Final Exam Review

List three online marketing planning recommendations.

1. Build the marketing plan around the customer, rather than on products. 2. Monitor progress toward the one-year vision for the business in order to identify when adjustments are needed, and then be agile enough to respond. 3. Identify all key assumptions in the marketing plan. When there is evidence that those assumptions are wrong, identify the new assumptions and adjust the plan. 4. Make data-driven, fact-based plans.

Backlinks were a key factor in Google's original PageRank algorithm. Explain what a backlink is and why Google has reduced its emphasis on backlinks and instead uses many other additional factors in its ranking algorithm ?

A backlinks is an external link that points back to a site. Google has changed its ranking methods and the assumption is that backlinks are still very important, but not weighted as heavily as they used to be. Using a number of other factors yields a better picture of the relevance of sites to the search.

What is a blogging platform?

A blogging Platform is a software application used to create, edit, and add features to a blog. WordPress and Blogger are two of the most popular blogging platforms.

Explain why so-called black hat SEO tactics are ultimately short-sighted and can lead to significant consequences for businesses that use them.

Black hat tactics try to trick the search engine into thinking a website has high-quality content, when in fact it does not. The search engines have stronger detection systems in place and when they are discovered, Google and other SEs will usually punish the business by dramatically lowering the website's rank so that it does not show up on SERPs at all.

What is the difference between search engine optimization and PPC advertising?

Businesses utilize search engine optimization (SEO) to improve their website's organic listings on SERPs. No payments are made to the search engine service for organic search listings. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising refers to paid search listings where advertisers pay search engines based on how many people click on the ads.

What is the role of exchanges in B2B?

Exchanges are sites where many buyers and sellers conduct business transactions. They may be public or private, depending on whether or not they are open to the public. Vertical exchanges serve one industry (e.g., automotive, chemical), along the entire supply chain. Horizontal exchanges serve many industries that use the same products or services (e.g., office supplies, cleaning materials).

How has Amazon maintained its competitive edge?

How has Amazon maintained its competitive edge? Amazon has IT developments that received U.S. patents keeping it ahead of competition.

What is the difference between a blog and a microblog?

In their simplest form, blogs are websites where people regularly post content. Some personal blogs are simply online diaries or journals where people share their thoughts, reflections, or an account of their life. Other blogs are more sophisticated and professional in format, resembling online newspapers or magazines. Because blogging technology has become so common place, you may not always realize you are reading a blog when accessing online content. A microblog is a blog that consists of frequent, but very brief posts containing text, pictures, or videos. Twitter is perhaps the most well-known example of a microblog.

Explain why maverick buying might take place and its impact on procurement costs.

Maverick buying is outside the established system. If the procurement process is too complicated, people will go outside the system, and buy from a local vendor. Maverick buying can prove costly not only because that vendor's prices may be high, but it can also keep the company from achieving volume levels that could trigger a new tier of discounts.

List the types of mobile entertainment available to consumers.

Most notable are music, movies, videos, games, adult entertainment, sports, and gambling apps.

Besides e-commerce websites that sell products, what are some other ways that recommendation engines are being used on the Web today?

Netflix does recommendations of movies for customers similar to movies they already have watched. Pandora creates recommendations or playlists based on song attributes.

Describe a typical consumer mashup.

One of the most common examples of a consumer mashup that you are likely to encounter involves the integration of map data (from companies such as Google or Mapquest) with information like store names, locations, phone numbers, and consumer reviews from other websites.

What is an RSS reader?

RSS technology allows users to subscribe to multiple sources (e.g., blogs, news headlines, video) and have the content displayed in a single application, called an RSS reader or RSS aggregator. Depending on the features of the aggregator, users can personalize how they want information from their news sources organized and displayed.

When is predicting people's behavior a violation of privacy? Give an example.

Certainly when personal data upon which the prediction relies are collected without consent, as appears with Target, especially for those underage.

Describe four metrics that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a PPC advertising campaign.

Click through rates (CTRs)—By themselves, CTRs do not measure the financial performance of an ad campaign. But they are useful for evaluating many of the decisions that go into a campaign, such as keyword selection and ad copy. Keyword conversion—High CTRs are not always good if they do not lead to sales. Since the cost of the campaign is based on how many people click an ad, you want to select keywords that lead to sales (conversions), not just site visits. PPC advertisers monitor which keywords lead to sales and focus on those in future campaigns. Cost of customer acquisition (CoCA)—This metric represents the amount of money spent to attract a paying customer. To calculate CoCA for a PPC campaign, you divide the total budget of the campaign by the number of customers who purchased something from your site. For instance, if you spent $1,000 on a campaign that yielded 40 customers, your CoCA would be $1,000/40 5 $25 per customer. Return on advertising spend (ROAS)—The campaign's overall financial effectiveness is evaluated with ROAS (revenue /cost). For example, if $1,000 was spent on a campaign that led to $6,000 in sales, ROAS would be $6,000/$1,000 5 $6. In other words, for every dollar spent on PPC ads, $6 was earned.

