Week 1 - Reflection and Review

The biggest take away from this week’s suggested media is just how young the internet still is. To quote what Reid Hoffman stated in his interview, “the internet is still at the end of the first inning”, in reference to a baseball game. Currently, the internet is a virtual medium where anyone can upload any information, with minimal verification. A good example of this is Myspace. Myspace is a social network where people can meet/connect virtually, but a lot of them are strangers who are often dishonest about who they were. This has resulted in limited credibility for Myspace and similar social networking sites. Now, the internet and especially social networking sites are fast becoming a center that establishes a true connection between the real world and the virtual world. Sites like Facebook and Linkedin are set up to first guarantee the trust of and between their users.

The other major theme I noticed was how internet companies would be monetizing their ideas. Reid Hoffman’s belief is that if you have the next great idea and people want it, then it needs to be scaled up and profits will be realized in the future. Marc Zuckerberg also fosters this idea, which is why he is not relinquishing his role as CEO of facebook. However, most of these newer ideas (Ning, Facebook, Quick), are not very profitable in their current sate. Their main source of revenue is ads. However, these businesses are working on other avenues to be profitable. One marketing idea that was clever was discussed by Marc Andereesen. The idea is to market a product before the product has even been created in order to determine the demand for the idea. This would be done by placing pop up ads, and calculating how many people click on these ads (nothing would be behind the ads). Similarly, I already do this when I am interested in purchasing a piece of real estate to be used as a rental property. I will place an ad on craigslist about my potential rental property and if I receive enough inquiries, I will know that I will be able to rent the property at the advertised price. This emphasizes that there are still a multitude of unrealized potential for digital marketing on the internet.

That being said, there is still a lot of misperceived conceptions about the internet and marketing. My comment that I would like to add is best summed up by a 15 year old summer intern, Matthew Robson, who worked for Morgan Stanley in the summer of 2009. At the behest of the bank's research team in London, Robson described how he and his friends interact with all kinds of media, from television and movies to Twitter and Internet radio, which got the attention of the CEO. He said that teens devour all kinds of media but are reluctant to pay for it. They listen to music, but prefer online sites, such as last.fm over the radio. They watch TV, but only when their favorite programs are in season. This was further emphasized by Gil and Frank in part 3 about the newspaper industry as they stated younger people are very adept at dodging paying for media on the internet. I completely agree with his final point, which he stated that view ads on Web sites as "extremely annoying and pointless." I personally have never clicked on them, and this is the main source of generated revenue for almost all internet sites. While the Internet and social networking sites are popular among teenagers, he gave micro-blogging service Twitter the thumbs down. This just points to how infant this internet still is. Marketing is continuously evolving in the digital age of technology as businesses begin to understand what works and what does not work. Many practices that work in the physical world will not work in the virtual world.

This article on Mathew Robson can be found here -
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/International/story?id=8070196&page=1

Self-monitoring report , Week 1

Below are the materials I was able to cover during the week. While my ultimate goal was to view all of the selections, that was difficult due to the amount of information provided (some selections were over 100 pages). One comment about this is that it was much easier for me to take in the materials that didn’t require reading, as I was able to listen to the podcasts while working out at the gym or watch/listen to the videos while checking up on my work email. In today’s fast paced lifestyle, multitasking is necessary, and marketers need to recognize that information needs to be conveyed in the easiest and most efficient ways to the consumers. One not of technical difficulty. If I click on the link to some of the selections, I will receive a "navigation to the webpage was canceled" message. In order to access the actual page, I need to right click on the link and select, "open in a new window". This is for Internet Explorer 8.

Chapter 1: "Made to Engage", in The Age of Engage, pp. 1-26
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 1"
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 2
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 3"
Video: A conversation with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn
Report: The Future of the Internet; from the Pew Internet & American Life Project
Book excerpt: "Mastering the Hype Cycle"
Article: "Do You Trust This Face?" by Alex French, GQ, December, 2008.
Video: "A conversation with Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos," from the Charlie Rose program
Video: "The Web and TV, a sibling rivalry," presentation by Peter Hirshberg, Silicon Valley executive
Video: "A conversation with entrepreneur and software engineer Marc Andreessen," from the Charlie Rose program
What is new media? (from The New Media Reader)
Technology and ideology: the case of the telegraph (from The New Media Reader)

First Post! - learning goals, outcomes, and questions

This week, I intend to get a better understanding of exactly what this class is about and the types of material and content that we will be learning from. The course is named “Marketing in the Era of Digital Technology”, but will this course be emphasizing more, technology or marketing. I assume it will be a perfect blend of both. After looking at the topics and assignments for this week, there are 14 selections of media to experience. If I am not able to read/listen/watch all of these, I would like to sample several from each different media type (articles/podcasts/videos) so I can get a good feel about the benefits each one provides.