MGMT 300 EXAM 3
Social Network Features
*1. Detailed personal profiles* *2. Affiliations with groups, organizations, and individuals* - alumni, employers, hobbies, fans, specific friends, products, firms *3. Private messaging and public discussions* *4. Media sharing* - text, photos, video *5. Feeds of recent activity among members* - status changes, new postings, photos, applications installed *technology providers* *1. Open/Public* - Facebook - LinkedIn *2. Enterprise/Private Platforms* - Ning - Lithium - SelectMinds - LiveWorld - IBM/Lotus Connections - Salesforce.com - Socialtext
Uber commissioned study claims that Uber impact on the US economy tops _______ a year
$2.8 billion
Which of the following is not a company that buys inventory and rents it out?
(correct) stitch fix ZipCar Chegg Rent the Runway
Wiki Features
*1. Collaborative content creation* *2. All changes are attributed* - others can see who made a given edit. *3. Revision history* - changes can be compared against prior versions and rolled back as needed. *4. Automatic notification and monitoring of updates* - users can receive updates via email or RSS feed when pages have been changed or new content has been added. *5. Searchability* - all pages are searchable *6. Tags* - specific wiki pages can be classified under an organized tagging scheme *7. Monitoring* *technology providers* - Socialtext - PBWorks - Google Sites - Atlassian - Jive - Microsoft (SharePoint) - Apple OS X Server
Why Open Source over Commercial Alternatives
*1. Cost* - free alternatives to costly commercial code can be a tremendous motivator. - conventional software often requires customers to pay for every copy used and to pay more for software that runs on increasingly powerful hardware. *examples* - E*TRADE estimates that its switch to open source helped save over $13 million a year - Amazon claimed the switch to open source was a contributor to nearly $20 million in tech savings *2. Reliability* - the more people who look at a program's code, the greater the likelihood that an error will be caught and corrected. - OS community harnesses the power of geeks who are constantly trawling OSS products, looking to squash bugs and improve product quality - *study shows* the quality of Linux code to be less buggy than commercial alternatives by a factor of 200 *3. Security* - by allowing "many eyes" to examine the code, the security vulnerabilities come to light more quickly and can be addressed with greater speed and reliability. *4. Scalability* - ability to either handle increasing workloads or to be easily expanded to manage workload increases. - major OSS efforts can run on everything from cheap commodity hardware to high-end supercomputing - allows a firm to grow from startup to blue chip without having to significantly rewrite their code, potentially saving big on software development cost *5. Agility and Time to Market* - vendors able to skip whole segments of the software development process, allowing new products to reach the market faster
Key Issues Behind SMART Capabilities
*1. Creating the social media team* - *social media is an interdisciplinary practice*, teams should include professionals experienced in technology, marketing, PR, customer service, legal, and human resources. *2. Establishing firm wide policies* *3. Monitoring activity inside and outside the firm* *4. Establishing the social media presence* *5. Managing social media engagement and response*
INSTAGRAM and WHATSAPP FACTS
*Instagram* has over 1 billion monthly active users (MAUs) who share over 95 million photos each day - facebook owned - estimated 2018 advertising revenue is nearly $7 billion - over 200,000 advertisers on its platform, and 98 of 100 advertisers on Facebook also choose to advertise on Instagram *WhatsApp* is the world's most popular messaging client - has over 1.5 billion monthly active users - each day users send over 1.6 billion photos, 250 million videos, 65 billion messages, and spend over 2 billion minutes in voice calls
Social Media Four Ms of Engagement
*Megaphone* - to send out messages from the firm. *Magnet* - to attract inbound communication. *Monitoring and Mediation* - paying attention to what is happening online and selectively engage conversations when appropriate. *engagement* can be public or private.
Facebook is Written in
*PHP*: - a scripting language particularly well suited for website development - is a good portion of facebook data *MySQL*: - a popular open source database
Social Media Policies Three Rs
*Representation*: - employees need clear and explicit guidelines on expectations. *Responsibility*: - employees need to take responsibility for their online actions. *Respect:* - includes the firm, its customers, and its competitors. *a fourth "R" is Reputation* - both the firm's and the employee's *security training* is a vital component of establishing social media policy
Two Ways Firms can use Clouding Computing Technology
*private cloud* - occurs when some firms use cloud computing technology on hardware they own or lease as a sole customer *hybrid-cloud strategy* - occurs when firms allocate resources between their own systems (the private cloud) and the public cloud (where resources may be shared with other clients).
Uber Customers complain about *surge pricing*
*uber pricing operates on a supply and demand scale* *surge pricing occurs when* - If there's a big event or some condition where driver supply doesn't meet demand, Uber will raise prices to encourage drivers to work - *uber states their goal* is to send a signal to potential drivers to hop in their cars, satisfy pent-up demand, and make a quick buck (*not* gouge the consumer) - *uber has agreed to cap surging during emergencies* at a price that is below the three highest-priced non-emergency days during the preceding two months
Facebook's Acknowledgment of Fake News
- *flagging* content as fake actually increased the intensity of sharing *facebook* - enlists third-party fact-checking organizations and artificial intelligence, and demotes news deemed deliberately deceptive - increased steps to close and prevent fraud accounts, stop advertising linked with fake news sites and accounts, and prevent organizations with a track record of misinformation from using Facebook's advertising
Social Context Ads
- *include* the names of friends who have liked a firm's page - *perform* better on recall and sales lift than conventional ads enhancing Facebook's advertising appeal - *ads also use* a type of *social proof* leveraging friend interest to improve the likelihood of customer engagement.
Airbnb providers are breaking the law
- *many municipalities* prohibit people from running a business, hostel, or hotel in a residential area or property not zoned for business. - *health and safety laws* governing hotels usually require things like sprinkler systems, exit signs, and clean towels - many Airbnb rentals exchange services outside conventional lodging taxes that hotel guests pay
Marketplaces allow suppliers to leverage underutilized assets
- *marketplace operators* can reduce overhead associated with conventional transactions by eliminating storefronts, utilities, staff, capital expense
What media are Blogs a type of
- *owned* media - but when users online share blog posts from an organization, this constitutes a type of *earned* media that generates even more awareness at no additional cos
Technology allows for *peer to peer supply*
- *resulting in* substituting information for real estate and other types of expensive inventory that traditional firms usually own outright - *citizen-suppliers* have paid for the assets they use to earn money in the sharing economy - *example* of peer to peer supply - Airbnb doesn't own its hotel rooms - Uber and Lyft don't own cars.
SNAPCHAT FACTS
- *snapchat* in the US has 65% of 18 to 24 year olds using the app - by 2019 the firm lagged rivals worldwide with only about 200 million monthly active users
Inbound Marketers
- *successful marketers* produce interesting content that acts as a magnet for the attention of potential customers. - look to attract traffic that is converted to leads that result in sales and hopefully repeat business. - *effective blogs* or *material deemed useful* can improve a firm's SEO (search engine rankings results), making the firm easier to find and possibly pushing online visibility ahead of rivals
Airbnb Negative Incidents
- *to counter* the firm offers a $1 million guarantee for hosts, secure payment guarantees, and 24/7 support phone service - the firm reports that significant property damage claims ($1,000 or greater) are reported only 0.004 percent of the time
Twitter's data is available via
- *used to make* its data available via an API, helping grow a rich ecosystem of Twitter supporting products and services. - *making data available to third parties*, firms may suffer from the *free rider problem* where others firms benefit from a service without providing much benefit back to the sponsor itself. - *Twitter's acquisitions* and moves to *block rival social efforts* from using Twitter data have switched the firm from a platform sponsor to one that has taken control of its ecosystem.
Cambridge Analytica Scandal shows what can happen when
- a firm builds a business from access to user data, violates user expectations, and fails to recognize and deal with unscrupulous partners - *fallout from users leaving Facebook is less severe than the impact on:* - employee morale - potential hires - partners growing leery of associating with a firm with a tarnished reputation - potentially increasing government regulation.
Venture Capitalists (VC)
- are investor groups that provide funding in exchange for a stake in the firm and a degree of managerial control (such as voting seat or seats on the firm's board of directors) - *earlier a firm accepts VC money*, the more control these investors can exert - *they have* deep entrepreneurial experience and a wealth of contacts and can often offer important guidance and advice - *strong investor groups* can oust a firm's founder and other executives if they're dissatisfied with the firm's performance. *facebook* - rapid growth and high user engagement allowed Facebook's founder to demand and receive an exceptionally high degree of control over the firm - early backers ceded control when Facebook's board had only 5 directors, Zuckerberg appointed 3 of them - when Facebook filed to go public, Zuckerberg's ownership stake stood at 28%, but Facebook created 2 classes of shares, ensuring that Zuckerberg maintains a majority of voting rights
Uber Application Programming Interface (API)
- allowing them to become a platform, expanding its reach through partnerships making Uber available in other apps and software products - API is essentially a published guideline on how other developers can embed Uber into their own apps. - *refers to the technology* used to integrate Uber with other services, including OpenTable, United Airlines, and TripAdvisor.
Facebook Open Graph
- allows developers to link Web pages and app usage into the social graph, placing Facebook directly at the center of identity, sharing, and personalization across the Web - projects Facebook's influence beyond the site itself *by using Facebook's Open Graph tools* - partners can add the "Like" button to encourage viral sharing of content, leverage Facebook user IDs for log-in, and tap a user's friend and feed data to personalize and customize a user's experience
Twitter Hashtags (Microblogging)
- are keywords preceded by the # character - are used to organize "tweets" on a given topic - users can search on hashtags, and many applications allow for tweets to be organized and displayed by tag.