What are the most common security risks associated with mobile banking?

Cloning Duplicating the electronic serial number (ESM) of one phone and using it in second phone, the clone. This allows the perpetrator to have calls and other transactions billed to the original phone. Phishing Using a fraudulent communication, such as an e-mail, to trick the receiver into divulging critical information such as account numbers, passwords, or other identifying information. Smishing Similar to phishing, but the fraudulent communication comes in the form of an SMS message. Vishing Again, similar to phishing, but the fraudulent communication comes in the form of a voice or voicemail message encouraging the victim to divulge secure information. Lost or stolen phone Lost or stolen cell phones can be used to conduct financial transactions without the owner's permission.

What are the four distinct methodologies used by recommender systems to create recommendations?

Content filtering, collaborative filtering, knowledge-based systems, and demographic systems.

Define the words "context," "personalization,"and "vertical search" and explain how they make for more powerful and accurate search results.

Context defines the intent of the user; for example, trying to purchase music, to find a job, to share memories with friends and family Personalization refers to the user's personal characteristics that impact how relevant the content, commerce, and community are to an individual. Vertical search, as you have read, focuses on finding information in a particular content area, such as travel, finance, legal, and medical. The current Web is disjointed, requiring us to visit different websites to get content, engage in commerce, and interact with our social networks (community). The future Web will use context, personalization, and vertical search to make content, commerce, and community more relevant and easier to access (Mitra, 2007).

What are the two basic goals of e-procurement? How can those goals be met?

Control costs: The first goal is to control corporate spending. Organizations want to spend intelligently for procurement activities to maximize the value of their spending, that is, to ensure that money spent to procure items results in procuring the right products at the best value. Corporate e-procurement constitutes a substantial portion of an organization's operational spending. For example, it is common for large manufacturing organizations to spend millions of U.S. dollars procuring products and services. Organizations thus design e-procurement systems to facilitate and control overall procurement spending. Simplify processes: The second goal is to streamline the procurement process to make it efficient. Inefficiencies in the procurement process introduce delays in ordering and receiving items and tax internal resources. The two goals of cost control and streamlining can be met in three ways: Streamline the e-procurement process within an organization's value chain. Doing so reduces the number of employees needed to process purchasing, reduces the procurement cycle time to order and receive items, and empowers an organization's staff with enough information about the products and services to enable them to make intelligent decisions when procuring items. Align the organization's procurement process with those of other trading partners, which belong to the organization's virtual supply chain. Alignment can be achieved by automating the process from end-to-end including trading partner's systems, and simplifies the buying process. This enables suppliers to react efficiently to buyers' needs. Use appropriate e-procurement strategies and solutions. Organizations analyze spending patterns in an effort to improve spending decisions and outcomes.

Why are retailers likely to view technology as both a blessing and a curse?

Countless new and innovative technology "solutions" to retailing problems are offered by a dizzying array of both established and new vendors. Many of the newest technologies promise to give retailers a competitive edge in the marketplace, but are unproven. Budgets for technology are limited, and making the wrong decision can lead to financial consequences, operational failures, and lost customers. However, because of intense competition, retailers cannot afford to be too conservative, or they risk losing out to competitors with technologies that enhance the shopping experience, reduce costs, integrate sales channels, and improve record keeping, data collection, and analysis of key performance indicators (KPIs).

What is the primary difference between a web directory and a crawler based search engine?

Crawler search engines rely on sophisticated computer programs called "spiders," "crawlers," or "bots" that surf the Internet, locating webpages, links, and other content that are then stored in the SE's page repository. Web directories are categorized listings of webpages created and maintained by humans. Because websites are only included after being reviewed by a person, it is less likely that search results will contain irrelevant websites.

Describe how digital content and services can lead to significantly lower costs.

Digital content and services eliminates many of the costs of physical products: selling one or many copies requires no additional storage space for the content; order fulfillment is entirely online (no warehouse shelves, no packing and shipping) and delivery logistics are minimal (delivered online, so make available to re-deliver if connection failed, etc.); and the largest business, personnel, can be minimal.

Describe three different real-time search tools.

Google Trends—Trends (google.com/trends) will help you identify current and historical interest in the topic by reporting the volume of search activity over time. Google Trends allows you to view the information for different time periods and geographic regions. Google Alerts—Alerts (google.com/alerts) is an automated search tool for monitoring new Web content, news stories, videos, and blog posts about some topic. Users set up alerts by specifying a search term (e.g., a company name, product, or topic), how often they want to receive notices, and an e-mail address where the alerts are to be sent. When Google finds content that match the parameters of the search, users are notified via e-mail. Bing has a similar feature called News Alerts. Twitter Search—You can leverage the crowd of over 650 million Twitter users to find information as well as gauge sentiment on a wide range of topics and issues in real time. Twitter's search tool (twitter.com/search-home) looks similar to other search engines, and includes an advanced search mode.

