While Internet marketing strategist B.L. Ochman questions in Ad Age how 181,000 people have come to call themselves social media “gurus,” “ninjas,” “masters” and “mavens” on Twitter, there’s one fact we have to face: if they weren’t being hired, then they couldn’t be making these claims.

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/kind-a-social-media-expert-hire/239439/

One thing in this article is what I strongly agree with. “Finding undiscovered insights and testing theories at a tiny cost”

We can think over that what kind of social stuff do we need. We often communicate with people with similar interests or needs. I do believe that the communication between familiar friends is just chatting but not social. The app we know such as Snapchat and Weichat are just tools but they satisfy the requirement  for put strangers into different category so that we can chat with  the people we want to talk with. Facebook is a kind of social, even the blog of COMM101 is.

In addition, all those things may not be always so popular. Just like Snapchat develops not well in Asia and Weichat does that not well in America, those social stuff largely depend on youngsters’ preference and culture difference, and the formal one is always changing. Therefore, the expertise on social is not the one who is great at some particular apps but who can find little things and try and test them bravely.

That’s also true for anyone who wants to or has already started a business.

After reading Lucas Lo’s and Cynthia Chiang’s blogs about Tim Hortons’ menu issue, I change my point greatly. It is said that Tim Horton CEO Marc Caira’s hopes to cut down menu items  in order to increase store efficiency.

Hey Tim Hortons, stop trying to be McDonald’s!

Tim Horton’s Should Shorten Menu to Shorten Line

It is really ridicules when it first came into my mind that such a huge chain store needs to reduce choices on menu in order to increase its efficiency. Because normally customers would make their own decisions when they are still in the line and then order directly so that the efficiency should not be affected. But my mind changed when I think about its value proposition, which is “offer top quality products while promoting exceptional service to customers” —–as Lucas said.

It may not so useful for Tim Hortons to provide a verity of  food to satisfy different needs cause the customer group which would choose Tim Hortons is specific. For those who just want to have a seat for study, work or rest and those who simply want t o have a cup of hot drink to get warm, more or fewer choices of food and drinks may not influence their choices so much.

Instead, what about thinking of the issue that open the store under Sauder on weekends?

Microsoft Office has been one of the world’s most useful software, corporations and individuals rely on it everyday. Microsoft has always stockpiled “large amounts of cash” from Office productivity software suite sales. However, in the past year “Microsoft has made it easier for consumers to access Office via the cloud and online downloads.”

Will Google Docs kill off Microsoft Office?

I strongly agree with the opinion in Mariska’s blog that “Google Docs is more useful for personal usage” and “Google Doc’s personal revenue will not be higher than the corporate revenue”

Microsoft devotes itself into developing personal and working use for several decades. It is not so easy to change the situation that almost every PC or laptop has Microsoft software because of its convenience and flexible. Google Doc develops with the widen process of Internet, it provides a great place for people working together with high efficiency. However, it is quite hard for it to make profits. Microsoft can sell their products and set different price for each version in order to satisfy different need. On contrast, if you have to pay before using Google Doc, will you still choose it as the first way to work? The number of users probably will reduce a lot. So that Google Doc still cannot take the place of Microsoft.

SAN FRANCISCO — For Twitter to justify the high valuation of its stock, the micro-messaging company must spread the gospel of tweeting far beyond its current active user base of 232 million accounts.

Different from the fact that Facebook benefits from the markets of north America and oversea half by half, Twitter gets profits from international market in a really low proportion, which allows this become its great opportunity.

Operating well in global market needs huge efforts. It is reported from S-1 that the number of oversea users make up for 77% of the total number, but only create 25% profit. On contrast, Facebook benefits 38% and 49% of its total revenue receptively in 2010 and 2012 from global market.

I believe that even though right now Twitter’s oversea market has grown 111% compared with previous season, investor cannot expect that it can always grow in such an amazing speed. However, the opportunity should not be underestimated. After the establishment of Shanghai Free Trade Zone, service inChina may be widen due to the fact that there’s no wall on Internet in that area.

Mobile messaging startup Snapchat rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook Inc that would have valued the company at $3 billion or more, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/snapchat-rejects-facebook-s-3b-buyout-offer-report-1.2426180

It is amazing that Snapchat rejected the buyout offer from huge company such as Google and Facebook. Why does it grow so fast?

Snapchat was established originally by several undergraduate students in Stanford.It is quite different from other IT company like Google, Twitter and Facebook. But one thing for sure is that they target the customer group of teenagers.

Last year, Snapchat widely got popular among high schools and universities around Los Angeles. Students even chatted when they were having classes. This is quite similar with other popular culture,which means that it capture youngsters’ attention. If a new app wants to develop further, teens should be the serious consideration. Right now, about 350 million photos upload through Snapchat every month.

