Social network is always about me and my network, but if "me" is changed into "the business", then it will also be "the business's network". Nowadays, Facebook seems to be the most popular one, however that may not be the case in the other part of the world and Facebook may not provide other facilities that are offered by another social networking site.
The more social networking site appears, the broader the function of social network since each site will tend to appear different to the others. I will anayse how social network can be used in supporting both primary and secondary activities of new business venture.
Based on Alexa Global Page Rank, there are 4 social network site in top 25 that are:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- MySpace
- LinkedIn
Where possibly each social networking site has a role in?
Picture 1 Social Network Sites in Value Chain Model
The model above shows that social networking sites can be used in both a secondary activitie (human resource management) or a primary activity (marketing & sales). Both activities have a similar characteristic, that is a need to interact with external entities such as labor market and customer market.
1. Human Resource Management
LinkedIn can be used to find either a partner or an executive. In LinkedIn, people can endorse others, so through LinkedIn, HR can make a better judgement from that.
2. Marketing and Sales
Facebook and MySpace have people's information. Thus they can put ads based on target market of the product that is advertised. While Twitter can help to push information to anyone and FourSquare can mark your product and service based on your location.
It may be difficult to organise all the social networking sites, but now there are some softwares that you may can use like TweetDeck or Windows Mobile 7 to manage all your social network accounts.
During my study in Australia, I met lots of people studying business. Some of them are from developed countries like Germany and Japan, but some others are from developing countries like myself (Indonesia). The developed countries like Germany and Japan have more multi-national company that have branches in Australia, while developing countries don't. Thus, there are more multi-national companies from developed countries that are operating in Australian more than developing countries.
In terms of looking for a job, either internship, part-time job or full-time job. Students from developed countries will have more opportunities to get a job since they can apply to multi-national companies originated from their own countries. Those students also have another advantage such as in language since they could speak fluently languages that are used by the executives in those companies like Japanese, Germany and French. Hence, students from developing countries have to compete with those students. Hence, just like a company, a student also needs to build his own core competency. Some ways to do it is by:
1. Becoming Top-of-The-Class Student
2. Having wide network that is ready to give references and recommendations
3. Joining Professional Clubs, especially exclusive clubs
4. Doing internship
It will be a challenge, even after doing those, to communicate all that I have done in a limited Curriculum Vitae/Resume. I almost finished my study, now it is also a challenge for myself to make it come true.
Apple just received 18 patents, one of those is Pinching-to-Zoom. Apple applied for the patent in 2006, while it just got it approved in 2010. Thus it took about 4 years.
The flow chart above shows "Opposition Period", thus after the patent application accepted, the patent isn't immediately active. It needs to be opposed, then if it's successful, then it will become active.
Graduate Student Association (GSA) of Australian School of Business (ASB) presents The End of Semester Ball for Semester 2, 2010. This will be the ball to mark the end of this academic year.
A. Specification:
Theme: Oscar Red Carpet
Venue: IMAX Star Room
Date: 24 October 2010
Time: 7 - 12 PM
Capacity: 200 people
Sales Desk:
In front of Postgraduate Common Room,
Ground floor, West Wing, Australian School of Business, UNSW
Last Sales: Wednesday, 20 October 2010 or when the tickets sold out
B. Marketing Materials that is presented to postgraduate business students:
Video 1 Chloe's version
Video 2. Abby's version
Picture 1. Poster (by Alex Tang)
C. Pricing Strategy
Individual
Group of Ten
General
$89pp
$84pp
UNSW Student
$74pp
$70pp
ARC Member
$66pp
N/A
Include:
1. 3 course-meal
2. Free-flow drink (wines, beers, and non-alcoholics)
3. Prizes to win worth up to $600
Payment through Bank Transfer to
Bank: Commonwealth Bank
Account Name: Commerce and Economics Postgraduate Student Society
BSB No.: 062-303
Account No.: 10349850
It was still almost a week before iPhone 4G was launched for the first time, but some people really wanted to be the first to get it, so they built tents near the store.
Video 1 The First Person in The Queueing Line
I think it's impressive. Even more impressively, in Q3 2010, Apple has managed to sell more smartphone than BlackBerry globally. Apple must has done it right. How about Android?
First of all, lets count the variants:
- iOS Phones (3): iPhone 4G 32GB, iPhone 4G 16 GB, iPhone 3Gs 8G
- Android Phones (a lot): Google Nexus One, Motorola phones, Sony Ericsson phones, Samsung phones, LG phones, HTC phones, and a lot more local-brand phones
There are more variants of Android phones compared to iOS phones and each variant has different features (including different customized Android OS installed in the phone). Different set of features will attract different market segment. See the example below:
Picture 1 Q4 Roadmap (Verizon)
The picture above shows that each product has its target customers or market segment. The market is divided into several segments. If each product is targeted to a certain segment, then Android will have an advantage over iOS phones since it has more variety offerings that will fill more segments in the market.
I wear an ic! berlin glasses. A couple hours ago, due to my carelessness, I let it fell and it teared apart. I was ... quite upset and also afraid that I would need to buy a new one. Fortunately it seemed repairable, but I did not know how to repair it. Thankfully I found the manual in YouTube. Thus, I put it here in case I need it again later.
Here is the video about ic! berlin's hinge:
I like ic! berlin glasses. It's fancy, light, no screws and it's easily fixed. LOL.
Avatar (2009) is a movie from producer, director and writer James Cameron.