What is a recommendation engine called that combines different methodologies to create recommendations? What are three ways these systems combine methodologies?

Hybrid recommendation engines develop recommendations based on some combination of the methodologies described (content-based filtering, collaboration filtering, knowledge-based, and demographic systems). Weighted hybrid: Results from different recommenders are assigned a weight and combined numerically to determine a final set of recommendations. Relative weights are determined by system tests to identify the levels that produce the best recommendations. Mixed hybrid: Results from different recommenders are presented alongside of each other. Cascade hybrid: Recommenders are assigned a rank or priority. If a tie occurs (with two products assigned the same recommendation value), results from the lower-ranked systems are used to break ties from the higher-ranked systems. Compound hybrid: This approach combines results from two recommender systems from the same technique category (e.g., two collaborative filters), but uses different algorithms or calculation procedures.

What are some potential ways that business organizations can take advantage of Second Life's unique virtual world interface?

IBM used it as a location for meetings, training, and recruitment. American Apparel was the first major retailer to set up shop in Second Life. Starwood Hotels used Second Life as a relatively low-cost market research experiment in which avatars visit Starwood's virtual Aloft hotel. Fashion and clothing manufacturers like Reebok, American Apparel, Adidas, and others used Second Life as a place to feature new clothing designs, setting up virtual stores where Second Life citizens could purchase digital clothing for their avatars. The hope was that awareness of fashion products on Second Life would spur interest and eventual purchase of real-world products.

Explain Facebook's Open Graph initiative and how it plans to expand its influence across the World Wide Web.

In April 2010 Zuckerberg announced Facebook's new initiative called Open Graph. The goal was to connect all the different relationships that exist on the Internet by linking websites to Facebook. Programmers at external websites were encouraged to include a Facebook "Like" button on their websites. That way, when a Facebook member visits the website, they can click "Like" and their relationship with that website will be reflected back on their Facebook page for friends to see. Facebook also encourages other websites to allow people to use their Facebook username and password to sign in or create accounts. For instance, if you are a Facebook member and you visit Pandora.com (a music service) or Yelp.com (a local directory service), you can sign into the sites using your Facebook username and password. Facebook will then share your profile information with those sites.

In addition to the "bid price" for a particular keyword, what other factor(s) influence the likelihood that an advertisement will appear on a search results page? Why don't search engines just rely on the advertisers bid when deciding what ads will appear on the search results page?

In addition to selecting keywords and setting bid prices, advertisers also set parameters for the geographic location they want their ad to appear in and time of day. These factors allow for additional customer targeting designed to help advertisers reach the consumers most likely to purchase their products. A quality score is determined by factors related to the user's experience. Ads that are considered to be more relevant (and therefore more likely to be clicked on) will cost less and more likely run in a top position. Relevant ads are good for all parties—the search engine makes more money from clicked ads, the advertiser experiences more customers visiting its site, and the customer is more likely to find what he or she is looking for.

Briefly differentiate between the sell-side marketplace and e-sourcing.

In the sell-side marketplace model, organizations sell their products or services to other organizations from their own private website or from a third-party site. This model is similar to the B2C model in which the buyer is expected to come to the seller's site, view catalogs, and place an order. In the B2B sell-side marketplace, however, the buyer is an organization. The two key mechanisms in the sell-side model are forward auctions and online catalogs, which can be customized for each buyer. E-sourcing refers to many different procurement methods that make use of an electronic venue for identifying, evaluating, selecting, negotiating, and collaborating with suppliers. The primary methods are online auctions, RFQ (request for quote) processing, and private exchanges. E-sourcing also applies to many other secondary activities, which add to the cycle time and transaction costs when performed using traditional methods. Secondary activities include trading partner collaboration, contract negotiation, and supplier selection.

What are some examples of user information required by recommendation engines that use collaborative filtering?

Many collaborative filtering systems use purchase history to identify similarities between customers. In principle, however, any customer characteristic that improves the quality of recommendations could be used, such as patterns of consumer behavior, interests, ratings, reviews, social media contacts and conversations, media use, financial information, and so on. Before implementing a content-based recommendation engine, what kind of information would website operators need to collect about their products? Content-based filtering recommends products based on the product features of items the customer has interacted with in the past and the similarity to other products' features.

Explain why the mobile gaming market represents such a lucrative market opportunity.

Media research firm Nielsen (2011) reports that games are the most popular mobile apps in the U.S. Reports of market size and growth rates differ on the exact amounts, but agree this category is sizable and growing rapidly. Estimates of 2013 mobile game revenue range from approximately $12 billion to $17 billion and analysts predict the market could grow to as much as $22 billion by 2015.

