ok,ok…
BaiduX15=1,795 (4,019)
SohuX50=2,230 (3,011)
DreamWorkX97=2,125 (3,002)
Total now=6150 lost about 40%
I am so glad it is not what my 401k looks like.
Showing posts with label Nan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nan. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
What we watch and how we watch it?
Last Sunday's NYT features the new reality of the way we watch now.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The changing access to technology and media consumption
Picard pointed out that the changing technology and access to technology would be one issue that drives the research in media economics today. To investigate the technology access with the patterns of consumption, new research hypotheses can be generated:
In a world that a very small number of users account for a disproportionate amount of the bandwidth consumption, wouldn’t it be reasonable for broadband Internet providers to charge consumer based on the amount of data use? We have already discussed this in earlier classes. When the unlimited broadband changes to be a limited service package, what types of content on the web would consumers first abandon to save the cost? What kind of strategy should content providers such as Youtube apply to cope with the problem?
In a world that a very small number of users account for a disproportionate amount of the bandwidth consumption, wouldn’t it be reasonable for broadband Internet providers to charge consumer based on the amount of data use? We have already discussed this in earlier classes. When the unlimited broadband changes to be a limited service package, what types of content on the web would consumers first abandon to save the cost? What kind of strategy should content providers such as Youtube apply to cope with the problem?
Saturday, November 1, 2008
The Long Tail…
Besides the idea of targeting the “niche markets”, another important condition for a long tail business to survive is to effectively guide consumers in the sea of products by “following the contours of their likes and dislikes”. I think that is the key element for the success of Netflix and Amazon, which is to keep on providing information related to people’s purchasing interest and that keep people continue to stay on their site (even they may not be buying things instantly…). I don’t think the online news providers have done a good job in this area, just by looking at the time people spent on the news site.
And before we get too excited about the long tail theory, there are some critics to look at: There is an article published on Harvard Business Review analyzing market datasets to show that
And before we get too excited about the long tail theory, there are some critics to look at: There is an article published on Harvard Business Review analyzing market datasets to show that
First, the tail is long but extremely flat--and, as online retailers expand their assortments, increasingly so. Second, compared with heavy users, light users have a disproportionately strong preference for the more popular offerings, while both groups appreciate hit products more than they like those in the tail.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Business models
Picard’s chapter suggested that newspaper’s business model has shifted from dependency on circulation to advertisement, and now with the declining of the readership it is time for newspaper to go back to the old business model. Like the recent article in AJR: The Elite Newspaper of the Future argued that:
Those all sound like cliché to me. It is just one of the myths that has been repeated so many times but has not become the reality yet? Besides WSJ, which newspaper has actually managed to do that or even tried to do that? I think the blogs are the ones that are really making the effort to provide analysis and investigative stuff.
Gao’s analysis of emerging business model is very neat. Just a footnote, after the success of Super Girl, there are many similar TV programs in China . Over the time, people will eventually get tired of it. So even a really good business model is venerable to repetition.
A smaller, less frequently published version packed with analysis and investigative reporting and aimed at well-educated news junkies that may well be a smart survival strategy for the beleaguered old print product.
Those all sound like cliché to me. It is just one of the myths that has been repeated so many times but has not become the reality yet? Besides WSJ, which newspaper has actually managed to do that or even tried to do that? I think the blogs are the ones that are really making the effort to provide analysis and investigative stuff.
Gao’s analysis of emerging business model is very neat. Just a footnote, after the success of Super Girl, there are many similar TV programs in China . Over the time, people will eventually get tired of it. So even a really good business model is venerable to repetition.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Smart Newspaper
Like we have smart phone, I think it is the time for newspaper to become smart too. One publisher of the newspaper complained in the AJR pieces about:
Newspapers, even online, are barely organizing their content innovatively than their print products. The newspaper still functions in a way, in which they assume that they are on the top of the information food chain. But as the AJR articles pointed out, it is no longer the case:
The newspaper should find the right position in the cycle of information flow. At least, newspapers must think themselves as information portals rather than the fixed number of pages arrived at people’s door every morning.
P.S. Please consider this post is written by a young adult (if under 30 considered young)who finally decided to become a subscriber of New York Times and have NOT received a single copy of the paper two weeks after placing the order online.
