Is it a good idea to encourage all employees to trade in these markets? Should insiders and/or highly uninformed people be allowed to trade? Do they help or hurt the market?

Today, organizations are exploring and taking advantage of different social networks such as blogs, wikis, collaborative filtering, and now, predictions markets. Prediction market is another technology that could be helpful to an organization in many ways. It can help generate predictions that efficiently aggregate many employees’ information and augment existing forecasting methods and provide insight into how organizations process information and how the same one flows within the organization

For predictions markets to work, even spread of information across the organization is recommended.
In markets where highly informed employees or insiders are allowed to trade some problems might occur:
• Employees from areas not related to the subject on the trading market will lose on average, and their incentives and motivation to trade will be reduced. Thus, the number of trades in the market will be hurt.
• Insiders or highly informed traders may also reveal highly protected information to the markets. They can also attempt to mislead the market about the outcomes in order to gain personal profit.

To avoid this problem and make the market work better, the organizations using prediction markets can try to evenly spread information across the organization, reducing the insider’s advantage. The organization could also do what happens in the stock market and prohibit insiders or group of employees highly informed about the subject in the market to trade in that specific market.

On the other hand, highly uniformed employees or employees who do not take the time to research and make and informed trade, sooner or later, will stop trading in the markets because they will have high probabilities to loose all what they have, and this will be an strong incentive for them to stop participating.

In what other industries or areas would Threadless’ community-driven product development model work well? And not so well?

Online social networks have become ubiquitous in the past few years. What forms of value do users get from these services and who is most likely to sign up on LinkedIn versus other sites?
Today, social networking has become deeply embedded in the lifestyles of all kinds of people. Through social networking, people can fulfill their desire to communicate better with the people they already know. They can also meet their need to become more popular and connect with a lot of people from different places, and social levels. People can also feel they are empowered to express their opinions, views, and knowledge about their topics of interest.

Some of the most common social network activities are the following:
• Posting messages
• Downloading music and videos
• Uploading music
• Updating personal Web sites or online profiles
• Posting photos
• Blogging
• Creating and sharing virtual objects
• Creating new characters
• Participating in collaborative projects
• Sending suggestions or ideas to Web sites
• Submitting articles to Web sites, and so on

In the last few years, there has been an explosive growth in social networking activities and sites that are competing for attention against television. Social Networking sites are positioned differently and try to target different segments of the market, which have different interests, needs, and lifestyles. For instance, sites such a LinkedIn are most likely to target the professionals and students segment of the market that are looking for to create their business networks while other sites such as Facebook and MySpace are likely to target the segment of the market that is looking for to satisfy their social needs by sharing their interests, connecting with old friends, and so on.

How do Wikipedia’s processes for creating and modifying articles ever lead to high-quality results?

Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia created by volunteers. Many people have asked themselves how the Wikipedia model has motivated individuals to give away their time and effort to write articles. According to some experts, the incentives for contributors to write to the open content encyclopedia are similar to those of the scientific community. Like scientists, people seek to collaboratively identify and publish true facts about the world. However, the increased size of collaboration can lead to ambiguous results in quality. In general, the quality of Wikipedia articles vary depending on the relevance of the same one, and the overall quality of Wikipedia is very difficult to measure, but its content is undoubtedly very useful to the community.

A study conducted by Dennis Wilkinson and Bernardo Huberman from Hewlett-Packard Labs(October 2007) found that high-quality articles in Wikipedia are distinguished from the rest by a larger number of edits and distinct editors. These findings are in contrast to observations of cooperative efforts in other domains where result quality does not necessarily increase with the number of collaborators.

Another important point leading to high quality results is that while it is difficult to eliminate vandalism, jokes, or entry of false information, the wiki technology makes easier to undo damage than to do damage to the encyclopedia. Due to the track of versions features it just takes few seconds to undo damage that might have taken hours or many minutes to do.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing internal versus external employee blogs in a corporate setting? Are there certain industries where one of these strategies makes more sense?

Some of the benefits that external blogs can bring to a firm are the following:
• Blogs represent the lowest cost and effective communications channel with costumers.
• If companies are properly able to leverage benefits of this technology, they can create communities of products ambassadors that will improve sales and firm’s recognition.
• Blogs can show honesty and transparency within a firm to people outside the organization.
• They can help firms to get more knowledge from their external environment.
• They can also improve external communication and feedback with consumers, firm’s marketing and branding activities, and search engine position.

Internal blogging also offer the following benefits:
• They represent very strong communication and information sharing tools within the organization since any employee can participate at any time.
• Blogs can be used at every level of the organization; they can improve participation, collaboration, and learning. They also make easy to run projects with heterogeneous teams.
• They become the written memory of the organization, and speed up the transference of knowledge to make ideas flow easily.

Internal blogging is very useful in almost any industry because of the multiple benefits. External blogging also makes sense in most industries but might be very difficult to implement in some highly regulated and supervised industries such as investment banking, health care and pharmaceutics. Although many firms in these industries have already implemented some initiatives of social technologies, they usually require too much effort, time, and energy. It is true because regulatory entities are constantly watching companies within these industries, and posting content to blogs require many control mechanisms and corporate policies within firms to ensure compliance with regulations and avoid legal implications. In these regulated industries, firms should outweigh the benefits of using blogs against its costs before making a decision to implement this technology.

