Almost overnight, not only has the largest publishing deal been struck, but the largest bookshop in the world has been built, even if it is not quite open for business yet.We've seen companies wish to work on e-books, such as Amazon's Kindle, etc. It is interesting that no matter in which article, you never see Kindle's sales number. It is hard to read on the screen and I do not think technology would be advanced enough within five years for people to be willing to read on screens. Maybe for convenience purpose I would by e-books (I actually did twice), but books, for practical purpose, I am still an ink-on-the-paper person (at least for now).
Showing posts with label jacie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jacie. Show all posts
Monday, November 10, 2008
Google Signs a Deal to e-Publish Out-of-Print Books
Google's attempting to publish digital books. A quote here,
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Human + machine = best search results
I love tools that give good recommendations! As both in “The Long Tail” and in “From Niches to Riches” when more products are available, it is hard for consumers to locate the product they are interested in. I wish I could find some other examples rather than books (cause they talked about amazon.com so much already), but I was playing with UT library site the other day and under a book I searched for, I saw tags (labels) showing up. It is supported by Library Thing.
I went to Library Thing website. It is a website that you can search for books. Each book is tagged by website members and you can see there are “members” of the book. I haven’t registered yet, but am guessing anyone can become a member of a book? You can see the list of members and each member has a profile and his/her own library. Pretty interesting site.
The problem is google is probably not enough (I like delicious.com, but it is still not enough). Googlezon in epic2014 is probably ideal for consumers. When you find a web page, there’s gonna be a recommendation says: people who like this page also like……
If someone can beat google on that part and use that search engine on every website, is google gonna die? (or become the second yahoo?)
I went to Library Thing website. It is a website that you can search for books. Each book is tagged by website members and you can see there are “members” of the book. I haven’t registered yet, but am guessing anyone can become a member of a book? You can see the list of members and each member has a profile and his/her own library. Pretty interesting site.
The problem is google is probably not enough (I like delicious.com, but it is still not enough). Googlezon in epic2014 is probably ideal for consumers. When you find a web page, there’s gonna be a recommendation says: people who like this page also like……
If someone can beat google on that part and use that search engine on every website, is google gonna die? (or become the second yahoo?)
Monday, October 20, 2008
business model for socialnetworking sites
An article on nytimes.com about business models: twitter and yammer. It's basically saying twitter is having problems and trying hard to find a business model after already gained popularity, while yammer is rather small but started with a business model, which is a paid one dollar per user model focusing on company users.
It's argument is: under current economic environment, scale is might not be the most important thing because popularity does not guarantee revenue. Not to mention popularity is hard to get. Here's the quote at the end of the story:
“Now it doesn’t matter if you want scale first because you just can’t have it,” said Paul Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. “You have the luxury of being able to decide between small and focused on revenues or large when you have capital. When there isn’t money, there’s no choice.”
Sunday, October 19, 2008
If the value is still content, then what content and how should we package the content?
As Picard said,
A business model involves the conception of how the business operates, its underlying foundations, and the exchange activities and financial flows upon which it can be successful.
Different media need different model. What fits one medium might not fit another. Right after reading Gao’s Participation Business Model, I started thinking if we could use a participation business model for online news. Many newspapers’ online sites indeed have participatory features, such as blog, comment, rating, or allowing users to submit photos and videos. These do not seem to be very innovative or popular features if we compare these features to MyShow, Super Girl, or American Idol.
Probably participation is not a major “value” users expect from a newspaper web site, as both Picard and Gao emphasized value is the center of a business model. So if we go back to wheat Picard said that content is the core business of publishing industry, then now in the digital and online environment, what “kind” of content? Instead of telling people what to do or what to read, why not say: how may I help you today? In addition to what kind of content a user would value from a local newspaper site, a different kind of navigation maybe? Something like google's front page or iPone's main page that there are several preset icons and users can modify those icons.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
11 troubled Web companies
Here is the article I talked about yesterday
As the post says,
The problem is that being loved is no guarantee for success. Even being used isn't enough.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Tweet me the news
Journalism is still valuable, as well as local (print or online) newspapers. Yes, I do think spelling and grammar are important, and especially for journalism. How would people think the news is credible if the writing is crappy?