"Newspapers need to negotiate a more equitable share with search engines that are making billions of dollars by selling ads around newspaper content without the costs of creating that content.... The book industry and the movie industry don't give their content away."It is important for the newspaper publishers to aware that it is not solely the information itself but the way one media processes, organizes and presents the information, which creates value. It is true that Google does not produce any news content, but it creates a channel for people to effectively get the information they pursue. Google is valuable to users because it is smart and you can do things with it.
Newspapers, even online, are barely organizing their content innovatively than their print products. The newspaper still functions in a way, in which they assume that they are on the top of the information food chain. But as the AJR articles pointed out, it is no longer the case:
Today journalists stand not at the head of the pipeline but in the middle of a boundless web of interconnected media, messages, senders and receivers. This is the new, right-brain, digital world. The journalist-in-the-middle is a ringmaster, a maker and a consumer, a grand impresario of a two-way information flow that has no beginning, end or fixed schedule.
The newspaper should find the right position in the cycle of information flow. At least, newspapers must think themselves as information portals rather than the fixed number of pages arrived at people’s door every morning.
P.S. Please consider this post is written by a young adult (if under 30 considered young)who finally decided to become a subscriber of New York Times and have NOT received a single copy of the paper two weeks after placing the order online.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Attention Economy
Attention economy reminds me of Putnam’s famous argument that TV (or Internet) has a time displacement effect on people’s civic engagement. But the attention economy provides a more sophisticated measure of people’s use of time, which is attention. Most of mass communication studies still utilize the time spent on media consumption to measure the media use. This approach fails to account for the increasing thinner attention people paid to the media, even when they claim to spend time with it.
Attention economy also proposed two interesting laws:
First, the amount of information increases, the demand for attention increases.
Second, the more attention to have begin with, the easier it is to get more.
The first one can be used to explain the information overload phenomenon. However, the increase in demand for attention may be disappointed by the supply. What people are paying attention to and which get the most devoted attention can be an interesting topic for mass communication studies. The second law shows a rich get richer model in attention economy. I am wondering whether some media outlets are more attention efficient than others. Especially new media, would reading twitter less attention consuming than reading New York Times? Therefore, one media does not have to be dominant attention grabber in order to succeed, media requires less attention may attracts more users, who live in a information overload society.
Attention economy also proposed two interesting laws:
First, the amount of information increases, the demand for attention increases.
Second, the more attention to have begin with, the easier it is to get more.
The first one can be used to explain the information overload phenomenon. However, the increase in demand for attention may be disappointed by the supply. What people are paying attention to and which get the most devoted attention can be an interesting topic for mass communication studies. The second law shows a rich get richer model in attention economy. I am wondering whether some media outlets are more attention efficient than others. Especially new media, would reading twitter less attention consuming than reading New York Times? Therefore, one media does not have to be dominant attention grabber in order to succeed, media requires less attention may attracts more users, who live in a information overload society.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The cooking pot market
Using the cooking pot market to explain the free online product and services seems purely genius at the first glance, but it only accounts for one part of what is really going on in the dual online media market.
If we look at the participatory media from users’ perspective, it is simply true that--
Consumers would like to create content for reputation or exchanging for other valuable information provided by their peers. It explains why Bloggers.com, YouTube, and MySpace can exist and keep on expanding over the years. It will be hard to put a price tag on the value of user generated content online, but it is possible to quantify the utility of it with the measurement of how people perceive its usefulness.
From the media company’s perspective, the idea of cooking pot market offers a way to manage the supply of the content and maintain the audience base. But eventually, they will starve without cashing out the information resources they possess online. One common way to do it is through ad selling. Many new media platforms, which establish success in a cooking pot market, still have hard time to finance themselves. For example, YouTube, as the future for television, is considered to have a lot of buried treasure in term of making ad revenue.
If we look at the participatory media from users’ perspective, it is simply true that--
If a significant part of your needs are for information products themselves, you do not need to trade in your intangible earnings from the products you create for hard cash, because you can use those intangibles to "buy" the information you want.
Consumers would like to create content for reputation or exchanging for other valuable information provided by their peers. It explains why Bloggers.com, YouTube, and MySpace can exist and keep on expanding over the years. It will be hard to put a price tag on the value of user generated content online, but it is possible to quantify the utility of it with the measurement of how people perceive its usefulness.