Citizen Suppliers
- are offering services and renting out their own goods - may find their fragmented costs increase due to increased product use and an increase in perceived risk over time. - *while other firms* are taking possession of inventory to organize resale or rental markets
Earned Media
- are promotions that are not paid for or owned but rather grow organically from customer efforts or other favorable publicity. - *social media* is a key driver of earned media (positive tweets, referring facebook posts, pins on pinterest) *forms of earned media include* - unsolicited positive press and positive customer word of mouth *example* - view unsolicited praise of Starbucks in your Twitter feed by folks you follow
Criticism of Facebook and Internet.org
- as violating principles of net neutrality and extending Facebook's walled garden as a de facto proxy for the Internet
*Sermo* Social Network of Physicians
- assist physicians gain peer opinion on confounding cases or other medical questions. - most doctors receive responses within 1 hour and a half of posting, and most cases are solved within 24 hours. - 85% of posting physicians say they received information they were looking for. - more than 340,000 doctors in the US and UK are Sermo members, although a much smaller % are active on the site. - member physicians are screened and verified to maintain the integrity of the service - *sermo posts* can also send valuable warning signals on issues such as disease outbreaks or unseen drug side effects. - used the service to rally against insurance company policy changes.
Facebook Reinforced Negative Perceptions regarding
- attitude toward users - notifications - privacy
Security-focused OSS products
- also known as hardened versions - *used to* describe technology products that contain particularly strong security features - *include systems that monitor the integrity of an OSS* distribution, checking file size and other indicators to be sure that code has not been modified and redistributed by bad guys who have added a back door, malicious routines, or other vulnerabilities
LAMP
- an acronym standing for *L*inux, the *A*pache Web server software, the *M*ySQL database, and any of several programming languages that start with *P* (e.g., Perl, Python, or PHP). - linux, apache, mysql, perl - LAMP stack of open source products is used to power many of the Internet's most popular websites (such as Facebook and Youtube)
Total Cost of Ownership
- an economic measure of the full cost of owning a product (typically computing hardware and/or software). - all of the costs associated with the design, development, testing, implementation, documentation, training and maintenance of a software system
Embassy
- an established online presence where customers can reach and interact with the firm. - *effective embassy* approach has firms establishing their online presence through consistently named areas within popular services - *social media embassies* can be highlighted in print, on bags or packaging, and store signage. - *firms can also create their own branded social media sites* - using tools such as Salesforce.com's "Ideas" platform.
Blogs (web log)
- an online publication that keeps a running chronology of entries. - allows readers can comment on posts and connect to other blogs through blog rolls or trackbacks - corporations use blogs to distribute ideas and gather feedback from the public. - first emerged a decade ago as a medium for posting online diaries - *provide* a rapid way to distribute ideas and information from one writer to many readers. *key uses*: 1. share ideas 2. obtain feedback 3. mobilize a community.
Linux
- an open source software operating system (known as the *flagship OSS product*) - founded by 21 year old, Linus Torvalds of Finland (eventually he gave it away) - the most significant product in the OSS arsenal - *linux powers* everything from cell phones to stock exchanges, set-top boxes to supercomputers - *linux supports* the majority of smartphones (integral to TiVo and Android based products), tablets, supercomputers, and web servers (Google, Amazon, Facebook) - *linxus makes up roughly 92%* of servers in Amazon's AWS cloud business - *microsoft azure cloud* is over 40% linxus - Linux has been used to power the Phoenix Lander and to control the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers
Google and Conde Nast
- are among the large firms that have taken an investment stake in collaborative consumption startups.
Two-Sided Network Effects
- are at work in collaborative consumption marketplaces, and in order to be successful, firms must offer value to both buyers and suppliers
Surge Pricing
- are clearly communicated before users commit to a ride - is used by Uber to help maintain supply/demand equilibrium - *uber hopes that* higher surge prices attract more drivers to the Uber system, and that prices will eventually flatten out.
Owned Media
- are communication channels that an organization controls. *include* - firm-run blogs and websites - any firm-distributed corporate mobile website or app, and organization accounts on social media - such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram. *example* - Starbucks website
Fragmented Markets
- are especially ripe for rollup in electronic marketplaces - extend the value chain by getting between suppliers and customers that would otherwise connect directly - *network offers value through* search and discovery, use of otherwise underutilized assets, scheduling, payment, reputation management
Ikea, Walgreens, IBM, and the W Hotel
- are firms that have enhanced customer offerings by partnering with sharing economy pioneers.
Lyft Example of using social media to instill trust between drivers and customers
- both parties link to Lyft through their Facebook accounts. - profile photos pop up as part of ride requests, so you know who you're going to be meeting. - both drivers and passengers rate each other - drivers can skip passengers with deadbeat ratings - passengers get an endorsement that they're not about to step into a car driven by a sketchy rip-off artist - payment is guaranteed through the app (audit trails help with trust issues)
SLACK FACTS
- business messaging app - called the "e-mail killer." - is the fastest growing business app, valued at $2.8 billion when it was barely a year old - now worth over $29 billion - is primarily known as a leading workplace productivity tool?
Open Sources Alternatives are threatening to conventional software firms
- but *now* some of the largest technology companies support OSS initiatives and work to coordinate standards, product improvements, and official releases
How has Twitter improved the civility of online conversations
- by moving algorithmically identified negative posts further down in a user's stream - *this can lead* to a Twitter echo chamber, where users only hear voices that reinforce their own viewpoint or can excessively screen out conservative opinions
Black Swans
- events that cannot be predicted but can cause an impact (ultra-rare, high-impact events) - *scalable computing resources* can help a firm deal with spiking impact from Black swan events. - planning to account for usage spikes explains why the servers at many conventional corporate IS shops run at only 10% to 20% capacity
Sock Puppets
- fake online persona created to promote a particular point of view, often in praise of a firm, product, or individual. - *be aware* that the use of undisclosed relationships in endorsements is a violation of US Federal Trade Commission rules.
WePay
- is a firm that has stepped up to offer simple payment solutions that specifically target the challenges of buyer/seller platform operator *clients include* - sharing economy standouts like service provider Care.com, goods marketplace CustomMade, and crowdfunding site GoFundMe
*Trust* is essential for Airbnb to Work
- no one is anonymous on Airbnb *Guest Identity is verified via a Two Step Process* 1. Integrated with Facebook 2. Users also share their LinkedIn profiles 3. examines the length an online profile has been up and makes sure it matches driver's license and passport information - *verified identities* discourage bad apples, who are booted out of the system for trying to apply with new accounts
Facebook was able to establish a stronger gocial graph than other social networking rivals because
- of the trust created through user verification and friend approval requiring both parties to consent - encouraged Facebook users to share more
Facebook Feed
- offering news feeds concentrated and released value from the social graph - catalyze virality and promote information sharing - each time you perform an activity on Facebook (make a friend, upload a photo, join a group), the feed offers the potential to blast this information to all of your connections. - *feeds make* Facebook a key channel for continued customer engagement. - *are the lifeline* of Facebook's ability to strengthen and deliver user value from the social graph by categorizing sharing - *Like button* allows users to share reactions including "wow,", "sad", or "angry" offering deeper insight on users and posts
Heartbleed Bug
- was an error in the OpenSSL security toolkit - *OpenSSL* was a product used by some 2/3 of Internet websites and underpinning security related to the little padlock many Web browsers show when sending secure information over the Internet - *30 billion annual e-commerce transactions* via OpenSSL - In 2014, a *routine coding error in the widely distributed software* opened a hole that could be used by hackers to gather passwords, encryption keys, and other sensitive information, - *heartbleed triggered* "the largest security breach in the history of the human race.
Oculus VR
- was founded by an eighteen-year-old Palmer Luckey, a homeschooler who hacked together prototypes in his parents' garage in Long Beach, California (had no customers, no revenue, and no complete product) - Facebook acquired Oculus VR (virtual reality) for $2 billion as a long-term bet at keeping the firm at the vanguard of computing's evolution - *Oculus Rift* was still in prototype form at the time of acquisition, it's essentially a computing screen that you strap to your face. - *possess* two very high-resolution displays fill ski-goggle-like gear with a wraparound image covering your field of vision - *goal* is to , "build the next major computing platform that will come after mobile."
Which statement is true about cloud computing?
Cloud infrastructure is often located in warehouse-style buildings designed for computers, not people.
Social Network
- online community that allows users to establish a personal profile, maintain contacts, discover and engage people with common interests, share updates, and organize as groups - *public social networks* include Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest. - can serve as a *hothouse* for "earned" media where enthusiast-consumer can help spread the word - personal relationships are reciprocal (both parties agree to be friends) *key uses:* - Discover and reinforce affiliations - identify experts - message individuals or groups - virally share media.
TWITTER FACTS
- only 336 million monthly users and 500 million tweets a day, *Twitter* is *smaller than* other social media sources - first-choice source for disseminating opinions from politicians and celebrities - is seen as a force for breaking news and shaping public opinion
WIKIPEDIA FACTS
- only 7 full-time employees - an operating budget of less than $1 million - nonprofit site *Wikipedia* has consistently remained one of the 5 most popular Internet sites - over 40 million articles in over 290 different languages, all of them contributed, edited, and fact-checked by volunteers. - dictate that all articles must be written in *NPOV (neutral point of view)* an editorial style that is free of bias and opinion.
New trends in the software industry include
- open source software (OSS) - cloud computing - software as a service (SaaS) - virtualization *which create challenges and opportunities* across tech markets. - *understanding the impact of these developments* can help a manager make better technology choices and investment decisions
Uber Leverages Data to Power the firms
- operational model - alert drivers - improve service - set pricing - identify possible cities to enter
Paid Media
- refers to efforts where an organization pays to leverage a channel or promote a message - paid media efforts include things such as advertisement and sponsorships. *example* - Starbucks ad online
Web 2.0
- refers to internet services that foster collaboration and information sharing - Web 2.0 services foster collaboration and information sharing, as opposed to static, transaction-oriented Web 1.0 efforts (different from Web 1.0) - is now categorized as *social media*
Inbound Marketing
- refers to leveraging online channels to draw consumers to the firm with compelling content - *does not use* conventional forms of promotion such as advertising, e-mail marketing, traditional mailings, and sales calls.
Cloud Computing
- replacing computing resources—either an organization's or individual's hardware or software—with services provided over the Internet. - making it more common for a firm to move software out of its own IS shop so that it is run on someone else's hardware - *cloud infrastructure is used by* retailer (Amazon), entertainment company (Netflix), advertiser (Google), résumé site (LinkedIn), and a social network (Facebook) - *mean that smaller firms* have access to the kinds of burly, sophisticated computing power that only giants use to have access to
Concern in Sharing Economy
- safety of the public - safety of service providers
Uber ability to improve transportation for people with disabilities in Boston
- saving the state of Boston a potential $47 million a year - Boston has entered a data-sharing agreement with Uber to gain insight on travel patterns to support transportation policy and city planning goals. - Boston's mayor has voiced support for uber seeing it as a safe and popular service among citizen and city visitors
Ubers Advantages over Traditional Taxi Services include
- scheduling - service speed - reliability - increased trust - ease of payment - car availability.