The discussion on Monday and also the Maybe it is time to panic made me think other possibilities of online news. In the article "technology doesn't dumb us down. It frees our minds" the author suggested maybe we can blam twitter for making us stupid. And as Nan's really refreshing idea in her post that "media requires less attention may attract more users," a twitter style news might be convenient for people who do not have enough time or attention.
The discussion on Monday and also the Maybe it is time to panic made me think other possibilities of online news. In the article "technology doesn't dumb us down. It frees our minds" the author suggested maybe we can blam twitter for making us stupid. And as Nan's really refreshing idea in her post that "media requires less attention may attract more users," a twitter style news might be convenient for people who do not have enough time or attention.
Actually rss feeds are something similar to twitter style format, but it really depends on what kind of reader (or widget) you are using, the format of the article from the production (news web site maybe) end, and so on. So sometimes the news feeds we end up getting is one headline, or full article. A twitter style means it is short, straightforward, with headline and the blurb text. Nothing else. Maybe something else if the user click on it. But the what shows up on the screen initially should not be more or less than the headline and the blurb text.
So who will use that? I don't know. But it should not be hard to try this idea. And again, a twitter style does not mean bad writing. It should be the best journalistic writing among all.
Friday, October 3, 2008
measuring attention?
With so much information and so much to do, we use our own ways and often times we use new technologies help us manage our tasks, time, and attention. Then the debate starts here. There was an article on atlantic.com arguing Google is making us stupid. Guess you know I would not agree with that...... There's counter-argument from nytimes.com, however, saying technology doesn't dumb us down but frees our minds.
I like the second article on nytimes.com a lot more in that it argues we are in an era with so much information that advanced technology helps us save time and spend more time on creating. Similar to what we saw in attention economy, the article from nytimes.com also argued:
It is really interesting to see that a HP scientific calculator was banned in some classrooms in 1972 with the fear that it is detrimental to human intelligence. Well, ban calculators! Ban computers!! Ban SPSS!!
Sorry.... back to attention, thus companies use money to buy attention and users trade in their attention for something else. Attention, compared with cooking pot model, seems to be more concrete in that attention can be transformed into other currency more easily. But even though it seems more concrete, it is still hard to measure. One measurement suggested was time, a poor measurement. How else can attention be measured?
Here's a link to the videos of Poynter's eyetrack method (?).
I like the second article on nytimes.com a lot more in that it argues we are in an era with so much information that advanced technology helps us save time and spend more time on creating. Similar to what we saw in attention economy, the article from nytimes.com also argued:
In a knowledge-based society in which knowledge is free, attention becomes the valued commodity. Companies compete for eyeballs, that great metric born in the dot-com boom, and vie to create media that are sticky, another great term from this era. We are not paid for our attention span, but rewarded for it with yet more distractions and demands on our time.
It is really interesting to see that a HP scientific calculator was banned in some classrooms in 1972 with the fear that it is detrimental to human intelligence. Well, ban calculators! Ban computers!! Ban SPSS!!
Sorry.... back to attention, thus companies use money to buy attention and users trade in their attention for something else. Attention, compared with cooking pot model, seems to be more concrete in that attention can be transformed into other currency more easily. But even though it seems more concrete, it is still hard to measure. One measurement suggested was time, a poor measurement. How else can attention be measured?
Here's a link to the videos of Poynter's eyetrack method (?).
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
cooking ideas and reputation, is it enough?
In our hypothetical tribe, however, people give what they have into the pot with no guarantee that they’re getting a fair exchange, which smacks of altruism……. But on the Net, a cooking-pot market is far from altruistic…… Your effort is limited to creating one – the original – copy of your product…… but millions of unique goods made by others!
