In response to Genie Chang’s “Oh No You Didn’t! Snapchat Rejected Facebook”, she mentions that Snapchat turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook. There are unique features about Snapchat but I personally think Snapchat missed an opportunity to grow with Facebook. I don’t think Snapchat can last very long on its own, in fact, I think it’s one of those apps that was “hot” for a few months and will eventually fade away. This reminds me of “Candy Crush Saga”, when everyone used to play and send each other tickets to move on to the next stage or more lives. Nowadays, you rarely see people playing “Candy Crush Saga”, I thought it was a smart move to sell it to a big corporation like Facebook when the app reached its peak.

Blog:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/geniechang/2013/11/15/oh-no-you-didnt-snapchat-rejected-facebook/

As I was reading Karina Furuya’s “Are Consumers No Longer Eating Cereal For Breakfast?”, I agreed with her points how the demand of cereal is slowly decreasing and Kellogg’s must change their product line to maintain or increase their revenue. In today’s society, people are starting to wake up late which in results, skip breakfast and grab snacks such as Greek yogurt and granola bars as an alternative to cereal on their way to school or work. People are starting to be health conscious about what they consume, therefore, if Kellogg’s want to stay competitive, Kellogg’s must know what their consumers’ needs are and modify their product. I agree with Karina Furuya’s ideas, she mentioned some examples for Kellogg’s to stay competitive by “branching out their cereal business to a healthier, low sugar line or create a new breakfast product other than cereal.”

Blog:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/karina08/2013/11/15/53/

Ilana and Noam Kenig created a business to help individuals get their lost data back, such as, important documents and precious baby pictures. However, once the business started, they realized that the individual market isn’t there.

Ilana and Noam Kenig noticed a need for businesses and not individuals which helped them re-target their customer segment to small businesses that need to back-up their customer information and accounting documents. For Ilana and Noam Kenig, maintaining the enthusiasm is the key to their success. They invest in research and development to stay ahead of their industry, and constantly create and improve services to meet their customer’s needs and to expand their company’s potential.

Ilana and Noam Kenig’s successful story shows that lean start-up business are usually better as 75% of traditional start-up businesses fail.

Check out more information about Ilana and Noam Kenig:
http://www.smallbusinessbc.ca/around-bc/meet-ilana-and-noam-kenig-restoring-data-inc
Reference statistic from here:
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ehost/detail?vid=4&sid=a913e837-00c6-4479-9f1a-76ee8588b09a%40sessionmgr14&hid=25&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&AN=87039866

Is there a new start for Blackberry now that Blackberry gave $16 million to Thorsten Heins?

John Chen steps to the plate to be the CEO of Blackberry. Chen is receiving a yearly salary of $1 million and along with a bonus of $2 million. He has been awarded 13 million restricted shares in Blackberry, currently worth about $85 million. A quarter of the shares will become payable after three years, another quarter after four years, and the remaining 50% after five years. This deal seems to help John Chen to be aligned with the company by recovering and hopefully, make Blackberry become a successful business again. I believe that John Chen can turn Blackberry into a successful company again in the next 10 years due to his successful story where he became the CEO of a troubled business, Sybase and sold the company to SAP for $5.8 billion.

John Chen reminds me of Steve Jobs as Steve Jobs was in charge of Apple when Apple was worthless. Steve Jobs turned Apple into a successful business and people with the shares when Apple was worthless is probably millionaires now. Apple was rising but after Steve Jobs’s death, Apple is lacking uniqueness and innovation. This gives me hope that John Chen might be able to turn Blackberry around.

Check out more information about John Chen:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/heinss-golden-handshake-could-be-as-much-as-22-million/article15241300/
http://allthingsd.com/20131111/john-chen-is-blackberrys-88-million-man/

It was record high on Friday, November 8 and today, November 11, it’s record high again in the stock market! Can you predict what’s going to happen tomorrow? It’s definitely hard to predict the stock market because tomorrow can be the record high again or fall dramatically.

Traditionally, based on the current economic data, economists can predict how the stocks will rise or fall. Traditionally, if the economic data is good, the stocks will go up but if the economic data is bad, the stocks will go down.

Now in today’s society, if the economic data is good, somehow stocks can go down because the government will stop printing money which will hurt the stock market, so how can we predict the results of the stock market? We cannot predict if the stocks will go up or down which turns the stock market as a gambling game like one big Casino. One day, someone can invest in the right stocks at the right time and earn billions of dollars, however, someone can be the poorest person in the world. Overall, the stock market is an unpredictable gambling game!

Check out the article about the record high of November 11, 2013:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-futures-flat-market-takes-125645571.html

Apple iPad Air was recently released yesterday (November 1, 2013). It has been a tradition for Apple products that customers camp out the day before any Apple product release in stores. As with any Apple product release, customers hold certain expectations. With the release of iPhone 5C that didn’t go well not long ago (More information in my previous blog post), customers were hopefully expecting something exciting with the iPad Air.

Once again, customers were disappointed. Customers felt a wave of regret wash over them. They paid so much for the iPad Air that they didn’t honestly really like. People felt that the iPad Air didn’t deserve the “Air” name. For instance, the weight of the iPhone 5 shocked the customers how light it was compared to the iPhone 4/4s. Another issue was it was uncomfortable to hold with one hand and to type on the iPad Air. The biggest issue that customers had was the iPad Air didn’t have Touch ID. The newest technology, Touch ID was added to the iPhone 5s home button allowing users to register to five fingerprints that may unlock the device in seconds by touching the home button. It’s an important security feature considering it’s efficient and lowers the stolen or lost rate on Apple products. However, this feature wasn’t on the iPad Air, which ultimately disappointed majority of the customers.

Overall, customers felt that the advertising for iPad Air as “Air” felt like false advertising, the iPad Air lacks of uniqueness, its speed changes are barely noticeable and its lack of Touch ID on the iPad Air was upsetting for everyone.

Check out the reviews by customers:
http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-ipad-5-air-review-3-major-disappointments-new-fifth-generation-ipad-1452788

Don’t you hate it when you have to make time out of your day to go to the bank to deposit your cheques? Especially when you arrive to the bank, you see a huge line up in front of you, expecting a 30 minutes wait until you get to the counter?

ING DIRECT Canada recently made an app that will solve those questions! Cheque-In is an app that allows customers to take a picture of the cheque and the money will be transferred to your bank account instantly. This current marketing strategy will increase sales as younger generations are starting to work in the workforce and pretty much every teen has a smartphone in today’s society. By using Cheque-In, ING DIRECT Canada cuts labour costs. Cheque-In is more efficient as a server will keep all the data accurately instead of having endless copies of paper done by bankers/tellers.

Cheque-In is through Internet which can be dangerous as there will be many hackers trying to hack into the system. The Internet is something that is hard for older generations to learn, therefore, Cheque-In will not be efficient towards older generations. Older generations prefer the experience of going to the bank and having a conversation with bankers/tellers. Some may prefer paper copies to keep track the bank amount from time to time as well.

More Information about Cheque-In:
http://www.ingdirect.ca/en/landingpage/chequein/faq.html