W8 Reading Reflection

As Christensen said, IM is worth watching, people love it, it is a perfect disruptive innovation, and it is a product with full potential. After all, so far, it is a service with millions of loyal users and no way to make money off them.

If Microsoft, Yahoo and the big IM service providers could eventually become phone companies, and with reach that would go beyond their reach today, that reach would be global and without boundaries. IM is like a powerful tool for users to do multi tasks now. Let’s take a look of today’s IM functions, the most popular ones come with text chat, email, search engine, media player, file transfer/storage, some even bundle with blogs, the original idea – text chat, has became one of these functions, but of course, it is still the most important one. So it will be really a big deal if the phone companies can see the chance and grab it, to hold this market of millions of users.

For enterprises, IM can offer a super convenient way for employees to communicate, even cross branches. Imagine a person has a question about a document he just received from another employee in a different building, he can just run his cursor over his IM to check if that person is online, if he or she is, he can just send his question instantly and hopefully to get the answer fast,too. This “contextual collaboration” can be extended to partners, suppliers, and key customers at the discretion of the enterprise.

It is interesting to think about the current big telephone companies, none of them of the end users’ identity like MSN, Yahoo and those IM products do, maybe that is one of the reasons for Skype to rise up. It offers a more secured way to communicate online, except tying on the keyboard, VOIP users can actually talk on internet. I can see the bright future for the combination of IM and VOIP service.

Questions:

• What makes you use IM instead of telephones?

• What are the concerns of enterprise IM?

W7 Reading Reflection – I love you and I hate you.

It’s not surprising to know the result of the research in “Around the World Wide Web in 80 Days.” While more educated people tend to use internet for political guidance and financial information, the female users tend to use internet for family and health information. I wish this research could also show if gender plays an important key of online political information seeking, but that’s not the topic here this time.

About the other article, “The Tragedy of Commons”, I found it very interesting and enjoyable to read even though I think Hardin is somehow a little cynical. I mean, to against human having the right of breeding, that sounds too communism. Population problems is complicated, they can not be taken solely on the reasons that Hardin provided since “the globe village” does not mean all human beings now belong to one country, or the globle warming problem would be much easier to solve,too.

Let’s take a look of online world now, it is a place people think where “globle villiage” is, has big population problems already. Admit it, how much times we have wasted on internet? Almost every time, when I get online just for email checking, or to take a short break during the “home work”sessions, I end up drowning in the MSN conversation, blogs, gardening websites (well…just me) and spent too much time on those things that I did not plan to do. And I HATE those forwarding jokes and “meaningful” articles in my email box, when you get at least 20 of them each day, non of them is interesting anymore.

As for my experience with electronic government, I do not really trust it. I’d rather check some big news websites for political information. There are many politician’s blogs online now, they all tend to talk for themselves for more votes, I don’t feel there is any sincereness and truth. The supporters pour their “love” to those blogs, when there is any different voice from a message poster, those fans start to attack him or her. For me, it is just too painful to see things like that.

Years ago, I tried to send an email to the mayor of Taipei to complain about the porn ads on an English newspaper in Taipei. I did get a response, but it was from the automatic response system. Well, at least that was a start! I haven’t tried to contact government again since, maybe the service is better now.

I still give positive feedback to online eDemocrocy. It is still an open window from the government for everybody to communicate with it. But before asking people to trust it, we need to educate both people and politicians, to make good use of it, not to pollute it. It does not have any technical solution, it needs moral solution.

Questions:

• How to tell people stop forwarding junk emails without hurting their feelings? ( I guess it’s not a question for our class, but I really wish to know how!)
• How to build trust of online democracy?
• How the internet’s impact on the upcoming elections?

Group Reading: The influence of virtual communities on distribution strategies in the internet.

The influence of virtual communities on distribution strategies in the internet.
Flavián, C., and Guinalíu

In this assigned reading, it gives a clean summarize of some important marketing strategies for online virtual communities, and also shows some case studies of some successful websites who had adapted to the idea of online community to target their customers.

In this everything-goes-online world, people goes to internet to do almost everything, from stock quotes checking to music downloading to shopping to chatting. From internet, a retail company can easily track who their customers are and what they want, as long as they know how to use this technology.

I agree with the authors about the moral connection and responsibilities to the brand from the internet community. Before making any purchase decision on Amazon.com, I would definitely check previous customer’s commends, or sometimes I would leave messages on the BBS forum when I have questions, I mean, any questions, there’s always people who would like to help. Also, when I log into a mommy & baby website which I visit quite often, I feel like that I am sitting with lots of friends who share common interests. It is a brand royalty.

Online interaction with customers could be a powerful tool for business, also, companies should also be more cautious about the service they offer, since everything goes online now, not only good feedback can be seen by public, but the negative ones as well.

Citation:
Anonymous, SIX WAYS NEW MEDIA WILL TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS IN ‘08. (2007). Quality, 46(10), 15. Retrieved November 6, 2007, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1368713671).