From the media company’s perspective, the idea of cooking pot market offers a way to manage the supply of the content and maintain the audience base. But eventually, they will starve without cashing out the information resources they possess online. One common way to do it is through ad selling. Many new media platforms, which establish success in a cooking pot market, still have hard time to finance themselves. For example, YouTube, as the future for television, is considered to have a lot of buried treasure in term of making ad revenue.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
How the “head” survive in the economics of long tail?
Two comments from the Economist article intrigued me to think: what will be the traditional media’s strategy to survive in the era of participatory media?
Those ideas are related to the long tail rationale, which argues that the creation and consumption of the large continuum of niche content can become a successful business model in the new media environment. As seen on the graph that shows “links from blogs to sites”, the mainstream media as the “head” in an economics of long tail still much needed as the source of information especially with its expertise in terms of gathering and packaging the news. I think the “head” have a chance to success only if it finds a good way to connect with the long tail or even become origin of the long tail.
Another thought I have is that the long tail argument may solve the mystery that we saw from the readership data Dr. Chyi presented in class. Why would Yahoo become such a hot place to get news? Maybe because the portal sites offer so much things to do, which create a long tail of audience with diverse reasons to be there. And this long tail happens to contribute to the news viewing for the site. However, the news viewing may just be a by product of something more fun to do.
First, Rupert Murdoch said,"[the newspaper] have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn't send a letter to the editor any more. She goes online and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers.
Second, “it's not content until it's linked,” said Jeff Jarvis, a former journalist and newspaper consultant, “and bloggers will not link to articles that require logins and subscriptions to be viewed.”
Those ideas are related to the long tail rationale, which argues that the creation and consumption of the large continuum of niche content can become a successful business model in the new media environment. As seen on the graph that shows “links from blogs to sites”, the mainstream media as the “head” in an economics of long tail still much needed as the source of information especially with its expertise in terms of gathering and packaging the news. I think the “head” have a chance to success only if it finds a good way to connect with the long tail or even become origin of the long tail.
Another thought I have is that the long tail argument may solve the mystery that we saw from the readership data Dr. Chyi presented in class. Why would Yahoo become such a hot place to get news? Maybe because the portal sites offer so much things to do, which create a long tail of audience with diverse reasons to be there. And this long tail happens to contribute to the news viewing for the site. However, the news viewing may just be a by product of something more fun to do.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Google, Ads Monopoly?
The search engine ads seem to be the buzz word for online advertising nowadays. I find this recent NYT article particularly interesting: it points out when placing ads on Google, not the advertisers who paid the highest price received the most displays.
What would this add to the recent anti-trust litigation against Yahoo and Google? Would Google become the “evil monopoly” who can set the ad price as high as they want?
Google does better supplying search ads partly because it has a larger inventory of ads. But it is also the result of the algorithms Google uses to select which ads are displayed. The auction systems at all the search engine sites incorporate some complexity. They don’t simply award places to the advertisers with the highest bids. They also factor in “quality scores,” based on the advertiser’s prior history and the relevance of the advertiser’s own destination page to the search term. The higher the quality score, the lower the price that the advertiser must pay to be chosen to appear on a page. It’s widely acknowledged in the advertising industry that Google’s software comes up with matches more likely to bring customers to advertisers who will complete a purchase than do systems used by other search engines. Advertisers pay more to bring in those customers.
What would this add to the recent anti-trust litigation against Yahoo and Google? Would Google become the “evil monopoly” who can set the ad price as high as they want?
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Media Financing
The credit management part of the reading reminds me of the rationale behind investing in the mobile phone message service by portal websites in China shortly after the year of 2000. Since the number of cell phone users has grown rapidly during that time, the portal sites think that asking consumers to pay a small amount of fee for weather forecast, IM, music downloading, playing online games etc will be very profitable. The risk to collect the credit is limited because all the fees are charged instantly through the cell phone bill (In China, people use pre-charged cards instead of service plans to pay the phone service). So far the cell phone message service (included text, images, audio or video) has proved to be the major contributor to portal sites’ revenue.
One recent article on NYT, asked a very interesting question:” How Many Web Services Can One Person Use? It fits into the discussion of “changes in demand”, in which the new media is often regarded as having advantages of generating new demands. But according to this article, it may not necessarily be the case, since ““The biggest chasm is no longer between early adopters and mainstream users. It is about finding and retaining the early adopters to begin with…”. When we are excited about the large number of users of a particular new media, the right question to ask might be: will the number still be the same or grow when another wave of newer media is coming into the market? Or the truth might be “to get someone to use a Web service now you have to get them to replace something else in their life”.
