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Monthly Archives: November 2013

 

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.

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