What is a micropayment and why is it beneficial to consumers and businesses that mobile payment systems can process these types of transactions?

Micropaymentsare transactions involving relatively small sums of money. The ability to make micropayments allows individuals to use their mobile devices to do things like purchase a beverage from a vending machine or make a payment to a municipal parking meter. Purchases can be spontaneous and fewer sales are lost due to not having the exact change, or even any cash on hand at all.

Describe the ways in which businesses can benefit from using social media monitoring tools?

Monitoring applications allow users to track conversations taking place on social media sites. The initial impetus for the growth of monitoring tools was the need for business organizations to better understand what people were saying about their brands, products, and executives (the "listening" part of the groundswell strategy model). Monitoring services can be used to identify industry experts, commentators, and opinion leaders who post regularly to social media sites. Once identified, public relations professionals can build relationships with these individuals and encourage them to become brand advocates who regularly portray the brand or company positively in their online writing and social media posts.

Why are social bookmarking services superior to the traditional method of saving "favorites" or "bookmarks" in a browser?

Most Web browsers allow users to store links to online content by saving them to a list of favorites or bookmarks. This approach becomes cumbersome as more information is saved because lists grow long and difficult to use. Organizing bookmarks into folders helps a bit, but the folders tend to hide information and users can forget what folder they have stored information in. Social bookmarking services provide tools which allow users to tag Web content with keywords of their choosing. Users can retrieve links by searching on these keywords. In addition to retrieving links tagged with keywords, users can search for Web content tagged by others. This is what makes the bookmarking system "social."

List some ways that travelers and travel-related businesses are using mobile technology.

Most major airlines, hotel chains, and Internet travel agencies have developed mobile apps to help travelers manage their arrangements. Airlines frequently give passengers the option of receiving up-to-date information about their flights via SMS text messaging. Google Maps is perhaps one of the most popular apps used by travelers, particularly those traveling by automobile. Even AAA, the automobile club, has a mobile app that helps drivers plan their trips and an app for drivers who need roadside assistance. Other interesting mobile travel tools include apps that translate text when traveling abroad, apps for finding nearby Wi-Fi hotspots, and apps created by a number of popular travel guides. Most large hotels chains, and many independent hotels and inns offer guests in-room, wireless high-speed Internet connections, although this is not always a free service. Some of these same hotels offer Wi-Fi Internet access in public areas like the lobby and meeting rooms. Larger hotel chains have apps that allow guests to make reservations, check their bills, and locate hotel services using a mobile app. Starwood, Hilton and other hotels are experimenting with mobile check-in programs whereby guests use their mobile devices to gain access to their rooms using NFC or SMS text message technology. This makes it possible to check-in to the hotel without having to stop first at the front desk. Many airlines now offer travelers the option of loading a boarding pass onto their mobile devices.

How do metadata tags facilitate more accurate search results?

Much of the world's digital information is stored in files structured so that they can only be read by the programs that created them. With metadata, the content of these files can be labeled with tags describing the nature of the information, where it came from, or how it is arranged, essentially making the Web one large database that can be read and used by a wide variety of applications. The semantic Web will make it possible to access information about real things (people, places, contracts, books, chemicals, etc.) without worrying about the details associated with the nature or structure of the data files, pages, and databases where these things are described or contained (Hendler and Berners-Lee, 2010).

What are the major differences between social networking services and older online communities?

Older online communities were often like public bulletin boards where all members of the community could read the messages that others posted. Websites were static, essentially online billboards for the businesses that created them. E-mail was the primary mechanism for social interaction. A Social Networking Service (SNS) is an online platform or website that allows subscribers to interact and form communities or networks based on real-life relationships, shared interests, activities and so on. We use a variety of tools and services for sharing interests with others. In addition to consuming content, we add comments or reviews and signal our appreciation for the content by clicking a "Like" or "11" button.

Search engines use many different "clues" about the quality of a website's content to determine how a page should be ranked in search results. These clues fall into three primary categories: Reputation or Popularity, Relevancy, and User Satisfaction. Explain the rationale for using each of these three categories as an indicator of a website's content quality.

