Beneficial or not? (for markets or for consumers)

It is interesting to see the recommendations of Amazon.com and other filter mechanism as a pre-selected personal taste for the consumers. Does that mean that we lost our control on making decision to select? I would see that personal using patterns whether they are heavy users or light users on the specific media as a precondition for the recommendation lists in digital entertainment economy to exert influence on the consumers. Probably, it could be the other direction which is the information related to consumers’ interests effectively provided by the services that makes consumers become heavy users. When consumers heavily rely on that media, they will not only pay attention to what content or product the media select for them, but they will also practically have purchase intention and behavior. Otherwise, they will choose to believe another way of word-of-mouth.

Indeed, digital market provides greater supply consumers than the offline market. I like the saying in the article that “many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching – a market response to inefficient distribution.” By expanding the shelf space and guiding the consumers to find out the product they like, hopefully the online news providers can have some idea from this. However, if following this kind of pre-selected mechanism, will it become another gatekeeper?

Dead end?

• The traditional concept of business as a “winner takes all” contest is giving way to a realisation that in the networked economy, companies need to both co-operate and compete. This perspective will need company to come up with business strategies that try to create maximum value in the marketplace. However, it seems to me that the co-opetition relationship between newspaper company and search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo is that newspaper companies are always in an inferior position. Even though they move their advertising revenue to online environment, the online ad revenue seems not grow fast enough to replace what they lost in the old media as the AJR article mentioned.

• Different media might need different model after a thorough assessment of a company’s network of players and a deep understanding of the business environment. An article I read (A framework for analyzing emerging business models: Cases of China’s media industry), proposes a participation business model concept after reviewing the existing perspectives of IT business model. The model consists of five dimensions:

1. information technology
2. business environment
3. value
4. the firm in terms of capability and resources
5. firm boundary

• This model might be able to be adopted to newspapers’ online sites due to the technology-driven environment and the participatory features employed by newspaper company. There should be a way out for not being in an inferior position in the relationship with those search engine giants. Can newspaper company find out new open ad networks or new ad models that could reform the relationships?

Panic again?

The articles remind me about Putnam’s time displacement concept. Especially the information available extremely exceeds the time we can spend on it, so the phenomenon of time displacement is much more serious nowadays, or perhaps we should say “attention displacement.”

It is possible when we spend time on the content, probably we don’t pay much attention on it. In addition, when people are multitasking, how much attention can they pay on the variety of content from different technology applications? From the perspective of media companies, do they care about the time you spend on their products or your attention on them? It seems hard to measure when distinguishing these two elements.

Online news industry has found it difficult to charge for access to online content. For me, the time when I need to pay for access to online news is the time when I have to access their archive for reading old news (I paid for an online news archive in Taiwan for doing content analysis). It is ironic for me that we pay for old instead of new in the news market.

The article, “Better than Free,” proposes eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free. I wonder if it is possible to apply to the news environment (still seems hard for me).

1. Immediacy
2. Personalization
3. Interpretation
4. Authenticity
5. Accessibility
6. Embodiment
7. Patronage
8. Findability

P.S. An interesting video clip about Web 2.0

Ting's stock picks

sorry I totally forgot to post it here.

Time Warner Inc. (TWX) 29.25 90 shares
Sony Corporation (SNE) 29.25 110 shares
Walt Disney Co. (DIS) 28.18 153 shares

Incidental exposure to online news

The article I reviewed is “Accidentally Informed: Incidental News Exposure on the World Wide Web” from 2001 Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.

This article argued that even though acquiring current affairs information is rarely a primary goal for people to use Internet, the prevalence of news on the web provides opportunities for people to encounter news in an incidental way. Therefore, the article assumed that “the frequency of web use will be positively associated with incidental exposure to news on the web” (H1). In addition, the article pointed out the goals people have for surfing the web could impact incidental exposure from the uses and gratifications perspective leading to the first research questions: “Do different uses of the Web result in differences in incidental exposure news?” Then, the second hypothesis “Incidental exposure to news on the Web will be positively associated with knowledge of current events.” was proposed.

This article mentioned in the literature review that more news are published online right now due to the popularity of portal sites and the information services provided by search engines. Since the online news is getting more and more, it would be obvious to see that people are more likely to expose to online news unintentionally. For the research question, it is also quite obvious that different purpose of using the Internet can lead to different patterns of using the Internet. I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly the “differences in incidental exposure news” is. It seems pretty vague to me. Lastly, when previous literature indicates that learning can be active or passive, it seems clear that the more online news people expose to (whether intentional or unintentional), the more knowledge of current events people would have.

The measure of knowledge here is an issue (Similar to SungWoo mentioned). Surveys relevant to the present research questions were taken in Autumn (21 through 31 Octobor) 1996, Spring (24 April through 11 May) 1998, and Autumn (26 October through 1 December) 1998. I would think that participants who took the survey later (for example the one took the survey on Dec. 1st comparing to the one did it on Oct. 26), might have more knowledge in terms of current events because people’s knowledge of current events is accumulated and they can acquire those information from different media.

In addition, this article mentions that the Internet is often an addition to rather than a replacement of traditional media, so the authors believe that web use will increase incidental learning about current events in part because of the complementary nature of contemporary media. I would consider that for certain groups such as young adults, the Internet might be a replacement of traditional media. Also, the incidental online news exposure was measured by a self-reported yes/no questions which is not persuasive to me. There should be a better way to measure people’s attention to information when the contents and media are competing with each other under the condition of information surplus.

Similar to Sandra’s feeling, I wonder if it is because I am not familiar with or interested in some area, I couldn’t get the meaning of those hypotheses or research questions. Would it be possible that those hypotheses or research questions which seem meaningless or boring to us might be important for theory testing or theory building?