However, when huge firms like Facebook think about buying this new kind of company, they should think over again and again. Because youngsters always change their tastes and don’t last so long. Many peers around me start to leave Facebook. So that even though Snapchat grows with  the preference from youngsters, it probably out of the market with the leaving process of youngsters.

(Reuters) – Starbucks Corp on Wednesday said breaking up with Kraft was hard to do, but worth the high price, after an arbitrator ruled it must pay a whopping $2.76 billion for ending the companies’ grocery coffee partnership early.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/starbucks-restate-results-show-loss-kraft-damages-121242696–sector.html

Restated results for Starbucks’ fourth quarter ended on September 29  shows a net loss of $1.64 per share. Also, an arbitrator ruled on Tuesday that Starbucks must pay $2.23 billion in damages plus $527 million for interest and legal fees for terminating its retail packaged coffee sales, marketing and distribution agreement with Kraft at least three years early.

What makes the issue worse, the company will issue $750 million in new debt in the next three months, Chief Financial Officer Troy Alstead said on the analyst call.

I do believe that it is not only an accounting failure, we can clearly find the problem of a lack of supervising in this case. The past experience of the failure on partnership with Kraft also proved this. The management and the supervisor system should be  established or improved.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s construction sector showed more weakness than expected in August, with a sharp decrease in plans for commercial and institutional buildings while housing showed a more modest decline, according to Statistics Canada data on Monday.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/canada-building-permits-fall-august-housing-cools-123944458–business.html

The building permits in Canada is not so stable at all. In August, it  fell 21.2 percent after jumping 21.4 percent in July to a record high. This may results in many issues.

Just like what Finance Minister Jim Flaherty  comments “the housing sector is ‘calming’ after a period of worry that a post-recession housing boom would turn into a bubble”

I have only been to Vancouver, where the housing price is comparative high among the cities in Canada. I used to think the situation should be blamed to the real estate speculators and the rich people from the world. Then I notice that the housing market here is not so friendly to normal people. The fact that the price for building permits is not stable may lead to wait and see  mentality and panic because no one knows what time the housing price would go up and down. Right now the housing market becomes cool, which is a common phenomena but really should be paid attention to its deep reasons

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks fell on Monday, extending two weeks of losses, as a lack of progress in ending the partial U.S. government shutdown or the debt-ceiling standoff kept investors nervous.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/stock-futures-down-washington-stalemate-continues-113551834–sector.html

The U.S government partial shutdown due to the fact that the politicians on Capitol Hill have failed to agree a new budget for the 2013-2014 financial year. Therefore, there’s no legal agreement to pay non-essential staff.At the beginning of the shutdown of U.S government, both American and people in other country treated the event as a farce cause it happened  for several times before.

Right now the things changed. Up to a million workers being furloughed. Investors are also looking ahead to the upcoming debate over the debt ceiling, which could result in a default on U.S. debt if a deal isn’t reached cause then America would run out of borrowing room in the mid-October.

Another fact is that about 70 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed lower while more than three-fourths of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange ended down.

We always compliment the combination of free-market and government control. Then we notice that the legislation is another vital factor in economics. What I mean is that how the government works and what the works based on really make a difference in the real world. The things should catch up and fit the modern pace rather than stick to the tradition. Even though America is the world largest economics. Now that we see the negative impact.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/us-shutdown-explainer-non-americans

It’s not just about the second-quarter earnings which showed a near $1 billion write-down for unsold Blackberry Z10 phones. It’s not about the fact that the BlackBerry PlayBook, the company’s first and only tablet offering, failed. It’s not about the fact that CEO Thorsten Heins, who took over Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, was stiff and never resonated with consumers, the media or investors. BlackBerry’s downfall stems from much more than that, going back six years.

http://bgr.com/2013/09/30/blackberry-downfall-analysis-iphone/

One day the professor in COMM101 asked that how a company may lost 1 billion dollars, which let me lost in thought.In 2007, BlackBerry was the leader of the tech industry even though in that year Apple announced the iPhone, with then CEO Steve Jobs introducing the revolutionary phone.

But things changed right now. Millions of crowded forward to buy a iPhone5s in the midnight while BlackBerry is seldom to be seen on the street.

In the past, BlackBerry was known for its well-designed system and the friendly control method. However, when  iphone leads whole world with touch screen and modern larger one, and sooner became what customers really prefer.

At that time, BlackBerry didn’t catch up with the fashion and still sticked to its keyboard. Even though BlackBerry tried their best to renew its system and developed new phones with touch screen, it seems that the things  didn’t go well at all. In the contrary, siri, google voice and the fantastic outlooking of products from other companies make people feel that BlackBerry is poor in producing smart phone, which leads to the result that BlackBerry is no longer preferred by the most of customers. It could be a mass with marketing failure, accounting failure and many other troubles happen together that make a company lost 1 billion in a quarter year.