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Agreeing with Sincere Cheong’s opinion, it seems that Marvel’s decision of creating their own studio in order to bypass buying intellectual property, copyrights, etc… was an extremely good idea.  By creating this new studio, it has allowed the company too expand into a new business model and allowed the company to expand its capabilities.  The process of creating their own studio has allowed Marvel to “retain its creative control” and has paved a new way of movie-making from comic books.  Before Marvel, there was no other comic book company that had established themselves and had created their own studio.  Their newly developed business model that came from the studio has proved to be extremely difficult to mimic.  I entirely agree with this statement as there has been no other company that has been able to do what Marvel has done exceptionally well.  The new movies such as Iron man and Avengers has demonstrated the full capabilities of Marvel and the success of their newly established competitive advantage.  Marvel has been able to successfully integrate themselves into the movie industry whereas other comic companies have not been able to do so as efficiently as Marvel.

Their new studio has allowed the company to expand their capabilities and further allow Marvel to have a sustained competitive advantage.  Therefore, I completely agree with Sincere who also agrees with the direction that Marvel has taken.  It has shown the relative success of taking new directions and that it may bring about huge positive changes throughout the company.

Last year, Google announced a new project that the company has launched.  Googles launch of a new sector called “Calico” in 2013 is run by Arthur Levinson, chairman and ex-CEO of biotech company Genentech.  Although  there are no specific details about how and what directions Calico will be going in order to do research for extending life or “cheating death.”  Calico is supposedly focusing more on health and the well-being of people, it is also focusing on aging and associated diseases.  This new phenomenon created by Google is a truly interesting direction that the company is heading towards, it showcases the full capabilities of google and how far it has come from simply being an “online company.”  More interestingly is the fact that Levinson is the chairman of Apple, however, he has received the blessing from Tim Cook to pursue this new objective.

This new project has been applauded by many but has sprung many questions left unanswered.  I believe that this new idea of improving life and improving the conditions of life is extremely important.  Although far-fetched, a few years ago we would have believed travelling to the moon would have been impossible.  It is the people who research, experiment, and try things that are “seemingly” impossible who accomplish new disruptive innovations that take the world by storm.  I am extremely excited to see what Calico has to bring as there should be much more news regarding Calico and its findings.

Calico is a new prospective company that will bring around changes in our future lives.  They have began expanding their company and will be building a facility that further tests aging, and age-related diseases such as neurodegeneration and cancer;  initially, the companies will each be investing $250 million.

As of recently, Instagram has begun implementing advertisements into its app.  However, their approach to adding these additional advertisements are different to the approach for Facebook.  Instead of having normal advertisements that any average user would notice, they are tailoring their advertisements to seamlessly integrate into the experience of Instagram.  This meaning that the advertisements would be introduced and styled in a manner that would mimc the photos and videos uploaded by normal users.  In my opinion this new approach is an innovative and fresh approach of making revenue with ads.  There has never been any other way of advertisements except for pre-rolls or pictures on the side of any given website.  This new seamless approach has yet to be seen, however, I do believe that it is a positive approach for advertisements and will receive general positive feedback, despite the negative connection of any type of advertisement.  In my opinion, it is difficult for a business, especially  an online business, to find a fine line of advertising quantity and its website/app itself.  Due to the obvious negativity shrouded around advertising, the Instagram team is risking the potential loss of users or continuing users by adding advertisements.

We have seen the use of advertisements on Facebook and have witnessed the negativity as it was being introduced along with the gradual implementation of advertisements on Youtube.  Naturally, there will always be negative feedback, nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how the public reacts to this new innovative way of integrating advertisements.  As an avid Youtube user, the main problem with advertisements were the unnatural and awkward placements of all advertisements as well as the annoying pre-video advertisement rolls.  These issues take away from the overall Youtube experience and has led to many computer users to acquire a tool called “Ad Block” which successively blocks out all advertisements.  With this new system, it will be interesting to see how people react and grade the apparent “seamless” advertisement implementation.