One way of assessing the quality of a website is to use measures of popularity. This is based on the assumption that websites with good content will be more popular than sites with poor quality content. On the assumption that people are more likely to link to high-quality websites than poor-quality sites, one measure of popularity is the number of backlinks—external links that point back to a site. Search engines attempt to determine if the content on a webpage is relevant to what the searcher is looking for. As with quality, the search engine cannot determine relevance directly, so algorithms have been developed to look for clues that suggest a site might be relevant. Factors which affect relevancy: Keywords related to the search topic suggest relevant content. Page titles: Words in the page title that are related to the topic suggest relevant content. Relevant phrases in text: In addition to keywords, search engines look at the words and phrases on the page to determine relevance. Amount of text on page that appears relevant: The proportion of relevant text to non-relevant text can influence relevance. Backlinks from relevant sites and Web directories: Webpages that are listed in relevant categories of Web directories are more likely to be relevant because they were reviewed by human editors. SERP click through rate (CTR): Searchers are more likely to click on listings that contain relevant content. Onpage factor: Metadata (such as page titles, page descriptions) and descriptive URLs should reflect the page content. People use the information in search listings to determine if a link contains relevant information. This affects CTR. Dwell time and bounce rate are impacted by how relevant a website's content is. Long dwell times and short bounce rates suggest relevant content related to the search. Search engines want their customers to be satisfied. As a result, SERP ranking is influenced by factors that impact user satisfaction. Factors that are likely to influence a search engine's user satisfaction rating are: Dwell time: Users that stay on a site longer are probably more satisfied. Site speed: Slow page loading time on websites reduces satisfaction. Reading level: Reading levels that are too high or too low frustrate users. Hacked sites, malware, spam reduce user satisfaction significantly. Website satisfaction surveys: Google created user satisfaction surveys that webmasters can embed in their websites. Positive responses to these surveys can improve ranking. Barriers to content: Making people register, provide names, or fill out forms to get to content has a negative impact on user satisfaction. Other factors: Too many ads, page-not-found errors, duplicate content/pages, content copied from other websites, and spam in comment sections all detract from user satisfaction.

Why does channel conflict sometimes occur when companies sell their products through both traditional and online channels?

Sellers that are click-and-mortar companies, face a conflict with their regular wholesale and retail distributors when they circumvent those distributors by selling online directly to customers. Conflicts may arise in areas such as pricing of products and services, allocation of resources (e.g., advertising budget), and logistics services provided by the offline activities to the online activities (e.g., handling of returned items bought online).

How can working teams use social media as an alternative to face-to-face meetings?

Services like Skype and ooVoo now make it possible to conduct video calls among small groups, making it easier to hold meetings.

Describe how an omni-channel retailer is likely to be different from a traditional, single-channel retailer?

Single-channel retailers only had a single "touch point" with which to connect with consumers. Omni-channel retailers offer consumers multiple brand-based "touchpoints" that leverage the strengths of each channel as well as their single view of the customer to provide optimal overall experience.

What are some ways you can use social media to solicit knowledge, information, and advice from experts on the Web?

Social media monitoring tools can be used to search the Web for blog posts, tweets and other social activity by industry experts and commentators that might prove to be sources of valuable information. It is often possible to engage these experts on social media by commenting on blog posts, interacting on social networks or services like Twitter.

What is the use of social media to find, screen, and select job candidates?

Social recruitment refers to use of social media to find, screen, and select job candidates. Often it involves searching information the job candidate did not want considered or that is illegal to use in the hiring process.

Describe some of the ways that people are using mobile devices to shop for products and services.

Some ways people use mobile devices when shopping: ordering product from online vendors; "checking in" at retail locations to obtain coupons; opting-in to receive discounts via SMS text messages; opting-in for in-store tracking/loyalty programs that offer discounts and special premiums; using QR codes or mobile visual search for additional product information; comparing product and price in-store to those found online (showcasing); managing travel arrangements for hotels and airlines; using marketing apps like Foursquare or Shopkick; using augmented reality to help make choices based upon the shoppers' requirements.

Briefly describe the three evolutionary stages of the Internet?

The first stage was Web 1.0 (The Initial Web) - A Web of Pages. Pages or documents are "hyperlinked," making it easier than ever before to access connected information. The first stage was Web 2.0 (The Social Web) - A Web of Applications. Applications are created that allow people to easily create, share, and organize information. The third stage is Web 3.0 (The Semantic Web) - A Web of Data. Information within documents or pages is tagged with metadata, allowing users to access specific information across platforms, regardless of the original structure of the fi le, page, or document that contains it. It turns the Web into one giant database.

How has Web 2.0 changed the behavior of Internet users?

The new technologies dramatically increase the ability of people to interact with businesses and each other, sharing and finding information, and forming relationships.

Why is Web 2.0 referred to as the social Web?

The new technologies dramatically increase the ability of people to interact with businesses and each other, sharing and finding information, and forming relationships. This perspective explains why Web 2.0 is often called the social Web

What is the phenomenon where social users are concerned about privacy but their behaviors contradict these concerns?

The privacy paradox refers to this phenomenon where social users are concerned about privacy but their behaviors contradict these concerns to an extreme degree. Users of social sites often claim that they are concerned about their privacy. At the same time, they disclose their highly personal lives, even content that is incriminating or illegal, in their profiles or posts.

What are the three languages developed by the W3C and associated with the semantic Web?

The semantic Web utilizes additional languages that have been developed by the W3C. These include resource description framework (RDF), Web ontology language (OWL), and SPARQL protocol and RDF query language (SPARQL).