Microblogging
- short, asynchronous messaging system - users send messages to "followers" who aren't required to follow back *key uses:* - distribute time-sensitive information - share opinions - virally spread ideas - run contests and promotions - solicit feedback - provide customer support - track commentary on firms/products/issues - organize protests.
Linux on the Desktop
- small user base for desktop Linux makes the platform less attractive for desktop software developers. - incompatibility with Windows applications, switching costs, and other network effects-related issues all suggest that Desktop Linux has an uphill climb in more mature market
Open Source Software (OSS)
- software that is free and where anyone can look at and potentially modify the code - pose a direct challenge to the assets and advantages cultivated by market leaders - open source is a $60 billion industry - 95% of IT organizations use OSS in mission-critical IT projects - *OSS has resulted in cost savings* for many large companies in several industries - *OSS has fewer bugs than its commercial counterparts* due to the large number of software developers who have looked at the code. - *huge exposure to scrutiny by developers* helps to strengthen the security of OSS.
Facebook Mobile Install Ads
- some gaming firms are willing to spend as much as $10 per install for these ads.
What do search engines, social media sharing, and trackbacks allow a blogger's community to do ?
- spread the word on interesting posts and help distinguish and reinforce the reputations of widely read blogs.
Envelopment
- strategy whereby a firm with a significant customer base adds a feature to an existing product or service and eliminates the need for any rival, stand-alone platforms *Facebook Example* - photo sharing, chat, video, marketplace, workplace, and dating features give them a key advantage to its central role in the lives of consumers - *resulting* in Facebook users posting over *350 million photos* each day - *resulting* in Facebook serving as many views a day (4 billion) as YouTube
Content Delivery Networks (CDN)
- systems distributed throughout the Internet that help to improve the delivery speeds of Web pages and other media by spreading access across multiple sites located closer to users - *Akamai* is the largest CDN, helping firms like CNN and MTV quickly deliver photos, video, and other media worldwide.
Cloud Computing helps
- tackle these costs by allowing firms to run their own software on the hardware of the provider, paying only for services that are used - 80% of corporate tech spending goes toward data center maintenance
Crowdsourcing
- the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined large group of people in the form of an open call
Marginal Cost
- the costs associated with each additional unit produced (cost of producing one more unit) - the marginal cost to produce an additional copy of a software product is effectively zero (duplicate, no additional input required) - *microsoft* generates 1.5 billion dollars a month from Windows and Office alone
Facebook's website is easy to update and push out to all users or to A/B test on a subset of users on a smaller scale
- the firm does not have this kind of control over mobile apps
IPO (Initial public stock offering)
- the first time a firm makes shares available via a public stock exchange, also known as "going public." - facebook is the third biggest IPO ever
Greater the Number of Wiki Users
- the more likely the information contained in the wiki will be accurate and grow in value
Wikis are powerful tools for *many to many* content collaboration because
- they are ideal for creating resources that benefit from the input of many, such as encyclopedia entries, meeting agendas, and project status documents.
Sharing Economy Marketplace are so attractive to consumers because
- they lower search costs - they help consumers quickly size up high-quality providers and make lower-risk choices - rating systems provide metrics for comparing supplier performance not available through conventional mechanism of searching for suppliers
Facebook has cut the number of ads its shows its users, while improving profits
- this is accomplished through the scarcity limited abs builds and better targeting allowing Facebook to charge more
Facebook Regularly Rotates Technical Staff
- this is in an effort to keep the ideas flowing - every 18 months employees are required to leave their teams and work on something different for at least a month - *getting people into new groups* helps Facebook's geniuses more broadly share their knowledge, generates idea flow, and prevents managers from developing fiefdoms - *facebook also runs hackathons*, all-night sessions with one key rule: no one is allowed to work on what they normally do.
Why do some collaborative consumption firms own inventory?
- to ensure (maximize) quality and gain more control over the customer experience *example Rent the Runway* - oversees its dress inventory, packing product for delivery, running a massive in-house garment cleaning effort, and retiring dresses that are noticeably worn - *goal* to ensure that their 9 million members have a "Cinderella moment" filled with delight, rather than disappointment
Facebook's Founding Ethos
- to make the world more open and connected *Facebook co-founder* has called for the firm to be broken up, as its power gives it "unilateral control over free speech
Cloudbusting
- use of cloud computing to provide excess capacity during periods of spiking demand. - is a scalability solution that is provided as an overflow service, kicking in as needed. - hybrid-cloud service
Corporate Use of Social Networks
- use social networks as organizational productivity tools - firms are choosing to implement their own internal social network platforms in hopes they are more secure and tailored to firm needs - have replaced the traditional employee directory - *a dialogue catalyst* that transforms the public directory into a font of knowledge sharing that promotes organization flattening and value-adding expertise sharing.
Twitter's Timeline
- used to be chronological, but has shifted to an algorithmic timeline that will first show tweets from people you interact with as well as some of the more popular recent tweets from those you follow.
Google benefits from its advertising being associated with *intent-to-purchase*
- users are on a "hunt" to find information when they enter Google and ads can be seen as quite helpful (search based) - *Google only charges text advertisers* when a user clicks through - *whereas* users go to Facebook when they have a rough idea of what they'll encounter, but this often lacks the easy-to-monetize, directed intent of search.
Micro-entrepreneurs
- uses their possessions and skills to provide personal services *examples* - Car rides (Uber, Lyft) - pet sitting (Rover) - meal prep (Feastly) - home services (Care.com, Angie's List, Handy) - freelance business services (Upwork) - errand runners (TaskRabbit)
Airbnb reduces transaction friction stemming from lack of trust by
- verifying the identity of both parties - monitors all communications between property listers and guests - providing 24 hour support - additional insurance coverage
Firms in Sharing Economy
fuel more efficient matching of *demand* and *supply*, lower costs, enable more efficient resource use, and provide a level of reach and services heretofore unavailable
Users of cloud computing run the gamut of industries
including - publishing (the New York Times) - finance (NASDAQ) - cosmetics and skin care (Elizabeth Arden).
SaaS (software as a service) is a
software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted
The software business is extremely profitable compared to the hardware business because:
the marginal cost to produce an additional copy of a software product is effectively zero.
Cloud computing is not typically suited for situations:
where complex legacy systems have to be ported.
Issues of *content adjacency* and *user attention* can make social networking ads less attractive than
- ads running alongside search and professionally produced content sites.
Facebook Membership Increases in Value by
- enhancing network effects - strengthening switching costs - creating larger sets of highly personalized data to leverage
Examples of Established Players Getting Collaborative
*1. Google parent Alphabet* - has invested over a quarter of a billion dollars in Uber and $1 billion in rival Lyft *2. Toyota* - has made a strategic investment in uber and struck a leasing deal *3. General Motors* - has invested half a billion dollars in Lyft *4. Volkswagen* - has invested $300 million in ride-sharing firm Gett *5. Apple* - has invested $1 billion into the "Uber of China," Didi Chuxing *6. Conde Nast* - has invested in Rent a Runway - *conde nast* the publisher behind Vogue, Lucky, Glamour, and other designer-friendly media properties, *7. Walgreens* - partnership with Task Rabbit on drrug store deliveries *8. IBM* - worked with collaborative commerce firm, Deliv - offers software that power many large retailers and works with Deliv to make same-day delivery services available to its clients *9. W Hotel in new York City* - partnered with workspace sharing site Desk Near Me to offer business travelers guests access to places to work while in Manhattan *10. Avis* - acquired Zipcar
Blog Features
*1. Immediate publication and distribution* - ability to reach the public without limits on publication size and without having posts filtered, edited, or cut by the mainstream media. *2. Reverse chronology* - posts are listed in reverse order of creation, making it easy to see the most recent content. *3. Ease of Use* - creating a new post usually involves clicking a single button. *4. Comment threads* - readers can offer comments on posts. *5. Persistence* - posts are maintained indefinitely at locations accessible by permanent links. *6. Searchability* - current and archived posts are easily searchable. *7. Tags* - posts are often classified under an organized tagging scheme. *8. Trackbacks* - allow an author to acknowledge the source of their posts, which allows bloggers to follow the popularity of their posts among other bloggers. *technology providers* 1. Blogger (Google) 2. WordPress - power over 30% of internet sites 3. Tumblr - hosts over 415 million blogs
Vendors of SaaS products benefit from the following
*1. limiting development to a single platform* - instead of having to create versions for different operating systems *2. tighter feedback loop with clients* - helping fuel innovation and responsiveness *3. ability to instantly deploy bug fixes and product enhancements* to all users *4. lower distribution costs* *5. accessibility* - to anyone with an Internet connection *6. reduced risk of software piracy*
SaaS firms may offer their clients several benefits including
*1. lower costs* - by eliminating or reducing software, hardware, maintenance, and staff expenses *2. financial risk mitigation* - since startup costs are so low *3. faster deployment times* - compared with installed packaged software or systems developed in-house *4. costs that are a variable operating expense* rather than a large, fixed capital expense *5. scalable systems* - that make it easier for firms to ramp up during periods of unexpectedly high system use *6. higher quality and service levels* - through instantly available upgrades, vendor scale economies, and expertise gained across its entire client base *7. remote access and availability* - most SaaS offerings are accessed through any Web browser, and often even by phone or other mobile device
WePay Combats Challenges in Several Ways
*1.* WePay's *Veda fraud-fighting technology* analyzes social profiles to get clients up and running with payments in a streamlined process - By linking to social media accounts (Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, TripAdvisor), they can gain a fast read on whether founders and businesses are legitimate *2.* WePay transaction history from hundreds of thousands of customers currently sending billions of dollars a year through the firm's systems - each transaction adds to the firm's "big data" smarts used to separate the stand-up vendors from the sketchy *3. WePay *machine learning technology* updates the firm's fraud models to adapt to new patterns it uncovers, spotting fraud with 2 to 3 times more efficiency than using a rules engine *WePay makes adding payment capabilities as easy as embedding a YouTube video, with a cut-and-paste of pre generated code*
Facebook Refines Feeds by
*Categorizing Sharing* - can find updates on the "news feed" that Facebook actively curates by default - *timeline* on your personal page offers a sort of digital scrapbook of content that a user has shared online - uses a secret and constantly refined algorithm that attempts to identify what you're most interested in, while cutting "spammy" content (not all posts are seen on a feed) - *100,000 individual weights in the model* that determines if you'll see a post
Facebook's Copilot
*Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg* - is known as the person who runs the place: is the coach, seasoned mentor, drill sergeant, and voice of experience in a workforce that skews remarkably young (billionaire) - regularly named to Fortune magazine's "Most Powerful Women in Business" list - Sandberg came to Facebook from Google (was a harvard grad) *in three years* - increase users ten-fold - devise an advertising platform that has attracted the world's largest brands - develop a sales organization that can serve a customer base ranging from the Fortune 100 to mom-and-pop stores - powerful speaker leading advocate for increasing the ranks of women in senior management (in her book Lean In)
Application Programming Interfaces Effect on Facebook
*Facebook had marshaled the efforts of* - 400,000 developers and entrepreneurs - 24,000 applications had been built for the platform - 140 new apps were being added each day - 95% of Facebook members had installed at least one Facebook application
Firms Characterized as Sharing Economy or Collaborative Consumption
*Goods:* *1. Pre-Owned:* - eBay, craigslist (peer-to-peer supplied) and thredUP (firm-owned inventory). *2. Loaner Products:* - Zilok (peer-to-peer supplied), Rent the Runway, Chegg (firm-owned inventory). *3. Custom Products:* Etsy, CustomMade. *Services:* *1. Professional Services:* - Upwork and crowdSPRING. *2. Personal Services:* - Angie's List, Handy, and TaskRabbit. *3. Delivery:* - DoorDash, Grubhub, Instacart, Postmates (self-employed drivers for restaurant or grocery delivery) - Drizly (drivers and alcohol inventory owned by suppliers). *Transportation:* *1. Transportation Services:* - Uber, Lyft, Didi (cars supplied by drivers). *2. Loaner Vehicles:* - Turo (peer-to-peer supplied), Zipcar (firm-owned inventory). *3. Office Space:* *1. Office Space:* - LiquidSpace, ShareDesk (peer-to-peer supplied inventory). *2. Places to Stay:* - Airbnb, HomeAway, Couchsurfing (peer-to-peer supplied inventory). *Money and Finance:* *1. Money Lending:* - LendingClub, Kiva, Prosper (peer-to-peer loans). *2. Crowdfunding:* - Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Indiegogo (peer-to-peer capital).