I guess the cooking pot markets make sense to me in that this is what I see on the Internet, especially through my everyday life. The model makes sense, but probably not enough for media companies who wish to make money, or cash in reputation. Each individual on the Internet might be producing their work for fun, only asking for ideas in exchange or gain some reputation, but media firms want to find a fast way to convert bits and bytes into real world currency. Subscription model does not work and online advertising is increasing, but uncertain where it is going.
Google creates new ways for ad methods, such as AdSense, with complicated equations, but what else? Cumulating reputation and then cash in the reputation is similar to your cash return credit card: before you reach a certain amount of credit (reputation), it cannot be cashed in (maybe a little with advertising). But if you cumulate enough reputation, one day you can cash in whatever you have at hand for millions or billions, if lucky enough.
So media companies buy Web sites that already have a good reputation and a good audience base, such as Google bought YouTube. In addition to this, after investing in a Web site and since nothing can be cashed in immediately, how can media companies survive if the cash flow keeps being negative? Media companies cannot just do it for fun, can they? (so far I guess only Google say they do?)
Sunday, September 28, 2008
the future of media landscape?
I really like the article in terms of how it can be related to what we are doing here: having a blog and act/write as bloggers. We are a small group indeed, but “such small number is common in participatory media.” We have similar interest (at least to some degree?) and exchange thoughts and opinions here. Each of us benefit from this blog by reading others’ posts and comments.
Having a personal/group blog is more common now than three or five years ago, and just as the reading suggested, maybe in five years, everyone is going to have a blog, just like everyone has (at least) an email account now. How many email accounts do you have? How many blogs do you have? Compare with what you had five years ago, what is the percentage of growth? So where does this technological development or growth take us to?
Of course I cannot foresee the future, but somehow I believe in the potential of mobile devices. Something similar to iPhone or GPhone. I do not mean mobile devices will replace our desktop or laptop computers (even though it is possible), but I think a great amount of people want to be connected, either by phone or by the Internet, or both. They might not want to talk to a real person all the time, but they want to be connected to the (cyber?) world more often, especially those who grew up with broadband Internet and their sidekicks.
Here's a blog post of the next Internet.
Having a personal/group blog is more common now than three or five years ago, and just as the reading suggested, maybe in five years, everyone is going to have a blog, just like everyone has (at least) an email account now. How many email accounts do you have? How many blogs do you have? Compare with what you had five years ago, what is the percentage of growth? So where does this technological development or growth take us to?
Of course I cannot foresee the future, but somehow I believe in the potential of mobile devices. Something similar to iPhone or GPhone. I do not mean mobile devices will replace our desktop or laptop computers (even though it is possible), but I think a great amount of people want to be connected, either by phone or by the Internet, or both. They might not want to talk to a real person all the time, but they want to be connected to the (cyber?) world more often, especially those who grew up with broadband Internet and their sidekicks.
Here's a blog post of the next Internet.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
online news and relevant advertising
I was thinking how news Web sites can make the advertising showing up on their Web pages relevant to their users.
It is hard. When we see an (full screen) ad on a news Web site like the other day in class, what we did was to look for the x button. We do not like being interrupted by advertising, especially irrelevant ones. But making advertising relevant to a specific user requires sufficient knowledge of that specific user. We rarely give out adequate/true information to news Web sites. This is where portal sites such as Yahoo, AOL, and especially Google can gain a great chunk of the pie. They profile their users.
Here is a post describing with google phone, how google will profile each individual user precisely. Another thing not in the post but I saw on another youtube video is (unverified info) when a user use google phone to take a photo and with 3g network, the phone tags the current location to the photo automatically.