One recent article on NYT, asked a very interesting question:” How Many Web Services Can One Person Use? It fits into the discussion of “changes in demand”, in which the new media is often regarded as having advantages of generating new demands. But according to this article, it may not necessarily be the case, since ““The biggest chasm is no longer between early adopters and mainstream users. It is about finding and retaining the early adopters to begin with…”. When we are excited about the large number of users of a particular new media, the right question to ask might be: will the number still be the same or grow when another wave of newer media is coming into the market? Or the truth might be “to get someone to use a Web service now you have to get them to replace something else in their life”.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Media companies
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Market structure in the era of convergence
By reading the chapters on market structure, I do understand the differences among four types of market, however, I think it will be hard to identify the characteristic of news media market at least not as clear-cut as those are described in the textbook. Especially in the current trend of “multimedia journalism”, which converge text, video and audio together to present news. When the news products are a bundle of services, it is increasingly difficult to argue whether the product differentiation can keep the traditional news outlets separately in the markets of newspapers, network TVs, Cable networks, etc.. Or it may bring all the news media to the same play ground to form a single “news market”. (Isn’t it already happening?)
In this line of thinking, I am wondering the product differentiation, the entry barrier and whether the media firm is sensitive to the price changes of other competitor in the market, all those hard lines can define the market either as Monopolistic competition or Oligopoly or else may become blurred. Just looking at the data in Jacie’s post, would the news on Yahoo or on CNN.com make a difference to online news users? Would Yahoo or MSN be considered as competitors (in terms of online ad revenue) by CNN.com? Also, would CNN.com and Yahoo have the same entry barrier as an online news organization?
In this line of thinking, I am wondering the product differentiation, the entry barrier and whether the media firm is sensitive to the price changes of other competitor in the market, all those hard lines can define the market either as Monopolistic competition or Oligopoly or else may become blurred. Just looking at the data in Jacie’s post, would the news on Yahoo or on CNN.com make a difference to online news users? Would Yahoo or MSN be considered as competitors (in terms of online ad revenue) by CNN.com? Also, would CNN.com and Yahoo have the same entry barrier as an online news organization?
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Production and Revenue
Two recent news of New York Times have illustrated how the newspaper industry tends to reduce its fixed cost in order to survive the financial hardness. To reduce the sections printed in the NYC metro area, NYT executives promised that “Given the business challenges we face, we are constantly looking for ways to reduce costs that do not affect the quality or quantity of the journalism we provide to our readers”. Also, the reduction to four section is only used to ease the cost of printing paper, but it does not affect the online version. Another recent incident of reducing production cost from NYT involves the cut on distribution cost, which shut down a subsidiary that distributes in the NYC area. In the long run, when the equimarginal principal applied, what kind of input mix should the media firm like NYT choose to maximize its output? Would the choices inevitably harm the quality of production?
The economies of scale can explain why many traditional media moves online. By reproducing the same content on the Internet, media companies can achieve a larger scale. Especially, as the example given on page 97, the television program can benefit a lot from selling additional copies. As the TV station posted their news videos online, the news may be consumed by a larger population, which includes those who can not watch it when the program is broadcasted on TV. However, the problem may occur as Picard (yes, the one who wrote the other text book used in this class) wrote in his blog post “how to obtain revenue for content distributed by digital media and how to share revenue from those downloads.”
The economies of scale can explain why many traditional media moves online. By reproducing the same content on the Internet, media companies can achieve a larger scale. Especially, as the example given on page 97, the television program can benefit a lot from selling additional copies. As the TV station posted their news videos online, the news may be consumed by a larger population, which includes those who can not watch it when the program is broadcasted on TV. However, the problem may occur as Picard (yes, the one who wrote the other text book used in this class) wrote in his blog post “how to obtain revenue for content distributed by digital media and how to share revenue from those downloads.”