Competitive Dynamics of *Smartphone Apps* differing from *Browser-based Desktop Services*
*Smartphone Apps* - can access a user's address book in order to rebuild the social graph for a new mobile service. - can more easily share photos and videos - can use push notifications to encourage use of the app. - smartphones have app icons on the home screen as a visual reminder to visit the app and a single-tap makes it easy to use - *authentication*, many firms have begun to offer "sign-on with mobile" as an alternative to using passwords, this could even be a more secure way to sign in since it's attached directly to a device that follows the user. *Desktops* - larger screen allows for additional menu items and options—mobile seems to prefer single-purpose, specialized apps.
Examples of Open Source Software
*WordPress* - software for running a blog or website, powering about a third of websites. *Firefox* - a Web browser that competes with Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer *LibreOffice* - a competitor to Microsoft Office *Gimp* - a graphic tool with features found in Photoshop Shortcut for video editing and Audacity for audio editing *Magento* - e-commerce software *TensorFlow* - open source machine learning software *Alfresco* - collaboration software that competes with Microsoft Sharepoint and EMC's Documentum *Marketcetera* - an enterprise trading platform for hedge fund managers that competes with FlexTrade and Portware *Zimbra* - open source email software that competes with Outlook server *MySQL, Ingres, and PostgreSQL* - open source relational database software packages that go head-to-head with commercial products from Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, and IBM *MongoDB, HBase, and Cassandra* - non relational distributed databases used to power massive file systems (used to power key features on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Amazon) *SugarCRM* - customer relationship management software that competes with Salesforce.com and Siebel *Docker* -tools for "containerization," an evolution beyond virtualization. *Asterisk* - an open source implementation for running a PBX corporate telephony system that competes with offerings from Nortel and Cisco, among others *Git* - version control software, critical to managing most commercial software products. *Free BSD and Sun's OpenSolaris* - open source versions of the Unix operating system
Citizen Supplier examples
*are becoming providers of rentals offering up their:* - rooms (Airbnb) - cars (Turo) - boats (Boatsetter) - power tools (Zilok)
Facebook Ads
*can be precisely targeted* since the firm has a large amount of actual data on users' self-expressed likes, interests, demographics, relationship status, geographic location, etc - *facebook has also taken steps to allow third-party databases to be incorporated into targeting ads on site* while preventing the possibility that databases can be combined to reveal online information to offline partners or vice versa. - spends more advertising online than they do on radio, magazine, cable television, or newspaper ads. - advertising represents a bulk of Facebook's overall revenue ( 90% coming from mobile) - Facebook Ads are for discovery or awareness building rather than a stated intent to purchase.
Facebook's Mission
*facebook's goal* as stated by Zuckerberg - is "to make the world more open and connected." *began* as a target of social networking for college students *now* has become a advancing and ecoloving force, occupying large swaths of user time and expanding into all sorts of new markets
Ways Organizations are Leveraging Twitter
*include* - real-time promotions - time-sensitive information - scheduling and yield management - customer engagement and support - promotion, - intelligence gathering - idea sourcing - as a sales channel
Open Source Firms that are valued in excess of $1 billion
*include* - Hortonworks - Cloudera - MapR - MongoDB (an open source NoSQL database leader) - Docker (a virtualization technology known as "containers"). - Red Hat, (first open-source firm to go public, has a market cap of around $30 billion)
Open Source Software Challenges (Drawbacks)
*include* - complexity of some products - higher total cost of ownership for some products - concern about the ability of a product's development community to provide support or product improvement - legal and licensing concerns.
Business Models for Firms in the Open Source Industry
*include* - selling support services and add-on products - offering hosting to run and maintain customer projects "in the cloud," - licensing OSS for incorporation into commercial products - using OSS to fuel hardware sales.
Facebook's Challenges
*including* - generating more revenue from its customer base - growing advertising - monetizing mobile - transitioning to a mobile-centric world where competitive conditions differ - protecting user privacy - potential for abuse - competing with a slew of new competitors
SaaS firms earn money by
*most* SaaS firms earn money - via a usage-based pricing model similar to a monthly subscription. *others* earn money - offering free services that are supported by advertising - promote the sale of upgraded or premium versions for additional fees. *most iconic SaaS firm* - is Salesforce.com, an enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) provider
Fake News Crisis
*motivated by various bad actors including* - those seeking to make money by attracting users to fake news sites that make money by running advertising - *election tampering* campaign allegedly undertaken by agents acting on behalf of the russian government (150 million american may have been exposed over Facebook and Instagram leading up to the 2016 presidential election - *technology has no built-in morality*, and tools to connect can become tools for abuse causing fake news
Beacon Platform Failure
*occurred because* - it was an opt-out system that was not thoroughly tested beforehand - user behavior, expectations, and system procedures were not completely taken into account *Beacon effort started from a simple question:* - Could the energy and virulent nature of social networks be harnessed to offer truly useful consumer information to its users? - *several partners associated* with beacon faced legal actions
Industry Evolution of OSS
*pre-Linux* - nearly every major hardware manufacturer made its own, incompatible version of the Unix operating system - these incompatible markets were each so small that they had difficulty attracting third-party vendors to write application software *now* - all major hardware firms run Linux, resulting in a large, unified market attracting software developers.
Software Business is attractive due to
- near-zero marginal costs - an opportunity to establish a standard *creating the competitive advantages* of network effects and switching costs.
*Major Problem in Sharing Economy* is the uncertainty around the ability for these firms to consider their workers as *independent contractors* and not *employees*.
*when employers improperly classify employees as independent contractors* *1*. the employees may not receive important workplace protections such as the minimum wage, overtime compensation, unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation *2.* results in lower tax revenues for the government *3.* creates uneven playing field for employers who properly classify their workers as full-time employees *reclassification to employees* - could raise wages by 20%, - add upwards of 14% more for workers compensation premiums - employers will need to provide health care contributions
Cambridge Analytica Scandal of Facebook
*whistleblower at UK-based research firm Cambridge Analytica* - detailed a surreptitious campaign to harvest user data on a wide scale, develop psychographic profiles, and sell services that will "find your voters and move them to actions." - Only 270,000 people authorized the app to collect data, but all were told the focus was academic research and no commercial ties were disclosed. - Facebook policy allowed app developers to access information on a user and their friend network—accelerated data access that created working profiles of some 87 million users, mostly US citizens. - Facebook has shut down app access to friend data, shut down 200 apps, has begun auditing 1,000s of apps, notified users who have had their data compromised, and introduced a host of new tools.
Facebook Slogans
- "Done is Better than Perfect" and "Move Fast, Break Things" are cultural signposts that direct staff to keep an eye on what has helped make the firm successful. - *slogans resulted in the willingness* for facebook to take bold risks on new initiatives and push forward with innovations that many users initially resisted but eventually embraced
Zilok Example of share economy
- "there are 80 million power drills in America that are used an average of thirteen minutes, does everyone really need their own drill"
Business of Open Source Software
- *OSS lowers the cost of computing*, make more computing options accessible to smaller firms - *OSS more reliable and secure* computing lowers costs for all users. - *OSS diverts funds* that firms would spend on fixed costs, like operating systems and databases, so that these funds can be spent on innovation or other more competitive initiatives *many firms are trying to use OSS markets* to drive a wedge between competitors and their customers
Twitter's SDK Innovative Software Development Kit
- *SDK* are tools that allow the creation of products or add-ons for a specific operating system of other computing platform. - *included* a # of tools for app developers such as crash reporting and analytics - sold these tools to Google
Instant Articles
- *allow* Facebook to host, cache, and serve content from media firms. - *faster article loads* increase article engagement and allow partners to make more money - *facebook hopes* partners may be more inclined to use its ad network. - *video ads* cached and served on Facebook are also booming, with Facebook serving as many videos a day as YouTube.
