flexibility
• integration problems

Can't help wondering: Is this a hype, fad or real innovation? 

Talking about innovation, there was no lab this week as Margaret wanted us to watch a documentary 'Mark Zuckerberg - Inside Facebook'. After three pages of notes I feel I learnt a lot, not only about how Facebook has progressed and succeeded where others failed (such as FreindStar, Myspace, Friends Reunited) but also how other companies have been able to grow and succeed through Facebook. Now here's a young guy, a psychology and computer science student who took an idea and ran with it and through his knowledge/ideas and contacts he has been able to change a global culture on how we communicate daily. As mentioned previously in my blog I watched 'The Social Network' movie based on Mark Zuckerberg, but really at this point I don't think it matters whether he stole someones ideas. Is Facebook not just a progression from the likes of Myspace? Surely its how Mark and his team has kept the users interested and opened the boundaries to what we as users and Facebook as an Information Technology company are capable of? Their unofficial motto of 'moving fast and break things', the fact that they all work in an open plan office to improve collaboration and the fact that they have a vending machine which dispenses new keyboards etc. Surely that's not the same as FreindStar, Myspace or Friends Reunited?

Gaming and advertising are ways of making Facebook financially successful to the tidy sum of $100 billion. Other companies are designing games, of which Facebook takes a third of the profit! Mark Zuckerberg poached Sheryl Sandberg from Google, because she had succeeded in the introduction of advertising in Google. Really? How can he be criticised? He has found a way to use his audience to his advantage as well as to the advantage of his users - a true entrepreneur? He has found a way of businesses being able to advertise and narrow their audience to offer them products and services based on the information we provide. Yeah perhaps we haven't asked for it but it can be handy if you've previously stated you like an item and then you have the opportunity to share with your friends and vice versa. As long as the 800 billion users of Facebook maintain the good faith in Mark and his team and they maintain the comfort and privacy of its individual users then how can we not ....

WEEK SIX - 'YOU' ON T'INTERNET

The lecture this week was about Social Networking and how it works, given by Margaret McCann. Rather like Margaret as a lecturer she is very organised, timely, regimented and a little bit scary! Perhaps not words to put together with social or networking.....

Social Networking was defined academically by Boyd and Ellison (2007) as:

Web based services that allow individuals to:

1. construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system,
2. articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and
3. view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

OK to me and you that's, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace etc. Ah the penny drops!! These sites attract millions of users and many will have integrated them into their daily lives (especially now with the increased usage of SMART phone). These sites offer a varied difference in technologies and the usage. I understand it as a way of sharing information  - putting yourself on the internet!

Further research into Social Networking Sites (SNSs) has actually made me question some issues with perhaps over-sharing information. An example of this on facebook is when people 'check in' at different places, highlighting the fact that they are not at home. A website Please Rob Me actually showed hundreds of people who were away from home! Don't get me wrong I've succumbed to the pressure and have a Facebook account but think I'm pretty sensible about how I use it; I'm selective with the friends I add (described in the lab as strong and weak contacts), selective with the photos I upload and generally only post the high-points or low-points in my life. Things I actually want people to know! Not helped by the recent programme on Channel 4 - My Social Network Stalker which saw a girls life pretty much ruined by emotional and mental abuse through Social Network Sites. Now that scares me slighly more that Margaret! So then went on to research how to protect yourself from stalkers and found a useful video from a news channel:

So how does this affect businesses and can Social Networking develop Social Distribution? I'm partner in two small businesses which both have pages on facebook, A N Designs Handcrafted Gifts and Glitzy Gifts. This assists with advertising (especially our handmade selection as it shows the variation), marketing (as it shows promotions and fundraising events we participate in) etc although on a much smaller scale to other businesses. I haven't pushed this too much at the moment as our business orders are steady and to be honest with everything I have on my plate I don't want to attract too much business at the moment.  

So in the lab we were given our next e-activity which was to choose a company and follow a sample of their posts on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. I think I drew the short straw with City of Glasgow College, I'm hoping it will be more interesting once I proceed with my research. Twitter was the only social networking site which I'm not currently a member but I am now! Now I have been looking at ways to improve myself academically and it seems I have found a solution. Who would have thought that my all singing, all dancing i-phone (that I wasn't actually that keen on having) would improve my time managment skills. My tiny hand held device provides APS for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and my most recent acquisition Blogger. My long bus journeys can now be spent researching City of Glasgow College and blogging. Who would have thought that the I'd be doing my next assessment by phone!

