gamedaypassion

I think the gamedaypassion site is a great idea and I really enjoyed hearing from an company that is already off the ground. i think one of the biggest challenges moving forward will be getting the buy-in at each campus and getting new students to participate in the community. tapping into the campus art programs is a great idea for overcoming the initial hurdle, and you could also use contests broadcast through social media to generate hype. I don't know how it would be perceived by the tech community if you opened up your service to rival schools, but I'd love to see something like this at UVA :)

prediction markets

Prediction markets are only effective if a lot of people participate.  What are the best ways to encourage more traders and trading within internal company prediction markets?

The results of a prediction market are correlated to the size of its network; therefore companies should encourage participation in order to see positive results. Companies have some of the options below:

• provide time during the work day/week for employees to trade
• use non-monetary rewards like prizes, public recognition, or coupons to act as incentives for active and accurate traders
• incorporate the trading platform into software that employees use daily (email?) so that it becomes part of their daily routine to use it
• educate employees on the benefits and use of prediction markets to overcome resistance

I found it interesting to learn that DARPA studied the use of prediction markets to enhance US Intelligence, though the research was pulled after congressional criticism accused it of being "terrorism betting parlors." At that time (2003) lot of issues had yet to be resolved, such as determining a threshold for action or under which circumstances should the general public be allowed to trade. the use of prediction markets still isn't widely used, but I wonder if some agencies would be more receptive to its use today.

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol50no4/using-prediction-markets-to-enhance-us-intelligence-capabilities.html

Community driven vs. traditional product development

What are the similarities and differences between a community-driven product development process and a traditional product development process within a firm?


In honor of the fact that I recently installed Office 2011 on my laptop, I made a Venn diagram.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn recently hit 100M users. If you were in charge at LinkedIn, what would be your strategic goals for the next several years? How would you achieve them?


In a few short years after it was founded, LinkedIn has become a profitable networking site for professionals. Its ability to monetize its platform is especially impressive considering the fact that LinkedIn is competing in a concentrated market where a couple of large social sites are excelling due to their large user bases supporting strong network effects. At the same time though, its current strategy may not sustainable over the long-term given the competitive environment.


In order to protect the integrity of its content and the value it provides to its users, LinkedIn should continue to control its software applications and emphasis on professional services. However, LinkedIn needs to find new methods of growing its user base to compensate for its narrow focus. In order to grow its network, LinkedIn should direct its resources to recruiting corporate customers and building tools that better connect employees within their organization and industry in which it competes. By signing on more corporations, LinkedIn will have access to a larger pool of individual users that will be more inclined to register, thereby growing the network. In order to make its services more appealing, LinkedIn could integrate conferencing services and data management. This development would be costly, though it provides added value and incentives for corporate users to contract with LinkedIn.

Wikipedia

How do Wikipedia’s processes for creating and modifying articles ever lead to high-quality results? In other words, since anyone can easily edit Wikipedia, how is it that good (and usually accurate) content emerges?

I like Wikipedia because it presents several different perspectives and I feel like I’m getting “all sides” of a story when I’m reading an article. It’s hard to report on a topic without having it become biased by personal views and past experiences, so by having several people write and edit a post, it seems more objective. And because everything is meant to be referenced, users can check the sources and judge for themselves the level of credibility. If I don't know anything about a subject, Wikipedia is a good first place to check because its database is so comprehensive, and generally, you can quickly find a more than adequate overview of almost any topic.

Even though it is open source and encourages public collaboration, you can't put just anything on Wikipedia. It has clearly outlined its guiding principles, and it has empowered its users to moderate discussions and enforce the core values. I work for a small marketing company (representing other small companies) so we try to come up with creative ways of increasing our web relevance without spending a lot of money. At one point, we tried to post Wikipedia pages for our clients and their technologies, but almost immediately they'd be rejected unless we could reference published articles on the topic.