Open Source Software Source Code
- *anyone can look at the source code, change it, and even redistribute it*, provided the modified software continues to remain open and free. - *differing from the practice of conventional software firms*, who treat their intellectual property as closely guarded secrets and who almost never provide the source code for their commercial software products - OSS is available for free, with the source code being available for review and modification
Criteria Necessary for a Crowd to be Smart
- *be diverse*, so that participants are bringing different pieces of information to the table - *be decentralized*, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer - *offer a collective verdict* that summarizes participant opinions - *be independent*, so that each focuses on information rather than the opinions of others. (an article in the McKinsey Quarterly, Surowiecki)
Crowdsourced Technology
- *crowdsourced* participant ratings and social profiles can help improve trust - this technology can also reinforce bias and discriminatory tendencies of the crowd - *crowdsourcing problem includes* the potential for bias, which firms use *audit data* to try to uncover and address bias - *other firms* hold back key information, such as destination information, if rides to a minority neighborhood might cause some suppliers to deny service to certain customers
Instilling Trust
- *doesn't mean* that firms are without safety issues
Winning in *Electronic Markets*
- *early firms into a market* gain scale, brand, and financial resources to help expand and reinforce assets for competitive advantage *example Uber vs. Lyft* - Uber started in 2009 and Lyft started in 2012. - Early on, Lyft struggled to gain the required critical mass of drivers to attract riders - While Uber's troubles have provided a boost to Lyft, but is still far behind Uber. - #deleteUber protests lifted Lyft from 10% to 19% of the US market, but Uber remains comfortable at an 81% share. - without Uber's constant negative press, it's unlikely that Lyft would have seen comparable growth.
Facebook's position as the digital center of its members' online social lives has allowed the firm to
- *envelop* related businesses such as photo and video sharing, messaging, bookmarking, and link sharing
Strategic Concerns for Platform Builders
- *facebook allows third-party developers* to create all sorts of apps to access Facebook data *major challenges with a more open approach include*: *1. weakening of strategic assets* - opens up access to users and content risks supporting efforts that undermine the critical assets of network effects and and switching costs - why do to facebook if you can get facebook content on other sites *2. revenue sharing*: - *free rider problem:* occurs which is taking advantage of a user or service without providing any sort of reciprocal benefit. *3. security* - allowing data streams that contain potentially private posts and photographs to flow through the Internet and have them land where you want them raises all sorts of concerns - an errant line of code doesn't provide a back door to your address book or friends list, to your messaging account, or to photos you'd hoped to only share with family
Facebook Messenger App
- *zuckerberg claims*, messaging is one of the few things that people actually do more than social networking - facebook messenger has 1.3 million users (only smaller than WhatApp) - *messenger has expanded* to become a tool for corporations to communicate with customers - firms can now use Facebook to send customer updates, receipts, shipping information, and use for customer support chat - are attractive when email may be segregated from a main inbox and quarantined in a "Promotions and Offers" folder - *allows firms* to build AI (artificial intelligence) powered chatbots that interact with customers. - *has become a payments platform*, allowing users to send and receive money with their contacts. -
Microblogging Features
- 280-character messages sent and received from mobile devices - Ability to respond publicly or privately - Can specify tags to classify discussion topics for easy searching and building comment threads - Follower lists *technology providers* *1. Open/Public* - Twitter - Enterprise Platforms - Slack - HipChat - Socialtext Signals - Yammer - Salesforce.com (Chatter)
Uber
- 4 years after Travis Kalanick co founded Uber, it was operating in 633 cities in 76 countries worldwide - is a San Fran based car service - In 2019, Uber is now a public company - *has raised* over $21 billion so far *has garnered the largest single investment in tech startup history* - by mid 2018, valued at over $70 billion - google has incorporated uber service into google maps - *keeps about* 20% of each transaction - *claims to create* over 50,000 new jobs a month - *job satisfaction* among Uber drivers hovers around 80% - *nearly half* of Uber drivers have a college degree, with drivers reporting that they use Uber income to supplement earnings, not as their primary salary
*mobile market* differs from *desktop* in many key ways:
- Access to address books - media libraries - the cloud - push notifications - home screen icons - limited screen real estate are enforcing a new competitive reality on Facebook and rivals.
As of 2018, ______ has more listening than Hilton, the biggest hotel chain on earth, has hotel rooms
- Airbnb
SOCIAL MEDIA FACTS
- As of mid-2019, 6 of the top 10 most popular Internet sites among US users focused on social media, peer-produced content (worldwide 5 of the top 10 sites are social) - Users spend more than 144 minutes each day, on average, using social media. - Nine of the top ten most downloaded apps for iPhone and eight of the top ten for Android were social
Corporate Blogs
- CEOs use blogs for purposes that include a combination of marketing, sharing ideas, press response, image shaping, and reaching consumers directly.
Uber threw in the towel and left _____ after losing $1 billion
- China
Colossal Walled Garden
- a closed network or single set of services controlled by one dominant firm - *some fear that Facebook* may be an all-too-powerful walled garden that may stifle innovation, limit competition, and restrict the free flow of information.
What results in a social network being favored over others in a particular culture or region
- network effects - cultural differences
Facebook's Data Centers
- Facebook's 11 data centers are scattered around the planet *these data centers* - serve more than 2.7 billion Likes, 350 million photo uploads, 2.5 billion status updates and check-ins - 3 times the messaging volume of the SMS network (through Messenger and WhatsApp), and countless other bits of data - collect to user data to customize feeds, estimate which ads to serve up, and refine and improve the Facebook experience. - receives 50 million requests per second, yet 95% of data queries can be served from a distributed server cache that lives in 15 terabytes of RAM *facebook's storage needs* - have grown by a factor of 4,000 in 4 years - total storage of 300 petabytes and growing at more than 600 terabytes a day *Facebook's annual spend on networking equipment and infrastructure* - is estimated to be between $14 billion and $15 billion in 2018 (up about 50%) and on par with Google and Apple spend
- Facebook's IPO, Instagram, an 18-month-old firm with 13 employees, had 50 million users and was adding new ones at a rate of roughly 5 million a week - Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion - *Facebook turned the potential rival, Instagram* into an asset for growth and another vehicle for the firm to remain central to users' lives *since acquisition* - Instagram has continued to operate as a separate brand - tripling its user base the year following acquisition (800 million by mid 2018) - usage numbers far higher than Snapchat and Twitter
YOUTUBE FACTS
- Just 20 months after its founding, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion - estimated 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute. - site has emerged as the Web's leading destination for video - every day, YouTube's over 1 billion users watch 100s of millions of hours of video and generate billions of views - *mobile revenue* on YouTube is up over 100% year after year, and 70% of views come from mobile devices
MICROSOFT FACTS
- Microsoft acquired *LinkedIn*, the world's dominant professional social network, for $26.2 billion, the largest acquisition in the firm's history. - Microsoft acquired of GitHub for $7.5 billion *GitHub* is the leading resource for supporting peer-produced open-source software and incorporates social elements such as "stars" and commenting
Why Study Facebook?
- Network effects - Platforms - Partnerships - Issues in the rollout of new technologies - Privacy - Ad models - Business value of social media - Differences between desktop and mobile markets
Factors that helped the rise in Collaborative Consumption
- Recession - Wage stagnation - Social media - Environmental concerns - Proliferation of smartphones
Uber's Problems (dishonesty began to be seen as Uber's cultural trait)
- Strikes by drivers, protests by the taxi industry, and aggressive political push-back. - Accusations of the theft of self-driving car tech - Rival Lyft accused Uber of unethical behavior, including calling and canceling Lyft rides to crater the efficiency - Culture shown to be hostile to women and minorities. - Mounting customer complaints of price surging.
Facebook Cloud
- a collection of resources available for access over the Internet. - the big group of connected servers that power the site *are scattered across multiple facilities* including server farms in: - San Francisco, Santa Clara, northern Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ireland, Singapore, and Sweden *open source software (OSS)* - software that is free and whose code can be accessed and potentially modified by anyone - is used to power facebook, on Linux a=operating system and Apache Web server software
Astroturfing
- engineering the posting of positive comments and reviews of a firm's product and services (or negative ones of a firm's competitors). - many ratings sites will penalize firms that offer incentives for positive feedback posts.
Sharing Economy raises questions for insurers
- Will firms pay out if there is a "sharing economy" incident with a supplier, or will they try to refuse? - attempts to regulate the industry could arise from legislator concern, lobbying from the insurance industry, or entrenched incumbents threatened by sharing economy competition - governments have explored additional insurance regulation for sharing economy participants
What is the difference between collaborative consumption firms Zilok and Chegg?
- Zilok provides inventory provided by participating "citizen suppliers," Chegg owns its own inventory.