WEEK FIVE - FISHFINGERS, BEANS AND MASH

Only joking - RSS, FEEDS & MASHUPS!

Just having a strange day, struggled to find a computer today in the library to log on and print off the lecture slides. In my quest to find a computer I actually counted 17 computers over level 2 and 3 which were out of order. Turned up to lecture slightly frustrated and glanced at the presentation screen and thought I had misread the title of the lecture - genuinely thought I saw shorthand for fish fingers, beans and mash!!

For a number of years I have used google as a method of searching for information on-line and haven't really given a second thought to how that information was brought to me. In more recent years and the introduction of SMART phones information has become even more accessible with the download of APPs. The lecture provided today by Alexis gave me the insight into RSS, Feeds and Mashups which I hold my hands up to, was away over my head!

Further reading allowed me to discover that RSS (Rich Site Summary) is simply a format for delivering web content which is regularly changing. For publishers of bloggs, web related sites and other on-line publishers this makes life a little easier and allows feeds of this information to be sent to whoever wants it. The number of RSS sites is growing as it is providing a solution to a problem; it is allowing the user to stay up-to-date easily by receiving feeds to the latest content of sites they are actually interested in, thus saving time as the user does not have to go onto each site individually, and maintains privacy as you are not forced to join each site and perhaps receive e-mail updates or newsletters.

A further solution is to use a programme called a reader or aggregator which continuously checks and searches all of the sites you subscribe to for new content and streams all the information feeds to one place. RSS readers are available on different platforms and include FeedReader (through windows) and NewsGator (which integrates windows with outlook). There are also a number of web based feed readers such as: MyYahoo (which I used daily without realising) and also GoogleReader (which we were to go on and use in the Lab).

In the Lab we went on to look at how to use RSS, and it turned out to be slightly frustrating for me. I couldn't log on to my google account and although I answered all the questions in a n attempt to reset my password I received a generic message stating that google would get back to me within 3-5 days. AAArrrrggghhhh!!!! Panicked slightly as I was worried about my blogg and whether I had lost my link to it. Managed to sort it out in the end but just makes me realise how much I depend on technology without really thinking about it. When eventually logged onto Google I used the web-based Google Reader to subscribe to various feeds. It was simple enough to use, you entered the keyword for your search and browsed the selection until you found something that was of interest to you and clicked to subscribe. This could then be added to the Star Items (which is a little like your favourites). As usual I looked at keywords for Virginia Beach and discovered that it was the 2nd best state to raise a family - starting to feel a little less frustrated ;0). This is an excellent tool which will come in handy when typing up my Research Proposal as it will allow me to be up-to-date with my information. I would imagine that those staying on into the fourth year will find this invaluable. We were also able to share the items we found with friends and colleagues although I think my friends are fed up with the references I keep making to my Big Move!

All in all it was a valuable lesson which I think could become quite addictive and I'm sorely tempted to subscribe to feeds just for the sake of it, so don't think it'll save me time in the long run. Now where serves fish, beans and mash? Feeling a tad hungry!

WEEK FOUR - SHARING 'STUFF' ON LINE

This weeks lecture, delivered by Alexis was on Media Sharing, Social Bookmarking & Tagging. Thankfully the technology was working just fine this week!

It would appear that the use of media sharing is exciting and boundless, and is opening knowledge and resources to everyone. We share media on a daily basis with Face book, Flickr, Digg, Upcoming, Myspace, Twitter etc. So how can businesses use this technology to share media, bookmark certain pages of interest and tag the bookmark to remind yourself of the content of the bookmark?

Time Magazine has recognised the phenomenon of You Tube and the prospect of sharing media files which has grown massively since its launch in 2006. Although it may not have originally been designed for business or even education, there is an increase in people using the likes of You Tube to advertise videos which are either informational, educational or entertaining. Businesses are using You Tube to get feedback on video adverts prior to releasing them. By uploading a video to You Tube and embedding it into a blog or website you can increase the number of times the video is seen. The following advert from Virgin Atlantic is very entertaining however the feedback would suggest that it is to be banned!