What are the two basic types of mobile payment transactions?

The two basic transaction types are using a mobile device for the online purchase of goods and services (e.g., ordering a book from Amazon.com), and for payment of goods and services in a traditional brick-and-mortar store.

What are the four primary steps to creating a PPC advertising campaign on search engines?

There are four steps to creating a PPC advertising campaign on SEs. 1. Set an overall budget for the campaign. 2. Create ads—most search engine ads are text only. 3. Select keywords associated with the campaign. 4. Set up billing account information.

How is Tumblr different from other types of blogging platforms? Most microblog content consists of text-based messages, although there appears to be an increase in people who are microblogging photos and video on Twitter and Tumblr. Tumblr has increased in popularity recently among younger Internet users because of its multimedia capabilities and ease of use.

Tumblr is often described as a microblogging service because it makes the posting of multimedia content easy for users, and allows them to update their blogs frequently. However, Tumblr blogs can include just as much text as a regular blog, although most who use the service emphasize photographs and video as the primary content. This emphasis on multimedia makes the Tumblr blogs more visually compelling. Tumblr is particularly popular among those who are blogging about things like fashion, entertainment, and the arts.

Why are the legal concepts of discrimination and negligent hiring competing demands on a business?

Two competing legal concerns are discrimination and negligent hiring. These put pressure on prospective employers to find out what they can about a potential employee, to avoid negligence in hiring, yet not cross the line into discrimination. Discrimination. Most employers have stringent employment policies that prevent their recruiters and hiring managers from learning potentially discriminatory information about candidates. Visiting a person's social media sites, however, clearly creates the opportunity to view large amounts of information going against these nondiscriminatory practices. Negligent hiring. Employers must consider the potential risk of a negligent hiring or negligent retention lawsuit related to social networking profile information. It is possible that if a workplace violence incident occurred and the attacker's public social networking profile contained information that could have predicted that behavior, the employer may be held liable for negligence in not using readily available information during the hiring decision.

How do organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and tactics?

Using Web analytics programs like Google Analytics, companies can determine how many people visit their site, what specific pages they visit, how long they spend on the site, and what search engines are producing the most traffic. More sophisticated SEO practitioners will also analyze keyword conversion rates, or the likelihood that using a particular keyword to optimize a page will result in conversions (i.e., when a website visitor converts to a buyer).These are just a few of the many metrics used to measure the effectiveness of SEO strategies.

What are the basic tools or applications that characterize Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is a term used to describe a phase of World Wide Web evolution characterized by dynamic webpages; use of XML and Java; social media; data from multiple sources, as in mashup applications; broadband connectivity; user communities; and user-generated and user-controlled content.

How are companies using QR codes to promote products and services to mobile consumers? Why are QR codes not as popular in the U.S. as they are in Asia and other parts of the world?

When products are tagged with QR codes, consumers can scan the QR codes to access product information from a mobile device. Using a barcode scanner app and the camera feature of a mobile device, customers scan the QR code containing a link to an Internet webpage and/or directing customers to promotional videos that feature its products. The QR codes may be on in-store displays, the products themselves, and marketers may use them in print advertising and direct mail ads. Charitable organizations may use QR codes on the outside of direct mail solicitations. Scanning takes the user to a video explaining the mission of the organization, typically making a more compelling request for a donation than what is possible through print media. Some experts cite studies that report many smartphone users simply do not know what to do with a QR code. Other research suggests that users think the scanning process is either inconvenient or that QR codes frequently direct users to pages that do not really contain anything of interest. For QR codes to become something American consumers use frequently, businesses will have to prove that they help mobile users find content that is interesting and valuable.

How is a recommendation engine different from a search engine?

With a search engine, customers find products through an active search, assuming customers know what they want and how to describe it when forming their search query. Recommendation engines proactively identify products that have a high probability of being something the consumer might want to buy. Each time customers log into the site, they are presented with an assortment of products based on their purchase history, browsing history, product reviews, ratings, and many other factors.

What makes Twitter a more attractive communication channel than traditional media for many individuals and organizations?

With traditional media, content is tightly controlled and brand messages are "pushed" out to users, often in the form of an ad interruption. With social media, users are frequently attracted or "pulled" to content that is interesting to them and they have greater freedom to decide if, when, and how they want to interact with such content.

What are some of the most important messages for business organizations in the Cluetrain Manifesto?

"Markets are conversations." These conversations enable powerful forms of social organization and knowledge exchange. People have figured out they obtain better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products. Companies should realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

Before implementing a content-based recommendation engine, what kind of information would website operators need to collect about their products?

Content filtering, collaborative filtering, knowledge-based systems, and demographic systems.

What are some of the benefits or advantages that Web developers gain from using AJAX technologies?