Admirable Goals and Unintended Consequences of Internet.org
- Zuckerberg has declared Internet access to be a "human right." - *goal* to make sure that actually, literally every single human being on earth has an internet connection - * to achieve the goal*, Facebook actively worked on schemes for providing Internet access to areas with no signal. - 85% of the world's population already lives within range of a cell tower with at least a 2G data network, - world population with no internet access is roughly 3 times larger than the facebook user base
Utility Computing
- a form of *cloud computing* where a firm develops its own software, and then runs it over the Internet on a service provider's computers. *include variants* *1. platform as a service (PaaS)* - *delivers tools* so an organization can develop, test, and deploy software in the cloud. - *include* programming languages, database software, product testing and deployment software, and an operating system - *customers use to build* their own applications on the provider's infrastructure. - *the cloud firm* usually manages the platform while the *client* has control over the creation and deployment of their application. *2. infrastructure as a service (IaaS)* - *offers* an organization a more bare-bones set of services that are an alternative to buying its own physical hardware - computing, storage, and networking resources are instead allocated and made available over the internet - *paid for* based on the amount of resources used - *provide firms* with the most customization, with firms making their own choices on what products to install, develop, and maintain on the infrastructure they license. - *requires the most* support and maintenance - *cloud providers* offer services that include running the remote hardware, storage, and networking, but *client firms* can choose software used - *IaaS services are offered by* firms including Amazon, CSC, Rackspace, HP, IBM, VMware, Google, IBM, Oracle/Sun, Salesforce.com
Software as a Service (SaaS)
- a form of *cloud computing* where a firm subscribes to a third-party software and receives a service that is delivered online. - *delivers* end-user software to a firm over the Internet instead of on the organization's own computing resources - requires the least amount of support and maintenance in comparison to utility computing - users access a vendor's software over the Internet - usually by starting up a Web browser - with *SaaS* you don't need to own the program or install it on your own computer - *SaaS* frees companies from the burden of buying, managing, and maintaining the physical computing that programs need
Blog rolls
- a list of a blogger's favorite blogs - not all blogs include blog rolls -are often displayed on the right or left column of a blog's main page - *well-known blogs* can act as flashpoints on public opinion.
Core Infrastructure Initiative
- a multimillion-dollar project developed by the Linux Foundation - designed "to fund open source projects that are in the critical path for core computing functions." - *backers include* Google, IBM, Facebook, and Microsoft - initial investments of $3.9 million for the first 3 years
Internet.Org (facebook partnered)
- a nonprofit organization crafting non-exclusive partnerships with local carriers to offer a free tier of services, a sort of "Internet dial tone" *includes* - social networking - information such as weather, health care information, education, and food prices all through a lightweight app that runs on very low-end phones. - provided free access to over 100 million people worldwide
Elevator Pitch
- a quickly conveyed business pitch - *origin is:* "imagine you're unexpectedly in an elevator with an investor, potential employee and you've got a chance to sell them on your idea."
Peer Production
- a superset of social media - occurs when users work collaborative to create content, products, and services - is leveraged to create much of the open source software that supports many of the Web 2.0 efforts.
Virtualization
- a type of software that allows a single computer (or cluster of connected computers) to function as if it were several different computers, each running its own operating system and software. - *this software* can lower a firm's hardware needs, save energy, and boost scalability - can be used to reduce an organization's hardware needs, can create a firm's own private cloud of scalable assets, and cut energy consumption and lower carbon footprint - *make a single computer behave like many separate machines*, allowing multiple operating systems (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows) to run simultaneously on the same platform. - *helps* consolidate computing resources and creates additional savings and efficiencies.
Containers
- a type of virtualization that allows for shared operating systems for more resource savings and faster execution. - allows applications to share an operating system, but it still lets resources be shuttled around from low-powered hardware to massive pools of servers if capacity spikes - *performs many of the functions of virtualization without requiring a separate operating system* - this saves even more power and computer space, and helps resources execute even faster. - container startup is Docker
Wikis
- a website that can be modified by anyone, from directly within a Web browser (ex: wikipedia) - acts as a collective corporate memory that is vital for sharing skills, learning, and preserving expertise - derive their name from the Hawaiian word for "quick" *available* 1. *software* - that firms can install on their own servers 2. *hosted online services* - where software and content are housed "in the cloud" by third parties that run the technology for wiki users. - can be public or private
Scalability
- ability to either handle increasing workloads or to be easily expanded to manage workload increases. -*software context*, systems that aren't scalable often require significant rewrites or the purchase or development of entirely new systems.
Roll Back (Wikis)
- ability to revert a wiki page to a prior version - useful for restoring earlier work in the event of a posting error, inaccuracy, or vandalism
Crowdsourcing
- act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call - 9 of the world's top 10 brands have engaged in some form of crowdsourcing. - is *not* all financially motivated, some help to create better service - tackles challenges through an open call to a broader community of potential problem solvers
Openness of Wikis
- acts as a mechanism for promoting organizational transparency and accountability.
Airbnb Benefits offered
- added income for local property owners - additional capacity during major events and the high travel season - a bulwark against hotel price gouging - a mechanism to widen travel and ultimately bring in the economic benefit of more tourist dollars *Portland, Oregon, and San Fran* are among the cities that have already passed legalization for sharing economy property listings
Facebook's primary competitive advantages are grounded in
- network effects - switching costs
Cloud Computing Impact on Industries
- can *lower barriers to entry in an industry*, making it easier for startups to launch and smaller firms to leverage the backing of powerful technology. - can *lower the amount of capital a firm needs to launch a business*, shifting power away from venture firms in those industries that had previously needed more VC money. - can *shift resources out of capital spending and into profitability and innovation* - can *accelerate innovation* and therefore changes the desired skills mix and job outlook for IS worker - *hardware and software sales* may drop as *cloud use increases*, while *service revenues will increase*.
Engagement
- can be public or private - is often more art than science - managers can learn a lot by paying attention to the experiences of others. - should have clear rules for engagement and escalation when positive or negative issues are worthy of attention.
Comment Section of a Blog
- can create a conversation to gather opinion, vet ideas, and brainstorm - can apply pressure to correct inaccuracies and keep a blogger honest.
Internet Enabled Market Makers
- can trace their roots back to once-pioneering, now massively influential firms like eBay and craigslist, which empowered all sorts of individual sellers and service providers
Messaging Services
- communicate with individuals or groups of users using short-format text, graphics, and video - most messaging is done using mobile devices.
Messaging Services Features
- communication can be public or private, identifying or anonymous - focus on a specific media type (ex: photos/Instagram, video/Vine) - focus on ephemeral, non permanent posts that go away, typically after they are read (ex Snapchat) *technology providers* *1. SMS Replacement* - WhatsApp - Snapchat - Viber - WeChat *2. Photo* - Instagram (permanent) - Snapchat (ephemeral) *3. Enterprise* - Slack - HipChat - Anonymous - Whisper - Yik Yak
Facebook also has concerns related to
- competing for user time with services that promote private sharing. - balancing user privacy with the potential for delivering products that are lucrative - whether Facebook can remain one of the Internet's most successful and influential firms.
Factors that managers should consider when making a make buy or rent decision include
- competitive advantage - security - legal and compliance issues - the organization's skill, expertise, and available labor - cost - time - vendor issues *must be evaluated over the lifetime of a project, not at a single point in time*
Product-Market Fit
- concept in entrepreneurship and new product development that conveys the degree to which a product satisfies market demand - *successful efforts* should be desired by customers, and scale into large, profitable businesses - *happens when* market need, weaknesses, and pain-points are satisfied by a customer-embraced solution far superior to what is currently being offered. - *example* Uber
Content Adjacency
- concern that an advertisement will run near offensive material, embarrassing an advertiser and/or degrading their products or brands. *IDC report suggests* that content adjacency is the reason why "brand advertisers largely consider user-generated content as low-quality, brand-unsafe inventory" for running ads. - *dispelling concerns hinges* on a combination of evolving public attitudes toward content adjacency issues in social media and better technology/policing of the context in which ads appear.
Technology has enabled diverse groups of product and service providers to
- connect with consumers - offering far greater reach and efficiency than traditional markets - tech-fueled marketplaces are allowing millions of users to turn to private individuals to meet demand
Witter's Fasting-growing MoPub Service
- connects advertisers that use ad networks with firms that want to auction off ad space in their apps and services - such as Google's AdMob, Apple's iAd, and Facebook's Audience Network - *benefits twitter* because it leverages data to make money without running more ads on its own service
Social Media
- content that is created, shared, and commented on by a broader community of users. - impactful on individuals, businesses, and society
Challenges Faced When Creating a Platform
- copyright - security - appropriateness - free speech tensions - efforts that tarnish platform operator brands - privacy - potential for competition with partners *all* make platforms management more complex than simply creating a set of standards and releasing this to the public *Platform owners beware*: - developers can help you grow quickly and can deliver value - misbehaving partners can create financial loss, damage the brand, and sow mistrust.
Switching Costs
- cost a consumer incurs when moving from one product to another. *can involve* - actual money spent (ex: buying a new product) - investments in time - any data loss - *switching costs are extremely powerful* for Facebook - *moving to another service* means *recreating* your entire *social graph* - *more time you spend on the service*, the more you've invested in your graph and the less likely you are to move to a rival
Blockchain based prediction market
- could be difficult for regulators to shut down - cheaper to run - potentially more accurate than current centralized efforts.
Uber runs a Lean Cost of doing business by
- eliminating human dispatchers - eliminating the capital cost of a fleet (cars are owned by drivers, not Uber) - working around the expensive "medallion" system that grants cab rights in major cities worldwide
- emerged as the global leader in mobile messaging, sending more total messages than the entire worldwide SMS text messaging standard - had 450 million monthly users, and a million more were signing up each day. - Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion ($16 billion in cash, $3 billion in stock) - In the high-growth markets of India, Brazil, and Mexico, *whatsapp usage numbers* were 12 to 64 times ahead of Facebook for mobile messaging
PatientsLikeMe (PLM) Social Network
- empowering chronically ill patients across a wide variety of disease states. - *openness policy* is in contrast to privacy rules posted on many sites and encourages patients to publicly track and post conditions, treatments, and symptom variation over time, using the site's sophisticated graphing and charting tools. - *goal* is to help others improve the quality of their own care by harnessing the wisdom of crowds
Legal Exposure to Open Source Software
- firms adopting OSS may be at risk if they distribute code and aren't aware of the licensing implications - *some commercial software firms have pressed legal action against the users of open source products* when there is a perceived violation of software patents or other unauthorized use of their proprietary code. *example* - Microsoft suggested that Linux and other OSS efforts violated some 235 of its patents - Microsoft began collecting payments and gaining access to the patent portfolios of companies that use the open source Linux (Fuji, Samsung, and Xerox)
Crowdsourcing is leveraged by several public markets
- for innovation - an alternative to standard means of production
Social Graphs
- global mapping of users and organizations and how they are connected - *refers to Facebook's* ability to collect, express, and leverage the connections between the site's user - *is everything* that's on Facebook as a node or endpoint that's connected to other stuff - *expresses the connections* between individuals and organizations. - *examples* friends, tagged photos, comments posted carry your name, your preferences, membership to groups, link between nodes in the social graph - Facebook was one of the first social networks where users actually identified themselves using their real names. *friending* - is a link between nodes in the social graph - required both users to approve the relationship - resulting in the network fostering trust among its user-base
Firms that offer free social media monitoring
- google alerts - foursquare - tweetdeck - bit.ly *firms that do not offer free social media monitoring* - wikimedia - amazon
Social Media Team
- group tasked with creating policies and providing support, training, guidance, and development expertise for and monitoring of a firm's social media efforts. - provide leadership, support, and guidance, they don't necessarily drive all efforts - important to ensure that authentic experts engage on behalf of the firm *social media is a conversation* - isn't a job for the standard PR-style corporate spokesperson. - improve efforts and prevent unwanted disclosure, compliance, and privacy violations.