Pod casting became the next step in blogging with individuals recording an audio blog and uploading to the Internet. Followers could then download the pod cast, onto a computer, i-pod/MP3 player. An example of Pod casting can be found on i-tunes which split their pod casts into categories ie, sport, music, radio etc. Starbust Magazine Pod cast offer hours of movie and TV news and reviews on a weekly basis. So how can this help businesses? Small Business Trends Radio have sourced 100 Best Small Business Pod casts from 2009 which vary from interviews with entrepreneurs to advice for rural small businesses in America!

Prior to this lecture I may have looked at a website and added it to my favourite list as it would be a site or pages within the site which I found of interest or would surf regularly. The lab this week looked at software which would not only mark a page of interest so that you could go back to it at a later stage but also so that you could share your saved pages and make them available to others - Social Bookmarking! Prior to the lab we were asked to join Delicious, Social Bookmarking Software so that we could search different categories and find topics of interest. A link to this topic was then saved and a number of these links created a stack. Each link was given a tag to remind the user what the link or topic was about. Once we were happy with the stack we had created then we published the stack ready to share with people within the Delicious Community!

I created a stack based on links and topics related to my move to Virginia. My stack included links to Realtors, schooling, job sites and car hire or car sales. This is a tool which will benefit me during this course and would be beneficial to any project! For example, the Proposal Document for Research & Consultancy Methods for Business - a stack could be created with links to various sites based on the topic and on-line referencing. Bupa was given in the lecture as an example of how a company could use bookmarks, which provided links from employees on bookmarks for staff and clients. A further example of a company who use bookmarks is Google, they face the problem of being able to merge Google Bookmarks with Chrome Bookmarks. Now I was understanding all this to this point, but when you start going into who uses folders or labels it starts to get a bit confusing!

WIKI

Our next lecture for Business Web Innovation was given by Alexis on Collaborative Writing. Had to refrain from giggling when the technology didn't work for the presentation, given that technology forms part of our course, but it all worked out in the end. What I learnt was that Collaborative Writing is software which allows you to work with others to view, edit and contribute towards documents. This was to be continued in the Lab. The tools range from a simple Wiki to advanced and I had basic knowledge of using a Wiki for a previous EDO module assessment. My experience from the previous Wiki produced was that it was easy to use, had similar functions to Microsoft Word and that it was easy to contribute to. On the downside our team faced issues with one individual who re-created the wiki the night before submission  - awkward! I'm hoping that I can use this experience on a positive note and ensure that the team I work with fully agree with it's content prior to submission.

Due to the technical issues in the lecture the presentation was rushed. I used this opportunity to go over my notes and realised that Alexis had planned to show us a You Tube video - Wikis in plain English. Having watched the video I learnt that Wikis were an effective way to co-ordinate and organise a groups input.

In the Lab we explored some of the best known Wikis such as Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wikitravel. Admittedly I have gone back to Wikitravel on numerous occasions over the last few days and have broadened my knowledge of Virginia Beach, USA. Soon to be my new stomping ground - 143 sleeps!!

I was placed into a group with three other girls, none of which I have worked with or even spoken to before. Our task is to cover three e-activities; Background Research, Using the Tools and Writing the Results in a document which is no longer than 1200 words. As of yet I haven't had much contact with the girls however I've made a start on gathering information for the first task!

BLOGGING

The Business Web Innovation Lecture this week looked at blogging, and although it had been defined as a personal collaboration space for news, outlet, links and memos to the world wide web, I later discovered from Alexis that I couldn't really go with my earlier thoughts to blog about the whole course. That narrows it down - slightly!

What I learnt from the lecture was that Blogs were established some ten years ago and used as an interactive on line diary which has grown and can be used for public, personal, business or political messages. Being a new blogger I decided to investigate what other people had blogged. What I found was that you could find blogs on a range of topics which incorporate text and other media. From this you could also read the discussion based on the topic from the followers - genius! The Guardian offers a business blog. I'm slightly ignorant when it comes to what's happening in the business world as I sometimes find it difficult to understand, however starting this course has made me realise that I may need to change my ways. Such a blog will be a huge benefit to me as reading the blog and the views of its readers allows me to get a deeper interpretation of what it means from different perspectives. My favourite artist Adele even has a blog and over 17 million people follow her (with a little help from Facebook).

Having explored the 'Blogosphere' the tasks in the Lab were easy to navigate and I enjoyed exploring a variety of different blogs. I realised that although I wouldn't be blogging about the other modules on my course I could certainly use specific blogs to assist with research required in other modules. The only difficulty I may have is finding something interesting to blog about!