AJAX technologies, or asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a term referring to a group of technologies and programming languages that make it possible for webpages to respond to users' actions without requiring the entire page to reload. AJAX makes it possible for Web developers to create small apps that run on a page instead of a server. This capability makes programs run much faster, eliminating a key source of frustration with the early Web. With AJAX and APIs, website programmers can import data from other sources to create new functions and features that we have come to associate with social media applications.

What is the purpose of an index in a search engine?

An index helps search engines efficiently locate relevant pages containing keywords used in a search.

Why do marketers use blogs and microblogs?

Corporate bloggers use the medium to tell stories about their brands and connect with customers. Blogs can also be an effective tool for interactive dialogue. Many blogs utilize comment features, allowing readers to respond to blog posts, interacting with the blogger and other readers.

What is the basic difference between the social graph and Berners-Lee's concept of the Giant Global Graph?

Facebook has begun using the term social graph to refer to the global social network reflecting how we are all connected to one another through relationships. Facebook users can access a social graph application that visually represents the connections among all the people in their network. Berners-Lee (2007) extends this concept even further when he coined the term giant global graph. This concept is intended to illustrate the connections between people and/or documents and pages online.

List five different practical ways that semantic technology is enhancing the search experience of users.

Grimes (2010) provides a list of practical benefits that could result from semantic search technology: Related searches/queries. The engine suggests alternative search queries that may produce information related to the original query. Search engines may also ask you, "Did you mean: [search term]?" if it detects a misspelling. (This already happens with some.) Reference results. The search engine suggests reference material related to the query, such as a dictionary definition, Wikipedia pages, maps, reviews, or stock quotes. Semantically annotated results. Returned pages contain highlighting of search terms, but also related words or phrases that may not have appeared in the original query. These can be used in future searches simply by clicking on them. Full-text similarity search. Users can submit a block of text or even a full document to find similar content. Search on semantic/syntactic annotations. This approach would allow a user to indicate the "syntactic role the term plays—for instance, the part-of-speech (noun, verb, etc.)—or its semantic meaning—whether it's a company name, location, or event." For instance, a keyword search on the word "center" would produce too many results. Instead, a search query could be written using a syntax such as the following: <organization> center </organization> This would only return documents where the word "center" was part of an organization's name. Google currently allows you to do something similar to specify the kind of files you are looking for (e.g., filetype:pdf) Concept search. Search engines could return results with related concepts. For instance, if the original query was "Tarantino films," documents would be returned that contain the word "movies" even if not the word "films." Ontology-based search. Ontologies define the relationships between data. An ontology is based on the concept of "triples": subject, predicate, and object. This would allow the search engine to answer questions such as "What vegetables are green?" The search engine would return results about "broccoli," "spinach," "peas," "asparagus," "Brussels sprouts," and so on. Semantic Web search. This approach would take advantage of content tagged with metadata as previously described in this section. Search results are likely to be more accurate than keyword matching. Faceted search. Faceted search provides a means of refining results based on predefined categories called facets. For instance, a search on "colleges" might result in options to "refine this search by. . ." location, size, degrees offered, private or public, and so on. Faceted search tools available today tend to focus on a specific domain, such as Wikipedia or Semidico, a search tool for biomedical literature. Clustered search. This is similar to a faceted search, but without the predefined categories. Visit Carrot2.org to better understand this concept. After conducting a search, click on the "foamtree" option to see how you can refine your search. The refining options are extracted from the content in pages of the initial search. Natural language search. Natural language search tools attempt to extract words from questions such as "How many countries are there in Europe?" and create a semantic representation of the query. Initially, this is what people hoped search engines would evolve toward, but Grimes wonders if we have become so accustomed to typing just one or two words into our queries that writing out a whole question may seem like too much work.

What is feature convergence? Give some examples of this trend with regard to social media apps.

Feature convergence is the trend for applications to take on additional features of other applications, such that few applications fit neatly into categories anymore. For instance, Facebook started as a social networking service, but now has features that span almost all of the categories of Web 2.0 applications. YouTube started as a sharing site, making it easy for people to share video clips with others. However, YouTube now contains many features that make it difficult to distinguish from a social networking service. The same is true of Flickr, a photo-sharing site that has really become a community platform for people interested in photography.

What would most people say is the fundamental difference between organic listings and PPC listings on a search engine ?

Paid advertisements receive preferential page placement, but most major search engines differentiate organic search results from paid ad listings on SERPs with labels, shading, and placing the ads in a different place on the page.

When is predicting people's behavior not a violation of privacy? Give an example.

It depends on the level of intrusiveness, and that can be very subjective. One might argue that Canadian Tire's credit card business inherently has purchase information and can analyze to determine risk of missed payments.

What are the most common types of mobile banking activities consumers perform?

Most common mobile banking: account alerts, security alerts, and reminders; account balances, updates, and history; customer service via mobile; branch or ATM location information; bill-pay (e.g., utility bills), and delivery of online payments by secure agents and mobile phone client apps; funds transfers; transaction verification.