Local Firms benefit from taxes and regulatory fees from industries threatened by sharing economy
- groups opposed to new, rival efforts can represent very powerful lobbies. *example* - firms usually pay for the right to operate a cab service within a municipal district - *In New York City*, companies need a so-called *medallion*, an operating privilege that can cost over $1 million for a single vehicle
Uber commitment to data allows the firm to
- grow and expand the firm - attract new drivers - cut prices
STACK OVERFLOW and GITHUB FACTS
- have emerged as critically important software developer learning tools and effective ways to establish and strengthen one's reputation. - roughly 5.7 million developers participate on the Stack Overflow question-and-answer site worldwide - 73% of posted questions receiving an answer, in an average of just 11 minute - a professional or student looking for guidance with a programming problem is likely to be best be served by StackOverflow
Several major global messaging apps including *WeChat* and *Line*
- have evolved into platforms that host other apps and services, creating substantial revenue opportunities along the way. *WeChat* is the dominant mobile platform in *china* with roughly 700 million users
Ads in the News Feed
- have the advantage of falling directly within the screen real estate that a consumer is focused on. - *news ads* are considered superior to ads that may occupy easy-to-ignore spaces on the right-hand side of a content window.
Apps and Social Technologies Influence in a Sharing Economy
- help allay fears by 1. collecting and sharing ratings (of both buyers and suppliers) 2. ensuring payment 3. offering increased scheduling convenience
Amazon provides software and services
- helping CIA build and maintain its own private cloud
Facebook has created a set of services and a platform for hosting and integrating with other services
- helping the firm foster its stated mission to "make the world more open and connected."
Wisdom of Crowds
- idea that a group of individuals, often consisting of untrained amateurs, will collectively have more insight than a single or small group of trained professionals - leveraged by many social software efforts - *crowd wisdom* is at the heart of wikis and many other online efforts - the crowd is not always right
Sharing Economy firms *were born*
- in a prolonged, worldwide economic recession - *where stagnant wages* have boosted consumer interest in low-cost alternatives to conventional products and services - *encouraging* a whole new class of laypeople to try their hand at offering services for hire - sharing services have an *environmental benefit* by fostering reuse and diminished consumption
Wikimasters
- individuals often employed by organizations to "garden" community content, "prune" excessive posts, "transplant" commentary to the best location, and "weed" or edit as necessary. *example* - *griefers* or internet vandal and mischief-maker (troll), regularly alter wikipedia pages
Viral (Social Networks)
- information or applications that spread rapidly shared and distributed by users
Facebook Graph Search
- intending to evolve search beyond the keyword - *allows users* to draw meaning from the site's social graph and to find answers from social connections - *some claim* Graph Search could become a primary source for job placement, travel info, and even dating. - *results are based* on the connections in your social graph
Deep Web (dark web)
- internet content that can't be indexed by Google and other search engines - provides access to user content, user opinions, and trending news that Google cannot access - *any search that prompts a user to start at Facebook instead of Google* is a revenue and data collection opportunity for Zuckerberg - *partnerships with Bing and Facebook's own Graph Search* attempt to harness the firm's deep Web asset to answer questions - *much of Facebook is private*, accessible only among friends - Facebook's activity represents a massive blind spot for Google search
Twitter (Microblogging)
- is a microblogging service that allows users to post 280-character messages (tweets) via the Web, SMS, or a variety of desktop and phone applications - *most dominant* microblogging service - supports *asymmetric communication*, where someone can follow updates without first getting their approval (good for cultivating a following) - you don't need to tweet to get value - *has served as* an early warning mechanism in disasters, terror, and other events. - can serve as a *hothouse* that attracts opinion and forces organizational transparency and accountability - *twitter has only recently* become profitable, and end-user growth has not kept pace with other social media offering
Uber's God View
- is a software system showing tiny car icons crawling around a map of the city, and little cartoon eyeballs scattered about, representing every location where a customer is looking at the Uber app.
Short Selling
- is an attempt to profit from a falling stock price. - *sellers* sell shares they don't own with an obligation of later repayment, in hopes that the price of sold shares will fall. - *repay share debt* with shares purchased at a lower price and pocket the difference between initial share price and repayment price.
Liquid Market
- is an efficient market with enough transaction volume to attract a reliable supply of goods at fair, market-rate prices - *cash from reliable economies* is the most "liquid" asset - *shows up* if there is a strong value proposition—usually involving clear convenience and price advantages
Uber Disruptive Model
- is creating growth that is outpacing the size of the taxi industry *despite bad press* - Uber's technology offers far more safety and security than the conventional taxi industry - the company continues to invest in furthering safety initiatives.
Mobile Traffic
- is growing, and despite initial concerns over Facebook's ability to find growth in this space, the firm's mobile ads in particular have grown at a tremendous rate and are solidly profitable.
Global Growth
- is highly appealing to firms, but expensive bandwidth costs and low prospects for ad revenue create challenges akin to the free rider problem. - *The New York Times points out*, fewer than half of global Internet users have disposable incomes high enough to interest major advertisers.
Word of Mouth
- is the most powerful method for promoting products and services - *Beacon* was conceived as a giant word-of-mouth machine with win-win benefits for firms, recommenders, recommendation recipients, and Facebook.
Facebook rules as
- kingmaker, opinion catalyst, and traffic driver making media outlets eager to be friends - *facebook beats rivals* in driving traffic to newspaper sites and is way ahead of Twitter and Pinterest in overall social traffic referrals - *games firms, music services, video sites, daily deal services, and publishers* integrate with Facebook hoping that posts will spread their services virally.
Question and Answer Sites
- knowledge sharing, discovery, learning, reputation building *features* - public, member-posted questions - permanent listing, searchable repository - community voting on "best" or most appropriate answer - reputation building, ranking, badging to encourage active participation *technology providers* - Quora (general) - Stack Exchange or Stack Overflow
TIK TOK FACTS
- known as Douyin in China (for "Shaking Music"), Tik Tok parent Byte dance paid $1 billion to acquire a similar app, Musical.ly - used by half of US teens at the time of acquisition
What Powers Facebook
- largely on commodity hardware, open source software, and proprietary code tailored to the specific needs of the service.
Trackbacks (Blogs)
- links in a blog post that refer readers back to cited sources - allow a blogger to see which and how many other bloggers are referring to their content - *trackback field* is supported by most blog software - not required to enter a trackback when citing another post, it's considered good "netiquette"
Virality can
- lower advertising and customer acquisition costs - increase reputation - lower the perception of risk.
IBM Social Network
- makes it easier to locate employee expertise within the firm, organize virtual work groups, and communicate across large distances - important due to IBMs large amount of employees working from home or client locations (42%)
Server Farms
- massive network of computer servers running software to coordinate their collective use. - *provide* the infrastructure backbone to SaaS, hardware cloud efforts, and many large-scale Internet services. - *require* plenty of cheap land, low-cost power, ultrafast fiber-optic connections, and benefit from mild climates *Google, Oracle's Sun, Microsoft, IBM, and HP* have all developed rapid-deployment server farm modules inside shipping containers
Facebook empowers its engineering staff to
- move quickly and release innovations before they are perfect at times - *hope is that* this will foster innovation and allow the firm to gain advantages from moving early, such as network effects, switching costs, scale, and learning *Facebook has repeatedly executed new initiatives and policy changes* - in ways that have raised public, partner, and governmental concern.
Airbnb
- multibillion-dollar hospitality industry empire (based in San Fran) - *started by* Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design - the poster child for the sharing economy - guest check into Airbnb every 2 seconds and over 200 million guests have stayed with Airbnb so far. - raised over $4.4 billion and is valued at more than $31 billion - listings in 81,000 cities and 192 countries, there is no other single hotel group that approached the firm's worldwide reach - *charges guests a fee* varying by property and other factors scaling from 0 to 20% and a 3% fee, paid after the first night
Apps
- over 1 billion smartphones are sold a year, providing a rich platform for app deployment. - apps lower the cost of software distribution and maintenance (compared with packaged software) - offer a richer user interface and integrate more tightly with a device's operating system, enabling more functionality and services such as app-delivered alerts. *mobile apps additional challenges for developers* - challenging updates - challenging version control - challenging A/B testing. *critics of apps* - say they force consumers into smartphone-walled gardens and raise consumer-switching costs. *development and distribution costs are cheaper for apps* than packaged software - it can be increasingly difficult for high-quality firms to generate consumer awareness among the growing crowd of app offerings.
Collaborative Consumption
- participants share access to products and services, rather than having ownership - resources can be owned by a central service provider (e.g., Zipcar) - resources can be provided by a community that pools available resources (e.g., Airbnb, Uber). - participants come together to pool resources to provide a larger selection of services for customers *example* - vehicles owned by the car-sharing service Zipcar, or the plane-sharing service NetJets
Factors that Determine What Posts are on your Feed
- past interest of a given user in the content's creator - post's performance among other users - performance of past posts by the content creator - type of posts a given user prefers (e.g., status, link, photo, etc.) - recency of the post
What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)
- phrase used to describe graphical editing tools, such as those found in a wiki, page layout program, or other design tool - easy enough for most users to grasp.
Prediction Market
- polling a diverse crowd and aggregating opinions in order to form a forecast of an eventual outcome. - tap crowd opinion with results that are often more accurate than the most accurate expert forecasts and estimates. - *most accurate* when tapping the wisdom of a diverse and variously skilled and experienced group - *least accurate* when participants are highly similar.
