rebecca yang

I came across Keenan’s blog and Anthony’s blog post about Snapchat, a disappearing photo messaging app, which has been extraordinarily popular with 3 million users in 2 years, rejected a 3-billion-dollar offer from Facebook. Despite the fact that Facebook has been positioned as the dominant social-networking app, it’s still concerned about threats from other companies, especially after the decrease in its share price recently.

It’s not unusual to hear Facebook’s intention to buy off a social-networking app that is likely to threaten some of services it offers; Facebook bought Instagram for 1 million about a year ago. Although Keenan advocates Facebook’s intentions of buying the novel app to decrease the competition and establish its status in the social-networking market, my analysis shows that it’s neither sustainable nor practical way to buy all the existing photo sharing and message apps such as Line and Whatsapp and even the next 20 emerging community services in the future. Instead of investing a great percentage of the capital into other apps, Facebook should concentrate on building up its own strengthens by updating its own social-networking app such as poke and online messages services. I understand Facebook’s concerns about the threats from other companies, but one of the most effective ways of tackling with the external issues is to solve the inherent problems by highlighting its strengths and eliminating the weaknesses. It’s necessary to have a dominant strategy regardless of others.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/11/13/facebook-wouldve-bought-snapchat-for-3-billion-in-cash-heres-why/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/facebook-snapchat-3-billion_n_4268859.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/12/28/facebook-pokes-a-bomb-succeeds-only-at-making-snapchat-more-popular/

I recently read Alison’s blog post about Tim Horton’s proposal to expand of their products into vending machines, which will be an entirely new distribution channel to approach the customers. I agree that creative strategies are significant for a company to differentiate itself from other competitors. More importantly, a novel idea also has a great potential to boost up its profits.

Rogers, a Canadian communications and media company, demonstrates a good example of how to generate a new revenue stream by operating a shopping channel. Although Rogers hasn’t released any financial information about the shopping channel, the fact that its sales went up by 6 % from last year to 812 millions even during US economic recession indicates the success of the company’s television channel paring up with website sales. In addition to telecommunication base, Rogers one of the most important revenue streams, media assets should be another area for Rogers to focus on, and it has done a good job on running the shopping channel. It has substantially increased the sales by bringing the celebrities who are associated with the products to the TV show. It’s interesting to see how a communications company successfully takes over an online shopping website and branches out to other markets while its conventional television networks are encountering competitive advertising market. Capitalizing on its substantial influence over a variety of medias, Rogers has the upper to market and advertise its own shopping channel. One thing for sure is that thinking outside the box provides Rogers more opportunities to explore the market.

Here’s a link to its online shopping website:

http://www.theshoppingchannel.com/?s_kwcid=TC|14868|shopping%20channel||S|p|29919895380&gclid=CN2P05nQ6roCFQdyQgodaQYABA

Sources:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-shopping-channel/article14143467/?from=14151732

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/retail-therapy-rogers-cranks-up-shopping-tv/article14151732/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/video/20130913theglobeandmailguylaurence-rogers-720p-3000kbpsmp4/article14280126/

At the same time that Microsoft abandon the old system that compels mangers to rate their employees on a curve and punish or even fire the low-end employees, Yahoo is debating whether it should adopt this ranking system

In order for the most efficient and economic business model, it’s seemingly reasonable for Yahoo to embrace this “Game of Thrones” in the office. Apparently, this new policy enables Yahoo to lower the cost moderately by getting rid of the least motivated workers who contribute less than the payment they receive. In addition, a competitive environment will be established, where everyone is driven to work harder by the extrinsic motivation such as money, rather than intrinsic factors such as his or her own passion and self-actualization, which are more likely to yield to a more outstanding results.

(Here’s Ted Talk about extrinsic motivations fail in some ways The puzzle of motivation)

Hence, every coin has two sides, mechanically rating the employees’ performances on a curve, which is mostly determined by the manger’s observations and opinions, is arbitrary and defective. In other words, employees will easily shift their focus from their duties to some negative political behaviors. For instance, some of the employees try to ingratiate themselves with the mangers and backstab their colleagues in order to save their jobs. As the research operated by the Institute of Corporate Productivity shows that the number of companies using a forced ranking system is constantly shrinking in these two years.

All-in-all, human resources plays a key role in the success of the company. Therefore, Yahoo should be cautious about the stack ranking idea and analyze the benefits and drawbacks of this new policy before the implementation in the organization.

Sources:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-13/microsoft-kills-its-hated-stack-rankings-dot-does-anyone-do-employee-reviews-right

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-12/yahoos-latest-hr-disaster-ranking-workers-on-a-curve#r=read

http://cdn2.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/05/Yahoo-logo-657×245.jpg

The TV and films online streaming services Netflix has witnessed the global subscribers number surge over 40 million and a huge profit jump. I am also one of the millions loyal customers for Netflix. A question occurs to me that what makes Netflix so prevalent with a huge and devoted customer base. I realize Netflix’s huge database, as well as its effective manipulation and integration of information and business considerably contribute to this remarkable progress.

A writer Leo Kelion explains how Netflix turns a threat of copyright infringement into an opportunity to obtain information about which is the most popular show so that it will launch more new shows online that are more potentially appeal to the public instead of wasting time and resources uploading films that only very few subscribers are interested in. In this way, though Netflix doesn’t create the database itself, it capitalizes on the valuable information from outside resources and dramatically increases efficiency of the company.

One of the new features allowing customers to create multiple profiles for one account is another example that displays Netflix’s efficient operation of the massive amount of information and its awareness of the first-hand customer feedback. It’s been requested by numerous subscribers for the multiple profiles because it creates confusion in “My Preference” when another family member logs in the same account and watches completely different kind of movies. As a result, customers find it more pleasurable and convenient to retain their own profiles while still sharing their accounts with other family members. I believe that Netflix will continue to thrive in the future due to its massive amount of subscribers’ information and exceptional business technology management skill.

Resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24621047

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24108673

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/netflix-gets-more-personal-with-multiple-profiles-per-account/article13545295/

When hearing social conscious responsibility, a lot of companies instantly link it with higher cost and lower profits. However, this is not always the case. Instead, United Parcel Service of America.Inc, an American global package delivery company demonstrates an excellent example of how to boost up the profits as well as being environmentally responsible through new operating methods and enhanced efficient process. Since 2004, with the aid of the engineering department, UPS has come up with numerous new routes for the driver to avoid as many left turns as possible, until there are only right turns in their delivery routes, which seems irrelevant to either social responsibility or generating more profits. However, the only right-turn policy has surprisingly resulted in saving 10 million gallons of gas and reducing carbon emission by 100,000 metric tons due to the shorter waiting time, lower fuel consumption and increased safety.

(Here’s a video clip to explain how the right-turn policy facilitates the traffics, eventually resulting in incremental efficiency.)

Why UPS trucks only turn left

Many companies are under the illusion that sustainability is pointed against profit because it takes time and capital to innovate new technologies, which are designed to address only the environmental and societal issues. However, they don’t realize that their companies are established and affected by the environment such as natural resources and water use. It’s crucial for the companies to abandon the traditional view of business model and look at business through a new lens where long-term benefit outweighs the instant profits.

Sources:

http://www.pressroom.ups.com/Fact+Sheets/Saving+Fuel%3A+UPS+Saves+Fuel+and+Reduces+Emissions+the+%22Right%22+Way+by+Avoiding+Left+Turns

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-20/ups-makes-no-left-turns-in-quest-to-deliver-sustainability-q-a.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/ups-efficiency-secret-our-trucks-never-turn-left-2011-3