By avoiding illegal conduct, do companies also act responsibly? Explain your answer.

No. What is legal is not necessarily ethical or responsible. Laws lag behind what is possible to do because laws change slowly whereas technology changes rapidly.

Explain why providing high quality, regularly updated content is the most important aspect of any SEO strategy.

Perhaps the most important action an organization can take to improve its website's ranking and satisfy website visitors is provide helpful content that is current and updated regularly. When SEO practices are combined with valuable content, websites become easier to find in search engines but, more importantly, contribute to building brand awareness, positive attitudes toward the brand, and brand loyalty.

Why would a business want to create a private SNS? What are some of the challenges associated with doing this?

Private SNSs allow a greater degree of control over the network. Companies can easily monitor activity on their own SNS platforms and track conversations taking place about their brands and products. Managing a private SNS requires considerably more time, attention, and resources than maintaining a presence on a general SNS. Organizations need to understand up-front that they are making a substantial commitment with this strategy.

Age, disability, gender, religion, and race are examples of what?

Protected classes.

What are some ways in which traditional brick-and-mortar retailers can use mobile technology to enhance a customer's in-store shopping experience?

Retailers can offer coupons or other special deals when the customer "checks in" or "checks out" at a store. They also can encourage the use of QR codes to help consumers find product information. In-store shopping experiences can be optimized through mobile technology that can track a customer's movement through a retail store.

How do webpage factors influence the effectiveness of PPC advertisements?

The effectiveness of PPC ads is heavily influenced by factors on the webpages that ads are linked to. For instance, sometimes companies create product-oriented ads, but then link to the main page of their website instead of a page with information about the product in the ad. Other factors include landing page design, effectiveness of the call to action, and the quality of the shopping cart application. A PPC campaign will not be very effective if the website is not attractive to consumers once they reach it.

Describe the page-ranking method most commonly associated with Google's success.

The methods by which search engines determine page rank vary and the specific algorithms they use are often carefully guarded trade secrets. In some cases, a search engine may use hundreds of different criteria to determine which pages appear at the top of a SERP. Google, for instance, claims to use over 200 "clues" to determine how it ranks pages (Google.com, 2014). According to Dover and Dafforn (2011), all these factors can be grouped into two categories: relevance and popularity (or "authority").

What are the ethical challenges attached to 3D printing and 3D bioprinting?

There are many. They range from legal to illegal activities (e.g., theft of intellectual property.) When demand is high, will living and/or nonliving medical organs/devices go to the highest bidder? Who is legally responsible for ensuring the quality of the resulting organs and devices? In some cases, 3D printing may be the only mechanism to produce an item. 3D printing is costly. In cases where non-additive manufacturing can do the same at less cost, which will be used?

What advantages do sites like Dropbox and box.net have over e-mail as a way of sharing and collaborating on creating documents? The e-mail approach has several drawbacks, perhaps the most obvious being the challenge of keeping different versions of the work organized.

There are two features of Dropbox that make it a great tool. First, saving files to Dropbox is just as easy as saving a file to your hard drive. Other services require you to manually upload and download files. Dropbox also maintains a version history for documents, making it easy to see changes made to a document and undo them if necessary. This is a great feature for teams working on collaborative writing projects. Like Dropbox, box.net is a cloud storage service but places greater emphasis on social tools and features, which make it a great choice for collaborating teams. Users can edit files stored on box.net without downloading to their hard drives. Like many other social companies, box.net has created an open source API, allowing third-party developers to write applications for box.net users that offer additional sharing and collaboration features. Over 60 such apps have been developed so far.

Rejecting a job candidate because of concerns about the person's health from information on his or her Facebook page is an example of what?

This is an example of corporate social media discrimination.

Why are mashups considered part of social media?

To begin with, many of the most popular APIs used in mashup apps are from social media sites. That means the data involved in the mashup are likely to be user-generated social information. The other reason mashups are considered social media is that they represent the power to separate content from form—allowing Web developers (and sometimes users) greater control over how information is displayed and used on the Web.

What are several potential causes of cognitive overload?

Tweets, texts, e-mail, social media, and annoying electronic static are potential causes.

What types of companies can benefit from predicting people's behavior?

Virtually any type. The most benefit is for those at the end of the supply chain (retailers, etc.)

Why have e-wallets not been widely adopted and what will makers of e-wallets need to do to make this payment method more attractive to consumers?

While Google Wallet has received considerable attention in the technology press, in part because of Google's power and influence in the industry, relatively few consumers can use this option. Only a small number of phones have the required NFC feature. Additionally, the program is only available to people with Citi MasterCard with PayPass or Google's pre-paid credit card. To be successful, the program will have to expand beyond these limitations. (The astute student may be aware of the recent release of iPhone 6, which has a secure NFC payment capability.)