Greg Keenan’s article “WestJet to test its luck in Ireland” describes the Canadian-based airline’s plans to test the skies of Ireland. With seasonal, non-stop and direct flights, the airline will be getting a better picture of the European market before attempting a full-force entry. As we have learned in September, WestJet cuts costs by implementing a single fleet of Boeing 737-700; there are less costs for things like training and maintenance of potentially different planes. However, to break into the European market and compete with other airlines like Air Canada means that WestJet has to adopt bigger and wider plans to satisfy demand.

In the meantime, people say that the airline is focusing on regional expansion and the prospect of 76-seat Q400 turboprop airplanes. At this point, industry analyst Walter Spracklin wrote “WestJet is essentially establishing a European beachhead and working on increasing brand recognition, we don’t see WestJet bringing on a new wide-body aircraft type into its fleet with the next three to five years” (para.13). With its iconic usage of a single fleet of airplanes, Westjet is in the right for trying to show its point-of-difference to consumers; of course, it is always ideal to truly see if it is fit to fly in European skies.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/westjet-goes-trans-atlantic-with-new-dublin-flight/article15455464/

In Justin Uyeno’s sophisticated and well-illustrated blog, he has one superb blog post related to corporate social responsibility based on an initiative right here in Vancouver, BC. The post “Vancouver’s toxic waste turned into gold” vividly lays out the plan of the City of Vancouver and TerraCycle Inc. to collect cigarette butts with designated bins and extract “cellulose acetate, which can be used to produce plastic pellets for shipping and plasticized lumber” (para. 1). (See Video)

I agree that there is definitely shared value present in this green initiative in terms of re-conceiving products and markets. Upon closer inspection, we address the social issue of smokers’ bad littering habits, the environmental issue of compiling cigarette butts, and the economic opportunity to transform something wasteful into more usable resources as demonstrated by TerraCycle. While the company may be able to generate profits with this partnership and unique recycling method, the City of Vancouver continues to make green progress which can translate to “increased tourism and standards of living” (para. 2).

Hopefully in no time, instead of asking the question of “what are we gonna do with all these butts?”, we will be asking, “but, what butts?”

https://blogs.ubc.ca/justinuyeno/2013/11/12/vancouvers-toxic-waste-turned-into-gold/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/news-video/in-world-first-bc-installs-butt-bins-to-recycle-cigarettes/article15392684/

In Aaron Lattimer’s blog, there is a fantastic post about Twitter’s recent and successful IPO. Aaron’s “Worth the Wait?” tells about how Twitter recently had its initial public offering with share prices at about $26; peaking at $50, the shares appeared to settle around $46. It is safe to say that  “Twitter has made history as being the largest IPO in the US technology market ever” (para.3). Although the stock is relatively cheap compared to other technology giants, TWTR definitely performed to the high expectations of bull-investors.

Aaron brings up two key points about how Twitter has never made a profit in the last few years  and its revenue streams, specifically advertising, are very prone to skepticism. Twitter is already a heavily cluttered service; with constantly updated feeds, users tend to just scroll through much of the news feed or simply search for tweets from users or under topics they are interested in. Advertisements may be easily brushed off unless the social media company is able to develop a way to constantly display ads without annoying the users. There are also limiting factors of the service like the small screens of devices like Aaron mentioned.

While I believe Twitter is a solid social media service that is here to stay for the time being, it will relatively stay at its current market value until it finds a more revolutionary way to effectively deliver powerful ads to consumers. As a relatively cheaper stock, we may not be able to expect too much at all. Then again, Facebook’s IPO was full of surprises…

https://blogs.ubc.ca/aaronlattimer/2013/11/12/worth-the-wait/

In “Getting Your Business Online: Optimizing Your Website,” Francis Moran gives us some tips about how to make websites well-known, at least in search engine statistics, on the internet. As the third installment following previous blog posts about making websites and other online content for one’s business, this blog post is certainly interesting in telling readers about tools like “indexing” and the usage of key-words to make websites more prominent in search results. Statistics like appearances in search engines is definitely a type of intelligence technology for both the business and the search engine itself. For example, Google needs such statistics to constantly refine its search algorithms to suit user needs; on the other hand, the business needs to know how it strong its presence is on the Internet and how well it is generating traffic, if any at all.

The “Bell Business Blog” is definitely a great resource for anyone interested in or currently operating a business. The blog features a lot of content pertaining to the usage of modern technology, both mobile and Internet-based, in today’s business setting. As young business students in an ever changing world, we should definitely take advantage of a blog that seems to be constantly growing with us.

http://businessblog.bell.ca/internet/getting-your-business-online-optimizing-your-website/