As a follow-up to Apple and the Mobile Industry subject, here is an article , from CNN Money that talks about the new iPhone OS coming up this summer. After reading about the many new cool features of this OS and how it seems to address the tastes of the pickiest users, I can not avoid to point innovation and creativity as some of the reasons why Apple is a very strong player that is increasing dominance in the mobile industry.

Has the digital music market irreversibly tipped in Apple’s favor?
Nowadays, it seems that more than ever consumers are looking for multi-functionality in a single device. Phones now include cameras, video cameras, recorders, web browsing, of course, media player functionality, among other capabilities. As of today, Apple has made the right strategic moves, especially, when it introduced Apple iPhone. The iPhone seems to have captured the best of the mobile capabilities and the iPod. These types of moves have helped Apple to stay ahead of the competition and keep its position as a leader of the digital music market. However, there are still ahead many battles to win for Apple. Mobile Network operators, record labels, handset maker are forming strategic alliances to try to defeat Apple’s dominance. In addition, other strong players from other industries are also trying to leverage their position in complementary industries to capture some value in the digital market. Moreover, the industry is still evolving, and there are many important technological and legal changes to come such as the rules that govern the DRM technology, which might change the rules and positions of this industry. Consequently, the digital music market has not irreversibly tipped in Apple’s favor yet, and if Apple wants to remain competitive on this growing market, it would need to keep being innovative, creative, flexible, and pro-active.

Here is an article from CNET, "Why video game developer acquisitions scare me" , that makes a parallel comparison of the major movie studios in Hollywood and the biggest game publishers. It also explains how game publishers such as Activision and EA with acquisitions of small developers could take control of the industry and diminish innovation on this game industry.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Brightcove’s business model?
The Strengths of the Brightcove’s business model are the following:
• A comprehensive designed business model that covers different players such as Publishers, Consumer,Advertisers, and Affiliates and places Brightcove on the center of all the players.
• A sophisticated pricing model that enables Brightcove to get revenues from all the different sides of this system.
• It requires a strong technical infrastructure that allows Brightcove to take advantage of its in-house talent in technology.
• This concept, on of its sides, targets the long tail of video content, which has proved to be a key success factor to other companies such a Netflix and Amazon.
• This business model allows providing advertiser with specific target audiences, which are considered premium audiences and drive top revenues.

The Weaknesses of the Brightcove’s business model are the following:
• This concept is not difficult to imitate. In fact, with $750k investment and 10 month of development could be replicated. Thus, this model is not a source of sustainable advantage for Brightcove.
• Many premium content publishers are not willing to trade control for 50% share of advertising revenue. They want to have full control of their content and benefit from any profit generated by their content.
• Brightcove is not able to define clearly who the targeted market should be among publishers.
• It has many strong competitors that are running part of this model successfully and have the first mover advantage.
• It might have “the penguin problem”. For instance, advertisers will not make their first move if consumers have not moved, and, on the same way, publishers will not be attracted to this platform if advertisers are not in. Consumers will likely be attracted once they have variety on video content.

1.Is DoCoMo wise to offer its existing mobile phone rivals access to FeliCa?

Yes, it is a good strategic decision for Docomo for several reasons. First, as the case stated, Docomo does not want to bear all the costs, and risks of a first mover. In fact, it might not be able to afford the premium required to hold exclusivity on this technology. Second, by giving rivals access to Felica, Docomo will be able to increase value of this technology due to the network effects. As Felica network and applications proliferates faster, it will easily become the standard in this industry, and since Docomo had a stake on Felica’s Network, it will be able to make profits from the use of this technology. In addition, Docomo will still be able to have a competitive advantage by being able to learn about the new Felica applications before competitors and to start negotiations before its rivals.

2.Is search a winner-take-all business?

Search is not a winner- take all business because of the following reasons:
First, multi-homing costs are low for users on both sides. End users can use many search engines at the same time at no cost, and switching costs are also zero.
Cross-side and same-side Network Effects are not strong and are neutral. Search engines do not have more value to people if more people are using it. People will select search engines based on performance or maybe new added features. Some people might have some preference for some new features or novelties provided by search engines. There is room for special features in the engines that might satisfy some special needs although, today, most search engines are offering standardized features. Thus, search is a multi-homing platform.