Sunday, September 7, 2008
News habit forming
On the consumer behavior, I found the habit forming argument is particularly relevant to the news consumption. Consumers’ appetites for news are built over time. If we imagine a demand curve for news, which is determined by the price of the news product and the quantity of news being consumed, as time goes by, the curve may move to the right for people who always follow the news. Because the marginal utility of the news increases with continuity of consumption (However, another assumption is that the overall news consumption shrinks even within the news habit group.). The opposite trend may be observed in the group that does not have a news consuming habit. Therefore, the media firms may be able to sell the news product with a higher price to groups with increasing news appetite than the group without a consumption habit. Also, if the gap between the two demand curves (group with/without news habits) becomes larger during a longer period of time, it may eventually change the shape of news media market.
As Seth pointed out in last week’s post, when the media content eventually become “free” online, the price of the product will no longer be a factor that affects the quantity of consumption. In that case, what will the demand curve look like? One possible way is to plot the demand curve for the market of advertising. Using the price of online ads and the quantity of the ads purchased, such demand curve will resemble the demand curve of media consumption. Another way to plot the demand curve for free online media product would be replacing the price with people’s time constraint for media consumption. Therefore, the less time people can NOT spending online, the more media products they consume online. This curve also mirrors the demand curve.
Dumb question: how can one measure the utility of a media product? Using Likert scale to assess satisfaction? Or as we know the amount of the products people purchase and the price for the product, the utility can be calculated.
As Seth pointed out in last week’s post, when the media content eventually become “free” online, the price of the product will no longer be a factor that affects the quantity of consumption. In that case, what will the demand curve look like? One possible way is to plot the demand curve for the market of advertising. Using the price of online ads and the quantity of the ads purchased, such demand curve will resemble the demand curve of media consumption. Another way to plot the demand curve for free online media product would be replacing the price with people’s time constraint for media consumption. Therefore, the less time people can NOT spending online, the more media products they consume online. This curve also mirrors the demand curve.
Dumb question: how can one measure the utility of a media product? Using Likert scale to assess satisfaction? Or as we know the amount of the products people purchase and the price for the product, the utility can be calculated.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Nan's Short Response (week 1)
One interesting point I found in this week's reading is that new media technology can change media production in many ways. For example, online publishing reduces the production cost of print media and also makes the distribution cost less affected by delivery distance. Although the online production can reduce the input prices for print products, it is still unsure if the circulation and advertising revenue will remain the same when one publication moves online. Particularly for the newspaper industry, how national and local newspaper will be affected by the online publication trend differently? Also, many major news organizations (i.e.BBC, Wall Street Journal) have started to provide online content in other languages in order to target geographically remote markets. How those news services may shape the international news flow and whether those services meet the marketing goals may worth to study.
The demand for news in the U.S. has decreased in many years. It may due to the increasing supply of demand-related products—the entertainment media content (It is just one hypothesis to explain the phenomenon). It will also be interesting to calculate the cross elasticity of demand with the price of broadband Internet service and the demand of different type of media content. The number may illustrate which type of media outlet is benefiting or suffering through the increasing adoption of broadband Internet, which may become the mainstream distribution channel for media in the future.
Not only the entertainment content and the news may compete for the audience demand, at times it may also compete for investment. For example, traditional media such as Austin American Statesman builds austin360.com, an infotainment website which generate significant income for the paper while reduces its budget to produce hard news. The concern is when the media firms adjust its financial arrangement to respond to the force of supply and demand, what it will do to the quality of newspapers? Would the market force eventually set a bottom line for the content share between entertainment and news?
My three new media sites:
www.cnet.com
www.slashdot.com
www.wired.com
The demand for news in the U.S. has decreased in many years. It may due to the increasing supply of demand-related products—the entertainment media content (It is just one hypothesis to explain the phenomenon). It will also be interesting to calculate the cross elasticity of demand with the price of broadband Internet service and the demand of different type of media content. The number may illustrate which type of media outlet is benefiting or suffering through the increasing adoption of broadband Internet, which may become the mainstream distribution channel for media in the future.
Not only the entertainment content and the news may compete for the audience demand, at times it may also compete for investment. For example, traditional media such as Austin American Statesman builds austin360.com, an infotainment website which generate significant income for the paper while reduces its budget to produce hard news. The concern is when the media firms adjust its financial arrangement to respond to the force of supply and demand, what it will do to the quality of newspapers? Would the market force eventually set a bottom line for the content share between entertainment and news?
My three new media sites:
www.cnet.com
www.slashdot.com
www.wired.com
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