It is hard. When we see an (full screen) ad on a news Web site like the other day in class, what we did was to look for the x button. We do not like being interrupted by advertising, especially irrelevant ones. But making advertising relevant to a specific user requires sufficient knowledge of that specific user. We rarely give out adequate/true information to news Web sites. This is where portal sites such as Yahoo, AOL, and especially Google can gain a great chunk of the pie. They profile their users.
Here is a post describing with google phone, how google will profile each individual user precisely. Another thing not in the post but I saw on another youtube video is (unverified info) when a user use google phone to take a photo and with 3g network, the phone tags the current location to the photo automatically.
Anyway, as we see in class on Monday, google devotes 70% of its effort to search and advertising, 20% to something and 10% to the rest. No wonder google news does not have a user friendly interface, yet. It's probably not yet on the to-do list. As we see google plans to start digitizing print newspapers, I do think google has an interest in news, or an interest in constantly updated information. With it devotes 70% of its effort to search and advertising, when they profile each individuals precisely, would the combination of the three make most users use google news and make most advertisers reluctant to spend money on any other news Web sites?
Google does not produce any news products. Will there be new business models or partnership between google and a news organization? similar to the partnership between google and t-mobile for the google phone?
Sunday, September 21, 2008
financial health indicators
As we see in the reading that there are indicators for economic health and financial health (Picard, p.230), I think it is harder for me to identify financial health indicators now. The numbers are very overwhelming. Here's why I started looking at GOOG's balance sheet:
In Business Week's Best Brands of 2008, Google ranks the 10th, a huge jump from the 20th of 2007 ranking.The brand value is $25.6 billion, which is a 43% increase from 2007. After reading the chapters, I want to know what does this $25.6 billion mean, so I started looking through GOOG's balance sheet.
For me, economic indicators seem to be more straightforward. For example, for economic health, when ComScore reported that google's search engine share increased from 61.9% to 63% within a month, it seems to me to be a growth in market share: an indicator for economic growth.
Picard's chapters are helpful in terms of explaining financial indicators, such as the definitions of assets, liabilities, and debt, but applying those to real world is difficult.
The table is obtained from Google Finance. As you can see for GOOG, there are total current assets and total assets. I am not exactly sure which one to look at when or which one is more important when deciding if a company is financially healthy. There are some ups and downs for total current assets and the total assets grow constantly. I think overall it looks pretty good? But I still did not find where the $25.6 billion (in Business Week) come from......
In Business Week's Best Brands of 2008, Google ranks the 10th, a huge jump from the 20th of 2007 ranking.The brand value is $25.6 billion, which is a 43% increase from 2007. After reading the chapters, I want to know what does this $25.6 billion mean, so I started looking through GOOG's balance sheet.
For me, economic indicators seem to be more straightforward. For example, for economic health, when ComScore reported that google's search engine share increased from 61.9% to 63% within a month, it seems to me to be a growth in market share: an indicator for economic growth.
Picard's chapters are helpful in terms of explaining financial indicators, such as the definitions of assets, liabilities, and debt, but applying those to real world is difficult.
| In Millions of USD | As of 2008-06-30 | As of 2008-03-31 | As of 2007-12-31 | As of 2007-09-30 | As of 2007-06-30 |
| Total Current Assets | 16,316.84 | 15,464.93 | 17,289.14 | 15,733.76 | 14,857.52 |
| Total Assets | 29,179.79 | 27,604.98 | 25,335.81 | 23,340.65 | 21,423.88 |
The table is obtained from Google Finance. As you can see for GOOG, there are total current assets and total assets. I am not exactly sure which one to look at when or which one is more important when deciding if a company is financially healthy. There are some ups and downs for total current assets and the total assets grow constantly. I think overall it looks pretty good? But I still did not find where the $25.6 billion (in Business Week) come from......