Here is the trailers:
0. Early trailer (this trailer just give some early idea about what to expect from the movie)
1. First trailer
2. Second trailer (this trailer really resembles the whole story from the beginning until the climax)
From 2nd Trailer, you can tell roughly how the story will go and end. James Cameron did not direct any movie since he finished his last movie (Titanic) about 12 years ago (1997), so some people doubted his touch. The storyline is criticized because of its similarity with other movies such as Braveheart (1995), Dances with Wolves (1990), or a disney's story, Pocahontas. The actors and actresses, as you can see, are mostly not from my A-list (at least I could not tell mostly who they were, for example Sam Worthington?, even though I have watched many hollywood movies). The movie is in 3D which means the viewers are supposed to wear the stupid-looking glasses which make people has to pay more (for 3D presentation) and the movie looks less bright. Those are some reasons to not watch Avatar.
After screening in theaters for weeks:
Avatar is rated 8.6/10 by more than 170 thousands IMDB users, it gets 82% by Tomatometer, it become the trending topic for days in Twitter.
Avatar won 2 Golden Globes (2010), including The award for Best Motion Picture - Drama.
Avatar broke box office records in many countries (7 consecutive weeks in North America Box Office with more than 600 million dollars gross) and become the highest grossing movie all the time (more than 2 billion dollars worldwide).
How could that possibly be?
About timing. Global economics downturn started in 2008. That triggered many studios to postpone or cancel some movie productions in 2008 and early 2009. The impact was there are fewer considerable good movies in 2009. Avatar, that was labelled as big-budget movie, came near the end of the year when most studios had already run out of big movies. It was a holiday season and in this period people go to the theatre. There people didn't have many choices, so they watched Avatar. That went until early 2010.
About the movie (product) for most people, including myself. Avatar is offering a new experience that many other movies did not. It's the 3D experience. Before Avatar there were not many 3D movies and there was no movie with full 3D that looks realistic. It is also the first time big-budget movie was made in 3D. Combined with the director's previous portfolios, huge special effect, proven-to-success story, long duration and other technical aspects, there are so many reasons to watch Avatar. The early trailer gave people expectations and the movie could fulfill the expectations. It leads to the viewers' satisfaction (proven by IMDB user rating, Tomatometer result, reviews, et cetera).
About marketing. Distributor for this movie is The Twentieth Century Fox which is a subsidiary of News Corp which business is in media. It continuously pushed stories about Avatar before the movie was launched and continuously did that. It gave people stories to tell or, for the company, it's a free advertisement.
About the viewer (consumer). PG-13 rating makes the movie accessible by a broad range of age consumers. After experiencing the movie, satisfy consumers would possibly generate word-of-mouth, for example telling others about their experience and suggesting the movie both directly (by speaking) or indirectly (by posting in social site like blog, forum, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Furthermore, if they are blown away by the 3D effect and want to watch a 3D movie again, there were no other choice at that time, so most likely they will re-watch Avatar.
Watch James Cameron's Avatar in theatre and be part of record breaking history (later you can tell your children about these too)! LOL.
Apple Inc. presented its new device: The iPad. It is basically just a screen. Technically, it's an giant iPhone/iPod Touch with 9.7 inch touch screen.
This is a fan-made video about Hitler response to iPad (don't mind the speech, just read the text):
Note: This is a scene from a movie, Der Untergang/Downfall (2004)
This video is quite good to mention iPad negative points that are:
No support for multitasking (one application at one time)
No camera (No video conferencing then)
No support for phone call
No support for Flash (from Adobe)
Not running Mac OS (instead, it's running iPhone OS)
Some positive points of iPad mentioned above are:
Support for split screen
Compatible with iPhone Apps
integrated eBook reader
Support for WiFi or 3G network
This is a trailer about iPad:
First of all, who don't want an iPad? Hitler? Even if he wants it, he can not have one since he is already out of this world. After watching the trailer, you should have some idea about how awesome the iPad is.
Physically, iPad is a bit smaller than A4-size paper. It's even thinner than a deck of playing cards (52 cards). If you get used to carry a folder or a bunch of paper, then you should not have any problems to carry around an iPad. Carrying an iPad is even more convenience than carrying a notebook, a netbook or a tablet (thanks to its advance user interface, a physical keyboard is not necessary). It's thickness is just fit with the space between joints on your finger and it's weight is less than 1 kg (2 pounds). iPad looks very Apple-ish, so it's fancy enough to carry around and you can carry it conveniently. That's great, right.
Here is Steve Jobs (The CEO of Apple Inc.) keynote about the iPad:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
In those video, you can see Steve Jobs holding the device. It looks great, doesn't it.
Apple's move to eBook business is predictable. Apple's device are there to support iTunes store. Mac line up (Mac OS, MacBook, Mac Mini, iMac) is available, so developers can create applications/apps (including games). The apps are mainly sold through iTunes for other devices like iPod, iPhone and now iPad. Mostly iTunes Store sells digital files. Besides the apps, iTunes Store also provides other contents like audio (music, audiobook), video (film, movie) and now eBook. Apple creates the devices to sell those products (through iTunes Store).
A MacBook is convenient to be carried around (portable device), but not to be used around. iPod or iPhone is convenient to be used around (mobile device), but it's not convenient to read documents because of its screen limitation. Then, iPad came to fill the gap between the MacBook and the iPod. It is convenient to be used around and it has a bigger screen (considered as book size) than both iPod and iPhone. It's better for reading, browsing, watching movie anytime and anywhere. The availability of iWork application for iPad makes it more productive. Although iPad does not support multitasking, but because it is using iPhone OS, I guess it will be still possible to listen to musics while doing other things (like browsing, reading, editing documents). Last but not least, The WiFi or 3G will be used not only for browsing, but also to enable people buying contents from iTunes Store.
iPad is not a bad product, but we just need to know its awesomeness.
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