This article predicts there will be six ways to change the business in 2008, they are : 1. Go online for training and certification. 2. Use online community to obtain real-time, real-life answers. 3. Find information quickly. 4. Locate products quickly with online directories. 5. Read breaking news. 6. Study in-depth content for personal development and strategic planning.

It seems that internet is going to play the key of successful business, I am curious about how do those big companies think about it, can they see the value of online interaction? Technology helps business goes wider and offers platforms for customers to gather together, they can exchange information there, and they can feel like a family or good friends under a recognized brand. It is very important for companies to make good use of the network from the virtual online brand communities.

Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUWR-_DIouM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYQfgLOl_IM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN-E5rzoIMc

W6 Reading Reflection – Small Groups Online

The author introduced couple of different form of online interaction. i.e. : email, chat rooms, online gaming, and Web sites. What is interesting is, the author claims that gender and race of the participants are easy to tell on the internet, based on what they post, people can assume their gender and race. This is a statement full of stereotype, and how stereotype is (will) change the society we are now living? He ignores the facts the world has became smaller and there are many different people of different race been brought up everywhere, not to mention the big population of indefinite genders now.

Also, when talking about online community, the author did offer enough study cases to prove his theories, Cases from Usenet and MUD games can not present the whole online communities and it is not proper at all to present the social control. But I agree with him on the subject of the “Performers V.S. Real people” online. We already hear enough about online-dating stories, people talk to some nice online friends for a long time, when they meet in real, they found that person is totally different than their online personalities, or genders. Should “internet” take the blame? Maybe. The communication technologies give us a more convenient way to interact with people, but it also make us take risks from it.

The author raised a question – “Are strong, intimate relationships online possible?” I was a heavy online chat room user when I as in college ten years ago, and I think this question is laughable. Of course it is possible. The people talking online, are real people, not machines. They make friends there, they exchange daily ideas there, they express their true feelings there, they feel hurt when someone leave without saying goodbye, and it is totally possible there are strong relationships online. Real couples who met online first are very common now, online interaction has been shaping the real societies since long time ago.

I think the Jervay Place residents’ case has drawn the positive outline of online communities. Since we can’t be expected to back to the internet-free world, we should make the good use of this powerful communication technology, and to improve our lives better by it.

Questions:

• What sort of online governance is possible?

• How to define the post maker’s gender/race online?

W5 Reading Reflection

What Gillmore described in this chapter is something basic, already wide spread and be taken as granted now – interactive communication.

In 2002, when I knew ohmynews.com successfully gathered enough votes and pushed Roh won the presidential election in South Korea, I was really impressed by the power of online community and that country’s super high internet usage. Most people used to read news from newspapers and TV news, when they found something that they have opinions about, they talk to family, friends or themselves. Now with the function of online forum, they can directly talk to the news editor, we can’t deny it is a big improvement, and it can really change the media’s ecosystem, no matter how many concerns there still are. Just like what Gillmore sai, ” In the digital communication era, the audience can be the part of the process, and they must be.”

ohmynews.com’s success reveals another issue about amateur journalism. Would the micropayment these amateurs get a problem? Maybe not for now. To have their own reports, writing and pictures to be seen by everybody is big enough, this job used to be done by a small amount of professionals, now everybody can do it as long as the news has its value, and it doesn’t really require professional trainings. Some people just want their effort to be seen, and that’s good enough for them. But if the news medias want better writings, better story tellers, they might still have to offer paychecks for the long run.

Personal blogs are everywhere now, there are numerous of political commends blogs online, and lots of them have stable numbers of pageviews each day. That doesn’t mean big media companies are safe from the interactive communication with their audience. Because of people’s habit. There are still people who wants to check daily news, they go to Washington Post.com or Seattle times.com first. Maybe people like that, will still check some other favorite web news blogs, but they still rely of the big brands more.

Since everybody, and anybody can run blogs now, one thing we need to consider about is the blog content’s standpoint. Is it fair? Can I trust it? (Unless the bias content is what I WANT.) I like the hyperlocal idea, and that is a way for communities to be agglomerated. The problem is, without much things going on, without deep reporting, community papers/ blogs would be tasteless and plain. How to make enough motivation for community members is a challenge.

Of course we still need professional journalists and photographers. No matter how many amateur reporters are there, we need pros to help to edit the incoming news, or even we need pros to be there for a more in-depth report. The news industry still need qualified professional to offer qualified news and pictures. But when it comes to natural disasters, interesting stuff at the street corners, someone’s dog saved a baby’s life under a truck, amateur’s service would be much handier. The co-exist of professional and amateur would enhance the journalism. There are just some rules that every news media should always follow, “No matter which tools and technologies we embrace, we must maintain core principle, including fairness, accuracy and thoroughness.“

Questions:

• From the case of Lawrence.com ( it shows the city that 20 year old resident knows, not the 50 year old resident knows), how to we cross blog’s age barrier? Or the old folks’ opinions will be ignored since they don’t get online that much (or not at all) ?
• As the gate keeper for news, how do mainstream medias filter the news/pictures from amateurs to make sure they are fair and true?
• How to re-educate journalism school faculties who has not adapted to the ideas of technology communication?