Sharing Economy is *allowing firms to*
- pool resources, products, and services in ways that create new markets and market opportunities *definition of sharing economy is imprecise*
FACEBOOK FACTS
- population of users is now so large that it could be considered the largest "nation" in the world - over 70% of the site's users log in at least once a day, spending an average of 50-80 minutes a day on the site - more than $40 billion in revenues and nearly $16 billion in profits in 2017 - US users spend more time on Facebook than on any other app - 42% of app time on smart mobile devices in the US is spent in the Facebook app
Social Proof
- positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something. - 91% of sharing economy participants would recommend the last service they used to a friend or colleague *endorsement from an acquaintance that states* - "getting rides from a stranger isn't scary, I do it and here's money so you can try it, too!"
Online Reputation Management
- process of tracking and responding to online mentions of a product, organization, or individual. *monitoring tools available to firms* *1. Google Alerts* - flags blog posts, new Web pages, and other publicly accessible content, regularly delivering a summary of new links to your mailbox *2. Link-shortening service bit.ly* - provides tools to track and graph sharing and click-through. *3. Twitter search* *4. TweetDeck*
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) TWITTER
- programming hooks, or guidelines published by firms that tell other programs how to get a service to perform a task such as send or receive data.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
- programming hooks, or guidelines, published by firms that tell other programs how to get a service to perform a task such as send or receive data - specified how programs could be written to run within and interact with Facebook - *zuckerberg was opening up Facebook* screen real estate, user base, and features like Feed to the world's developers - *developers who make applications* create *complementary benefits* that have the potential to add value to Facebook beyond what the firm itself provides to its users. - *developers of APIs* are allowed to charge for products, offer them for free, run ads and keep earnings through their apps.
Feed Feature (Social Networks)
- provides a timely list of the activities of and public messages from people, groups, and organizations that an individual has an association with - can rapidly mobilize populations and spread the adoption of applications, and offer low-cost promotion and awareness of a firm's efforts *feeds downside* mismanagement - can create accusations of spamming - public relations problems - user discontent - potentially of legal actions - *raise strong privacy concerns* - as status updates, past messages, photos, and other content linger, when user's behavior and network of contacts changes
Facebook Audience Network
- provides a way for firms to allow Facebook to gather advertisers, target ads, serve ads on third-party sites, and collect revenue - *does not* provide a way to sell user information
Options managers have when determining how to satisfy the software needs of their companies:
- purchase packaged software from a vendor - use OSS - use SaaS or utility computing - outsource development - develop all or part of the effort themselves
Sharing Economy *consist of* the following
- recirculation of goods - increased utilization of durable assets - exchange of services - sharing of productive assets - *sharing economy efficiency* is enhanced through streamlined coordination and broader reach by leveraging the Internet
Uber Improves the Environment by
- reducing DUI rates - providing a safer alternative to an elderly driver taking the wheel - making cities more appealing by reducing parking and road congestion
Acqui-Hire
- referring to "acquiring" a startup firm as a means of securing new talent to "hire" - facebook has become one of Silicon Valley's most aggressive practitioners of acqui-hire
Long Tail
- refers to an extremely large selection of content or products - is a phenomenon whereby firms can make money by offering a near-limitless selection. *in the context of blogging* - the niche content that is discoverable through search engines and that is often shared via other types of social media.
- was started by Mark Zuckerberg as a 19 year old college sophomore and eventual Harvard dropout - is ban in China (taking about 20% of world population off the table) - after deleting 2 billion fake accounts, roughly 1 in every 5 people on the planet has a Facebook account - *daily traffic* on facebook is 3x larger than the viewership of the Super Bowl - *accounts for* the largest share of social networking in the world with usage rates that would be the envy of most media companies - *Facebook apps* account for 30% of US mobile Internet use - 85% of facebook users come from abroad *In 2012* - public offering valued facebook at over $100 billion, and the $16 billion raised in the offering made it the biggest tech IPO - Zuckerberg's net worth topped $19 billion *In 2018* - revenues were over $55 billion and profits topped $22 billion - today mobile brings in over 90% of Facebook advertising revenue
Virtual Desktops
- when a firm runs an instance of a PC's software on another machine and simply delivers the image of what's executing to the remote device. - allows firms to scale, back up, secure, and upgrade systems far more easily than if they had to maintain each individual PC. - allow a server to run what amounts to a copy of a PC—OS, applications, and all—and simply deliver an image of what's executing to a PC or other connected device
Network Effects
- when the value of a product or service increases as its number of users expands. - *also known as* Metcalfe's Law, or network externalities. - people are attracted to facebook because others they care about are more likely to be on this social networking platform - *without the network effect*, Facebook wouldn't exist
Collaborative Consumption
- where a firm moves a whole category of products from something an individual owns outright to something that is *collaboratively consumed* - can be used to describe the efforts of people to become individual sellers and service providers - *occurs when* an individual takes possession of an item for a period of time, then returns it for use by others *consumers are even collaborating as financiers* pooling capital to back projects and provide loans - (Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Indiegogo) - (LendingClub, Prosper, Kiva) *also known as* - collaboration economy - peer-to-peer commerce - re-commerce
Libra (Facebook backed)
- will be a decentralized, blockchain powered, government-less cryptocurrency that lowers transaction costs and enables micro-transactions - is referred to as *facebook's cryptocurrency*, but Facebook is just the effort's instigating founding member. *at announcement, Libra was backed by 28 firms* - including Visa, Master-Card, PayPal, Stripe, Vodafone, Mercy Corps, eBay, Uber, and Spotify - *purpose is to* focus on creating new opportunities to serve the 1.7 billion adults worldwide who don't have a bank account - *will use its own separate blockchain*, not one tied to Bitcoin or any others, and the machines that support this distributed transaction ledger will be run by member organizations - *will be open to scrutiny by international authorities* demanding controls to prevent money laundering and use to fund terrorism
Entrenched Interests
- will challenge the legality of the sharing economy and lobby for its regulation or curtailment.
What Accelerates the Growth of Sharing Economy Marketplaces ?
- word of mouth sharing and the virality offered by social media - 47% of participants in the sharing economy learned about the services they used via word of mouth. - *firms that turn customers into brand ambassadors* see lower advertising and customer acquisition costs *example* Uber - every 7 riders attracts 1 new Uber user. - regularly offers customers discounts for sharing Uber coupons to attract friends as new riders
Three Reasons Many Humans are Offline
1) data is too expensive for many of the world's poorest citizens 2) services aren't designed for emerging market use by populations who need ultra-low bandwidth services that run reliably on very low-end or old, recycled hardware 3) content is not compelling enough to draw in non-users. *Cost, Compelling content, and Technical issues to make services available on low-end hardware are the three factors limiting Internet use.*
Risks Associated with SaaS include
1. Dependence on a single vendor. 2. Concern about the long-term viability of partner firms. 3. Users may be forced to migrate to new versions - possibly incurring unforeseen training costs and shifts in operating procedures. 3. Reliance on a network connection - which may be slower, less stable, and less secure. 4. Data asset stored off-site - with the potential for security and legal concerns. 5. Limited configuration, customization, and system integration options compared to packaged software or alternatives developed in-house. 6. The user interface of Web-based software is often less sophisticated and lacks the richness of most desktop alternatives. 7. Ease of adoption may lead to pockets of unauthorized IT being used throughout an organization
Top 11 Social Platforms
1. Facebook 2. YouTube 3. WhatsApp 4. Messenger 5. WeChat/Weixin 6. Instagram 7. QQ 8. QZone 9. Tik Tok / Douyin 10. Sina Weibo 11. Reddit 12. Twitter
Cloud Computing Implications across the industry
1. Financial future of hardware and software firms. 2. Cost structure and innovativeness of adopting organizations. 3. Skill sets likely to be most valued by employers. *cloud computing* is reshaping software, hardware, and service markets and is impacting competitive dynamics across industries.
Two Separate Categories of Cloud Computing
1. Software as a service (SaaS) 2. Utility Computing
Advertisers can promote tweets to any user based on
1. geography 2. language 3. keywords 4. interests 5. device type 6. matching e-mail addresses to those in their CRM (customer relationship management systems)
Benefits of Open Source Software
1. low cost 2. increased reliability 3. improved security and auditing 4. system scalability *just about every type of commercial product has an open source equivalent*
What statement is true about Airbnb Revenue Model
Airbnb charges both property owners and guests as part of transactions on their website
_____ is the biggest photo-sharing site on the Web, taking in around 3 billion photos each month.
Statement considered a contributor to vulnerabilities in the OpenSSL security product (heartbleed bug)
Few developers were working on the project, so the ideal that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" wasn't met with OpenSSL.
How did Airbnb's CEO gather additional intelligence on how the firm was being used?
He lived out of Airbnb rentals full-time.
Heartbleed lesson to managers
Just because a tool is used by many doesn't mean one shouldn't audit its software products to understand the strength of support and potential risks associated with use.
Which of the following refers to a variant of utility computing where vendors provide the operating system and supporting software like database management systems but where client firms write their own code?
Platform as a service (PaaS)
Vertical Niches
are products and services designed to target a specific industry
Facebook is currently the _____ most valuable public company on Earth.
fifth
Service Level Agreement
is a negotiated agreement between the customer and the vendor
Data Center Virtualization Software
is at the heart of many so-called private clouds and scalable corporate data centers, as well as the sorts of public efforts described earlier. - *virtualization software* can increase data center utilization to 80% or more
n00b
is the derogatory term for an uninformed or unskilled person
Facebook, a firm that has built its reputation on desktop dominance, is seeing new competition, especially in ____________ where the competitive dynamics differ significantly
mobile apps
The market for expensive, high margin, server hardware is threatened by companies
moving applications to the cloud instead of investing in hardware
Less popular open source products are not likely to attract the community of users and contributors necessary to help improve these products over time. This situation reiterates the belief that _____ are a key to success.
network effects
Smartphone apps have a huge benefit for increasing engagement over browser-based desktop services because of ________
push notifications
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, ensured that he remained in control of the firm even after it went public by:
retaining a majority of voting rights in the public company.