I found an interesting article/interview on the culture of Wikipedia. Joseph Reagle, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, has written a book about Wikipedia and its collaborative climate. In the article, Reagle is interviewed about Wikipedia's processes, values, and bureaucracy.  The article, and the comments below it, echo a lot of what is said in the case, but from a more recent perspective.

http://opensource.com/business/10/9/inside-culture-wikipedia-qa-author-good-faith-collaboration

managing user-generated content

In general, how should organizations deal with issues posed by user-generated content and other information spread over social media?

As this week’s case helps illustrate, companies need to manage customer relations because the Internet has given consumers a very loud microphone to voice bad experiences. In the case of United, its stock dropped 10% and it lost $180 million after a customer posted a video on YouTube to illustrate his discontent with customer service at the airline, connecting him with more than 6 million people in less than a month.

Although the whole situation could have been avoided with better customer service from the beginning, I think United’s response to Carroll’s video and tweeting helped mitigate some of the bad PR it received. In the wake of its bankruptcy, it’s clear that United divested a lot from its human capital, and the employees that survived several rounds of layoffs were under trained and possibly overworked. United used the video as an opportunity to engage with its customers and employees, and start rebuilding its culture. 

at the same time, social media and user generated content provides an opportunity to identify and engage with loyal customers. This is a benefit because it allows company to build a relationship with their customers and better understand the factors and features that influence their purchase decisions.

in order to diffuse customer complaints and identify loyal, happy customers, companies should monitor and search social sites for mention of their name and become active participants and social peers on these sites. in order to prevent potential complaints from becoming large problems, companies should be proactive and constantly monitor online conversations and mediate when necessary. the United case shows that when a problem is unattended to or doesn't have an equitable resolution, it can be very costly. 

Hulu's Value Proposition

Hulu was formed as a Joint Venture between NBC and News Corp. (Fox), and later included Disney. Even though it began as an agreement between two conglomerates, Hulu has started its company and vision from scratch. Its culture emphasizes frugality, meritocracy, and ownership. In order to meet its goal of helping users find and enjoy the world’s premium and professionally produced content when, where, and how they want it, Hulu aggregates video content and facilitates distribution in order to make television shows more accessible than what is currently offered by cable operators. I’ve summarized the value proposition for each of its customers below:

Content owners: By 2009, Hulu has partnered with 170 content owners and 30 affiliated websites to acquire and distribute premium video content online. In exchange for its content, Hulu offers networks and equity partners the majority of the ad revenue generated by their content. Participating with Hulu and its affiliated websites is an advantage because in many cases, content owners and networks can grow their audience by making it widely accessible online. This increased audience means that the content owners will receive a premium on advertising during their shows. While this shift to online streaming affects the traditional distribution channels and the amount of revenue networks can receive from license fees, Hulu can potentially provide its content partners with increased revenue from advertising generated by its content.

Users: One of Hulu’s objectives is to bring the content to its audience by making it available through several channels rather than forcing them to come to its site. Rather than a passive experience with cable television, Hulu has created a social experience for its users by making it free, easy, and intuitive, as well as providing the option to review the content. Also unlike cable television, Hulu responds to user feedback and limits the amount of ads cluttering the site in addition to offering content with limited interruption. Hulu also allows options for embedding, which further enables content sharing and encourages new users to discover the content. While Hulu is trying to help the content owners monetize this larger user base, it does make it harder to own and control the content.

Advertisers: Hulu has taken advantage of online media to offer more targeted, interactive experiences for its viewers, allowing the advertisers to create more effective and relevant ads than what can be seen on cable television. Through it’s three ad options (standard, premium, and exclusive), Hulu provides a range of options that provide an advantage to advertisers because the ads integrated into a show can not be skipped or fast forwarded, unlike what happens on recorded shows on cable television. Furthermore, Hulu can collect demographic, geographical, and search behavior and sell ad space at a premium because the advertisements will be more relevant and effective.