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
concentration of online news industry
HMF is making me really really dizzy, so I decided to start with Picard's piece then a little on HMF…
If we wish to measure market concentration or measure the degree of market competitions, both according to HMF and Picard, what we need to do first is to define our industry (market) and identify firms that comprise the industry. For a news Web site, name it MSNBC or nytimes.com, what is the industry and which companies comprise the industry? Can they answer this question or can we answer this question (I cannot……)?
Picard argued there is seldom direct competition among media, such as newspaper versus newspaper, but different media compete with each other for audience time and expenditure (p. 139). Competition among and between media can be understood as: intermedia competition and intramedia competition. These two take place simultaneously, and I guess this is one of the reasons why we find so hard to define the industry of online news.
To define online news industry, we can first start with U.S. based English news Web sites. Then second, in terms of intramedia competition, we include all U.S. traditional news media (TV, print, radio, etc). Third, in terms of intrmedia competition, we include all U.S. based new Web sites, which are countless. Fourth, we cannot ignore portal sites (in PEW's 2008 news audience survey, Yahoo was name the most frequently visited news site, p.22). And fifth, if the competition is for news users' time, how should we account for multitasking?
Here are the top eight most frequently visited news Web sites from Pew's news audience survey
Yahoo—28%
MSN/Microsoft—19%
CNN—17%
Google—11%
MSNBC/NBC—10%
AOL—8%
Fox—7%
NYT—4%
Local news Web site—4%
(other Web sites are 2% or lower)
But if we look at online news only at this point and ignore the traditional media (TV, print, radio) just for a second, using Pew's data, we can roughly see how concentrated online news industry is (even though it is survey data instead of industry data). Adding up the percentage of the second table on p.22 of Pew's report, it is added up to 122% because multiple responses by a user were accepted. Adding up the percentages of the first four (from yahoo to MSNBC), we have 57%. If we manipulate the numbers proportionately, we have CR4=49.72 (122%: 57% = 100%: 49.72%). Using the same method, CR8 would roughly be 65.57%. We have both CR4 and CR8 for online news to be moderately concentrated. They are higher than the CR4 (42%) and CR8 (48%) of print newspapers Albarran and Dommick have in our HMF text p.147. What does this mean is… this moderate (or almost highly concentrated for CR4) concentrated online news industry is consistent with oligopoly I guess?
If we wish to measure market concentration or measure the degree of market competitions, both according to HMF and Picard, what we need to do first is to define our industry (market) and identify firms that comprise the industry. For a news Web site, name it MSNBC or nytimes.com, what is the industry and which companies comprise the industry? Can they answer this question or can we answer this question (I cannot……)?
Picard argued there is seldom direct competition among media, such as newspaper versus newspaper, but different media compete with each other for audience time and expenditure (p. 139). Competition among and between media can be understood as: intermedia competition and intramedia competition. These two take place simultaneously, and I guess this is one of the reasons why we find so hard to define the industry of online news.
To define online news industry, we can first start with U.S. based English news Web sites. Then second, in terms of intramedia competition, we include all U.S. traditional news media (TV, print, radio, etc). Third, in terms of intrmedia competition, we include all U.S. based new Web sites, which are countless. Fourth, we cannot ignore portal sites (in PEW's 2008 news audience survey, Yahoo was name the most frequently visited news site, p.22). And fifth, if the competition is for news users' time, how should we account for multitasking?
Here are the top eight most frequently visited news Web sites from Pew's news audience survey
Yahoo—28%
MSN/Microsoft—19%
CNN—17%
Google—11%
MSNBC/NBC—10%
AOL—8%
Fox—7%
NYT—4%
Local news Web site—4%
(other Web sites are 2% or lower)
But if we look at online news only at this point and ignore the traditional media (TV, print, radio) just for a second, using Pew's data, we can roughly see how concentrated online news industry is (even though it is survey data instead of industry data). Adding up the percentage of the second table on p.22 of Pew's report, it is added up to 122% because multiple responses by a user were accepted. Adding up the percentages of the first four (from yahoo to MSNBC), we have 57%. If we manipulate the numbers proportionately, we have CR4=49.72 (122%: 57% = 100%: 49.72%). Using the same method, CR8 would roughly be 65.57%. We have both CR4 and CR8 for online news to be moderately concentrated. They are higher than the CR4 (42%) and CR8 (48%) of print newspapers Albarran and Dommick have in our HMF text p.147. What does this mean is… this moderate (or almost highly concentrated for CR4) concentrated online news industry is consistent with oligopoly I guess?