The changing of advertising

When a company keeps advertising their product, does that mean the company or the selling of the product is going down? I like the concept that was mentioned in Jarvis’s article that before you spend money to advertising, investing your product and service first, especially, in the online-networked environment where people are still arguing whether the brand advertising work online. This article corrects my misconception of the function of advertise. Since social networking sites and microblogs showed up, the statement about the market evaluation that “it’s about relationships, not messages” was confirmed again. However, does that mean social media would be crucial factor that influence the advertising? How much should a media rely on the advertising revenue nowadays? There should be a lot of differences between new and traditional media when the technology access and media consumption is changing.

In addition to the network based media, search engine ads also become a popular way for online advertising such as Yahoo’s key word advertising. I was kind of surprise its effectiveness when people try to search some information actively and then relevant shows up. Moreover, such as google’s software comes up with matches more likely to bring customers to advertisers. In this kind of situation, how would a company make decision whether to put there advertising on online media or on traditional media?

Decision making for media market

What is the needs of firms? For an effective and skillful financial management, there are so many important decision-making points to seek capital at different stages (the research stage, the development stage, the introduction stage, and the establishment stage) and to solve problems of financing a new firm or product. It is more complicated than just earn money from the markets. It might be good if we have different case studies to understand different media financial flow, especially when the online environment is so different leading to different types of media product. The article I read in Wired, “The Good Enough Revolution,” points out that the markets have transformed by products that trade power or fidelity for low price, flexibility, and convenience. Therefore, in the digital environment, it could be possible that customers would sacrifice lots of quality for cheap and convenient device.

In this article, it is interesting to find out that sometimes promising idea might turn out to be fatally flawed in this digital era. The company (Pure digital company) was trying to combine digital imaging with the mass market of throw-away point-and shoots (disposal camera I think). However, it needs people returning the $20 camera to stores for printing photos and a CD. From getting those single use digital cameras back, the company can reduce the costs it had to manufacture. However, surprisingly, the customers didn’t return the cameras fast enough because they can print pictures later, print pictures by their own device, or just own the digital file, the company is hard to finance continuing operations (would it similar to the concept of credit management?). Therefore, the product and retailing failed. Does it mean that different media might need different model due to the uniqueness of market ecosystem.

Finding a survival way

It seems like the war between Microsoft and Google is hard to end. Microsoft started its search engine, Bing, incorporating with its Internet Explorer, and Google developed Google Chrome Web browser to match with its Google search engine and against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Even though Google Chrome only has 2.84% of the market comparing to Internet Explorer's 66.87%, it tried to increase it’s awareness by searching another survival way – incorporate with (like pre-installed) Sony’s Vaio line of computers.

It seems like the competition will be more complicated because more business will involve in (smart-phones, social networking sites, micro-blogs, etc.) However, the competition should trigger companies’ motivation to have better managerial decisions and become more creativity for matching the tastes in the market and making money. However, would it be a monopolistic competition in this convergent digital era? and what will the market structure be like in this competition?

Let's Brainstorming

In Stepp’s article, he throws out some interesting questions to let us think about what news organizations can do to overcome their obstacles in this digital era. “Why don’t they capture the market in online classified, long before Craigslist? Why didn’t they become the home base for local video, long before YouTube? Why didn’t they recognize the power of social connections, long before Facebook?” When we think about what can be the next innovative Internet applications after social-networking sites, we are surprised at the emergence of micro-blogs. At the same time, micro-blogs also become a networked platform for people to access to daily news.

Technologies change so fast and never stop. What news organizations need to do is to be creative and think one step further than other competitors, especially when it is a time that everyone can be publishers and receivers. It seems that when TV station tried to incorporate their videos with YouTube, it is still too late. I doubt that people will go to TV station’s YouTube profile page to watch TV news (like breaking news) everyday.

“What can we do that people are willing to spend something to get, even if it’s just time?” Since it is a time that audiences can be reached by multiple ways, if news organizations come out with a creative way to attract audiences, they can make people happily pay for their products. Stepp indicates that for most local news organizations, the vision is to become the community’s central sources of dependable information services. How to maintain their credibility and find their own niche to compete with international news organizations at the same time? I wonder about the competitive and collaborative relationship between international and local news organizations.

Ting's response (HMF and Picard)

An interesting point I found in chapter three is that two products can be substitute goods and complementary goods at different time point. Especially when a new media technology shows up, we often think that it would replace the traditional media since the amount of time available for the consumption of various types of media is limited. However, it still could be possible like VCR or DVD player complement the theatrical exhibition of movie for time shifting. Therefore, it will be interesting to find out how new technologies compete with each other or integrate with each other (like there is a lot of Internet applications integrate with each other). When a gadget such as iphone or google phone includes all kind of services, does each of the services complement each other and make a win-win situation? For example, when you take a picture, you want to use a camera build in your cell phone or you want to bring another one? Therefore, the relationship seems more complicated then just displacement or complementarity. When we think about the free online content is displacing traditional print media or television, there is still argument that with users of online news in a specific content area also being more likely to seek out news in the same area from traditional media outlets.

In Picard’s article, the real measure of journalistic value is value created by serving readers such as accessing sources, searching through information and determining its significant, and conveying it effectively. However, the technology empowers individuals nowadays to have these capabilities. To weight more on economic outcomes, journalists need to find out a creative way for their reporting to attract audiences. In the relationship of supply and demand, news becomes more infotainment nowadays to attract more audiences, even includes a lot of daily information (such as where to eat or where to shop) in the newspaper like Apple Daily. Journalism seems in a dilemma that it tends to be profit-oriented in the market of digital era and it also needs to hold its moral standard not to be over sensational. Can news media maintain their news quality in this dilemma when considering supply and demand? In this case, is there any resolution? Or the market will force everything to change?