Wikipedia’s appeal

Today I wanted to review an article in Wikipedia when I came across an appeal from Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales. What he is asking for is donations so that the non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation can continue operating, with its staff of 35 people. The ending of the letter states the following:

“…Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge…”

This is quite an interesting quote, although partly irrelevant with the three major topics that this blog deals with. It leads back to what academic people think of wikipedia, as a reference, and the objections from the Web 2.0 community. There are people supporting the use of Wikipedia as the volume of articles is really huge, and, since many people can contribute to them, they do not lack quality and they are not subjective. If you add the people who work for Wikimedia Foundation and monitor these articles and the extremely fast updates (i.e. read today’s case about Brittany Murphy’s death) you have the ultimate source for information on the Internet.

Now, we have the scientists and academics’ point of view. For them Wikipedia is not valid for referencing, since knowledge there is not usually supported by any scientific methodology. Therefore, assignments with Wikipedia references come as a joke in the academic community (“the thing he did was even worse than referencing Wikipedia!”). Academics do not seem positive to change their attitude against this online encyclopedia soon.

Yes, I can still go on and write a tone about Wikipedia and the controversy about this, but I think that if there is even a chance that Wales’ afforementioned sentence can prove right, we should think about helping Wikipedia. After all:

1)They do not ask money for content (and there are plenty of cases where this happened with other websites).

2)They are far more cost-effective than buying and carrying any other encyclopedia.

3)Everyone can add to this – and by this I really mean everyone. User generated content for other users to read; and that’s Web 2.0 people..!

The Borders Case

It has been a while since my last post, but the pace here was rather fast! Well,today I will briefly discuss on of the events that “consumed” 1 hour of my life last Sunday.

Apparently, those of you that live in UK know that Borders, the well known book-store, is about to close. What I did not know (and after finding out that all Kotler’s books were gone by the time I arrived at the store) was that their discounts for business books are just epic! This Sunday I got a 60% discount, resulting in me paying just 20 pounds, instead of almost 50. The case though is not this.

It is funny and sad, at the same time, to see hundreds of people literally looting Borders here in Glasgow (and I guess that this is not the only place). The discounts seem to work quite well, Borders will get rid of the stock, but I am not quite sure if all these people were about to buy any books before this event. We are talking about people who walk besides you, holding usually 3 to 10 books which, under other circumastances, they would have bought throughout a whole year possibly. When the price is falling, books turn almost into commodities, and spending a fiver for a book u don’t know (like I did) seems like a no-risk investment.

Wasn’t it possible for Borders to just lower the prices before? As one American friend told me (since I am quite unfamiliar with Borders, we don’t have any stores in Greece), Borders’ prices were always higher than the main competitor of the industry, Amazon. So, even when they had their student discounts (usually around 20% off) they would drop at the same level. It is a rather interesting thing to think what would have happened if Borders were just decreasing prices, or improve the feeling and the experience of being in a bookstore. However, I guess we will never know…quite ironically, I am quite sure that Borders have never experienced such a flow of customers, and they will never experience it again.

And all these link back to the competition between traditional channels and the web-based companies. In this era of diversified competition, where your business is actually subject to competition from every single place in the planet, you should watch out more about your strategies, regarding prices and adding customer value. Again, it is not my personal experience but I think I’m free to guess that Borders failed at both of these, and that is why they’re closing now.

P.S.: The underlying message of this was simple and had nothing to do with marketing: run to Borders and get some books, before they empty the place!

2012

Well, you could call it another special effects movie, and yes it’s true. The particular scene where a whole city in California is destroyed withing 4 minutes, ot the one in Yellowstone National Park are portraying a very good use of this art. Of course, in the end people will survive (at least some of them), the hero will do something memorable and still make it, and earn everything, and people will find out that mount Everest is not the highest mountain anymore. Actually, a perfect solution for people who don’t want to spend their night trying to understand the symbolic meaning behind a particular dialogue, or the meaning of a movement (yeah,I’m talking about all those “quality cinema” fans).

But still, 2 hours and 38 minutes? Seriously, I can destroy the Earth faster, much faster! And remember one of the basic laws of movies: even if you can’t fly a plane, or you have just taken a 2 hours’ lesson on a small one, you may still hide an ace combat pilot within you, waiting for the right moment to come out and rock (let’s say, the end of the world??)!