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
ch 5 & 6
I never gave too much thought on the supply side, at least not until now. So, being an ignorant amateur, let me try to articulate what is on my mind now. Do bear with me.
Newspaper companies have fixed costs and variable costs, fixed costs being their printing machine, computer servers; variable costs being the paper and ink, the staff members needed for news production. When newspaper companies are making less profit now, they gain less in terms of total revenue from subscription number (or subscription fee) and advertising revenue. Since from the economics perspective, profit equals total revenue minus total cost, if the newspaper companies are saying they are not making profits, this should mean their total cost is bigger than their revenue.
There are two ways a newspaper company can do to make the total cost to be smaller than total revenue: decrease the total cost or increase the total revenue. I think I see newspaper companies worry about their total revenue more than worry about their total costs. They ask why people (especially young adults) do not read newspapers anymore and worried about their advertising figure decrease year by year.
They do worry about the total cost, but more often I see them cutting off staff members, which is a reduction of a variable cost. The other variable cost is the ink and paper, which the newspaper companies are not yet willing (or willing but not yet ready) to give it up. And indeed, the ad revenue and subscription fee obtained from the print might still be bigger than the total revenue gained form their Web site, but if I remember it right, the total ad revenue for print newspapers in the U.S. is decreasing and the total ad revenue for their Web sites is constantly increasing over the past year. I will look into that and possibly bring the number tomorrow.
However, what I feel is it is not the newspaper companies’ fault. With the new technologies and new platforms, the equilibrium point is not yet reached.
Newspaper companies have fixed costs and variable costs, fixed costs being their printing machine, computer servers; variable costs being the paper and ink, the staff members needed for news production. When newspaper companies are making less profit now, they gain less in terms of total revenue from subscription number (or subscription fee) and advertising revenue. Since from the economics perspective, profit equals total revenue minus total cost, if the newspaper companies are saying they are not making profits, this should mean their total cost is bigger than their revenue.
There are two ways a newspaper company can do to make the total cost to be smaller than total revenue: decrease the total cost or increase the total revenue. I think I see newspaper companies worry about their total revenue more than worry about their total costs. They ask why people (especially young adults) do not read newspapers anymore and worried about their advertising figure decrease year by year.
They do worry about the total cost, but more often I see them cutting off staff members, which is a reduction of a variable cost. The other variable cost is the ink and paper, which the newspaper companies are not yet willing (or willing but not yet ready) to give it up. And indeed, the ad revenue and subscription fee obtained from the print might still be bigger than the total revenue gained form their Web site, but if I remember it right, the total ad revenue for print newspapers in the U.S. is decreasing and the total ad revenue for their Web sites is constantly increasing over the past year. I will look into that and possibly bring the number tomorrow.
However, what I feel is it is not the newspaper companies’ fault. With the new technologies and new platforms, the equilibrium point is not yet reached.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
jacie's chapter 4
I have been interested in utilities for a while, but in chapter 4 I found Attribute Theory to be rather interesting. So let me raise several inquiries here regarding Attribute Theory and news media.
I see news consumption to be a combination of habit forming and attributes provided by the product. Of course were this statement to be, my vague and nonscientific assumption would be the content and information offered by different media company to be rather similar, if not identical. By drawing a table of news consumption, I put habit or non-habit in the first column and in the first row I put the utilities consumer obtains from consuming the product is either from the product itself or from the attributes provided by the product. Thus we have four kinds of combination here.