Since the writing of the Electronic Arts Case the Sony Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii have been released and both have online gaming capabilities. What’s your assessment of the current online gaming market?
In general, in the gaming industry, there has been a switch in terms of market share among console makers. The leader of the console makers now is Nintendo Wii, who is selling, over 3 times as many units as the PS3, and even more than that against the Xbox 360. In 2008, there was an increase on U.S. retail sales of video games, consoles and game accessories, and total video game sales in America topped $21 billion, and, after many years of operating loss, as of 2008, the console and digital media products of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) have finally become profitable.
Focusing only in the online gaming market, according to some critics, Microsoft's X Box live system has done the best job so far of connecting a home console to the Internet and bringing the entire experience together with ease and relative stability.
Although Nintendo and Sony have made available downloadable games and multi-players, they are not doing it quite well. According to a CNET article, The Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console lets gamers enjoy some of the best games from the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and other classic systems, and the PlayStation Network offers both new games and classic PlayStation titles for download. Unfortunately, the Wii's multiplayer component feels incomplete and awkward, and the PS3's library isn't as large and its interface isn't nearly as friendly as it could have been.
In addition, Microsoft has also announced that as of January 2009 there were 17 million paying subscribers signed up to their Xbox Live service. It is a success for Microsoft, who bet on a subscription-based model for the online gaming market. Many analysts thought people wouldn’t be willing to pay for that kind of service.

Since the publishing of this case, Netflix has entered the video on demand (VOD) market. What is your analysis of how Netflix has attempted to update their business model with VOD?
Due to the emergence of Video on Demand, Netflix has made its best efforts to be proactive and be ready for the possible mass adoption of VOD technology. The CEO of Netflix stated their willingness to embrace this new technology by saying that they are on the business of “allowing for the best home video viewing for the customers” and not just provide DVD rentals. This statement reflects the dynamism and flexibility of this company.
As of today, Netflix has integrated VOD in its business model and is attempting to establish itself as the market leader in VOD, by integrating a free value added feature to its offering, streaming online video. Netflix is offering unlimited video streaming of over 12000 selections with a subscription of $8.99 or $13.99 per month. This video could be downloaded to a computer or TV through an Internet connected device such as XBOX360, Netflix player, and so on. This added feature is allowing Netflix to increase market penetration of the VOD market and increase customer retention, which has been one of the big challenges for Netflix. As stated before, this move reflects the dynamic capabilities of this firm and a good attempt to address this new technology as a growth opportunity in its path to continue its success.

Who will win the competitive battle between P2P file sharing networks and iTunes over the long run and why?

As it was stated on this case, P2P networks and software has been improved a lot in the last few years. These sytems have improved their speed, security, and distribution. Moreover, the code of these systems is available for other to change them and release new improved versions of the existent systems. The films and music industry can stop some of the creators of current systems such as Bitorrent, Grokster, Per Impact and so on, but they can not stop the release of other more secured networks based on the mentioned systems that will encrypt the files transmitted and will keep complete anonymity of people uploading and downloading any kind of files. Moreover, the author of the P2Psoftware and network should not be liable for any wrong-doing with their systems. They are just creating the technology that could have other multiple legal and beneficial uses such as file sharing of company’s information within a the same, instant messaging, or son on.

It is difficult for the films and music industry to stop all users through the legal system. By 2006, there were more than ten million of users worldwide of P2P systems, and this number is increasing day by day. P2P users are always trying to finding new ways to share their files and hack security schemas. Although some law suits were won against some major P2P systems, these suits are too costly and slow to stop the increasing number of member and users of P2P systems. Perhaps, the ISP providers are the ones who could help establish some filters to avoid illegal piracy, but, as the article stated, they do not want to interfere and are constantly upgrading their systems to support the increase in traffic demand because P2P systems is increasing its use and number of affiliates.

Despite iTunes success (“reviving online music”), iTunes is not making any profits for itself. Apple’s real goal is to make money by selling iPhones or iPods. Furthermore, many efforts have been made to sell music online, but most of them have failed in the process. My opinion is that the business of digital information good as it is these days is not working, and firms in this business might be defeated by P2P systems if they do not update their business model to be profitable in the long run.

This is the Lemonade Stand I just created. This e-commerce seems to be a pretty good idea.

1. How should Ezboard update their business model to reach their revenue goals?

1. Before deciding what business model to follow, Ezboard should evaluate carefully what the competitors are offering these days, who its audience and what their preferences are, and what its strengths are as a firm. Based on the information given in the case, the business model should contemplate two main sources of revenue, advertising and new subscription model. Ezboard would be able to increase sharply advertising revenues by targeting advertising and by doing direct sales. The second source of revenue should be subscriptions. Ezboard should keep the unregistered users, registered users, and paid users, but entice all those users who so do not pay to become a paid user by incorporating new options to the paid version and making the unpaid version more restricted. They should mainly work on increasing users by investing more on marketing and by offering a more differentiable and better service than the competitors.

First, the new Version 8.0 software should very reliable, scalable, faster, and user friendly. It is the key to keep current users. After achieving that, Ezboard could incorporate some new services to the software to be offered to the paid users. Currently, personalization makes Ezboard different from competitors, so it could offer even more personalized features such as signature, profiles, pictures, winks, nudges, emoticons. It could also add some additional services such as social networking features: photo albums, chats, and blogs. These features will add value to the current Ezboard value proposition. Ezboard also should track more information about users and their preferences, so they will be able to continue to improve their services, based on users’ preferences and behavior. Collecting and tracking information about users will also allow EZboard to understand their users and do a better job in targeting advertising, and attracting direct sales.