Anyway, for those who haven’t seen the movie, go on and enjoy it, it’s a good alternative for a Friday night.

28/11/09 – Song of the day

Take Five – Dave Brubeck Quartet

The song that everyone knows, but noone seems to remember its name. Originally intended to be a drum solo song it is probably one of the most well known jazz songs, because of its unique saxophone theme. Enjoy!

Is Google a customer led business?

It has been in my mind for some days, since I was first iniciated in the RUCL model (are you Customer-led). I guess that one of the key points about Google is that it does not always respond to needs – in some cases it is proactive, with all the positive and negative aspects associated to this. As we speak, Google is preparing the launch of a new search engine, Google Caffeine, which will change some things, most important of them the results’ appearance. Will this be succesful or not? We still do not know, but Google felt that a bit of “renewal” was needed, since Microsoft introduced Bing, with a clear intention to attack Google’s market share.

Apart from this, Google seems to change constantly things in Google Chrome. Should you add Google’s attempts to enter the OS market, we have a very proactive company, but is this always to the clients’ direction? It all leads back to that funny Dilbert strip, depicting a company with no marketing department, where engineers were free to design whatever they wanted to.

Yet, Google is quite succesful, leading the way in many fields and, apart from some mistakes it has made during the past years, continues to be a titan on its field. Could this mean that at some points you have to identify trends and needs even before they occur?

Companies still do not understand Web 2.0. – the case of Rupert Murdoch and Microsoft

NewsCorp is about to withdraw all of its news from Google. Microsoft will play a significant role in this, since Microsoft Bing will be the only engine with access to these news, for the right price of course, as announced yesterday.

Nothing new here. Corporations still do not understand the power of Web 2.0., and still think of the web generally as a place to make big money. Stupid kind of thinking from narrow-minded people, who cannot understand that Web was developed by academics and tech people and NOT by business people. So what if Murdoch decides to withdraw his articles from Google? They are really a drop in the ocean, since people have ways to be informed without paying anything at all. On the other hand, it is quite disgraceful that Microsoft decided to move this way, since it shows that it really has no intention to participate in Web 2.0. Not an innovative approach, right?

Google will continue to exist after this, that’s for sure. People will not even notice the loss of content, and Murdoch will eventually destroy both his company’s brand and his personal story as a smart businessman. Something which again points out the obvious: no matter how smart you are, if you cannot understand Web 2.0., don’t mess with it.

Nostalgia advertising – Hovis

My topic of interest lately, nostalgia advertising is clearly depicted in this advertisment. Many researchers and marketers suggest that nostalgia advertising has become very important, because of the current economic downturn. I prefer to think that nostalgia marketing in general has always been an issue, ever since experiential consumption was introduced as a field.

For those who do not know, Hovis is a historical British brand of bread, which celebrated its 122 years with this ad. The transition from late 19th century till early 21st century is performed by using the same character as in another historical Hovis advertisment of 1973, a young boy bringing bread back home.

Youtube is making “big money” from record labels

Universal Group and Sony BMG are currently responsible for almost 6% of Youtube’s revenues, according to Silicon Alley Insider. It seems that Google’s monetization plan works absolutely fine, since, apart from these two key accounts, Youtube has managed to have many of its major clients’ contribution to revenues below 1%. In a world where things change rapidly (like the music and movies sector), it is always good to have a backup plan.

3D on top of Sony’s strategy for 2010

As pre-designed in April 2009, the band will focus on 3d technology for 2010. Sony hopes that by implementing this strategy, it will be able to achieve the aim of 1 trillion yen by 2013. Blue-ray discs and PS3 are the two vehicles that will help Sony implement its strategy, in a field that, without any doubt, many of its competitors will follow. It remains to be seen if the 3d strategy will be first implemented in games or movies, two of the main Sony’s business.

21/11/09 – Song of the day

Just because – Jane’s Addiction

I might don’t like the voice that much (the singer is good, it’s just not the kind of voice I would listen to all the time) but the groove of this song is special! Trivia info: Jane’s addiction have actually spent more time split than together, since they split two times, in 1991 and in 2004 for a total of 14 years! Enjoy!