I do agree with Nan that news consumption is built as a habit, meaning users have one to several news sources that they usually get their news from. In this case, we focus on cell A and B in the table above (of course we can discuss about it if you think accessing news media is not a habit).
What I see news consumption fits Attribute Theory is the utility news consumers get is not from the product (the media itself), but is from the attributes provided by the products, making the demand for the product (i.e.: a print newspaper) a derived demand. I argue the attributes are the information and opinion pieces in the news media. Take a print newspaper again for example, after a reader read the newspaper once, obtained the utility from the information (which is the attribute), the media itself does not have too much value left, as well as a second copy of the day's newspaper does not have much more value than the first copy (unless the paper is wrapping my lunch today).
I see online news to be the same case, even though we do not pay for it. The product itself might be the bit and bytes in our computer's short memory or in our computer's temp storage, but the attributes are still the information and the opinion. Once we read/watch/listened to it all, we got it all. It is not like I just had a piece of cheese cake before I started writing this response and I want another piece now.
I see news consumption to be a combination of habit forming and attributes provided by the product. Of course were this statement to be, my vague and nonscientific assumption would be the content and information offered by different media company to be rather similar, if not identical. By drawing a table of news consumption, I put habit or non-habit in the first column and in the first row I put the utilities consumer obtains from consuming the product is either from the product itself or from the attributes provided by the product. Thus we have four kinds of combination here.
| utilities from the product itself | utilities from attributes provided by the product | |
| habit | A | B |
| nonhabit | C | D |
I do agree with Nan that news consumption is built as a habit, meaning users have one to several news sources that they usually get their news from. In this case, we focus on cell A and B in the table above (of course we can discuss about it if you think accessing news media is not a habit).
What I see news consumption fits Attribute Theory is the utility news consumers get is not from the product (the media itself), but is from the attributes provided by the products, making the demand for the product (i.e.: a print newspaper) a derived demand. I argue the attributes are the information and opinion pieces in the news media. Take a print newspaper again for example, after a reader read the newspaper once, obtained the utility from the information (which is the attribute), the media itself does not have too much value left, as well as a second copy of the day's newspaper does not have much more value than the first copy (unless the paper is wrapping my lunch today).
I see online news to be the same case, even though we do not pay for it. The product itself might be the bit and bytes in our computer's short memory or in our computer's temp storage, but the attributes are still the information and the opinion. Once we read/watch/listened to it all, we got it all. It is not like I just had a piece of cheese cake before I started writing this response and I want another piece now.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
jacie's short response (week 1)
When something gets cheaper, we often take it for granted that the people will buy more or more will be sold. Often times it seems to be the case, but the three chapters illustrate that there are indeed more economic principles behind such a general statement. Even though demand and supply interact with each other in a market and the combination of the two determine the market price, here I find demand to be really interesting since I am interested in audience/users more than media firms.
From the chapters we learned that there is “change in quantity demand” and “change in demand.” Change in quantity demand is affected by the own price of the product while change in demand is affected by other external factors other than the product’s own price (such as change in income per capita). When the authors explain Law of Demand, they also use empirical examples of how often firms ignore Law of Demand, purposefully or not (p.20).
One thing that came to mind was iPhone (bear with me if you hear this word often enough already). iPhone came out in the summer of 2007 and the latest iPhone 3G was launched on July 11th this summer. One significant difference, in term of economics, is there was a significant decrease in the product’s own price: it dropped from $399 to $199 (for 8G storage space model). After the “better and cheaper” 3G iPhone was launched on July 11th, Apple’s press release on July 14th quoted the CEO Steve Jobs saying, “iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend. It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones [in 2006], so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.” The comparison here is: a million iPhones, 74 days v.s. 3 days.
Demand of iPhone 3G seems to be much higher, but in what way? Is it merely because it is $200 cheaper? In addition to change in quantity demand (affected by the product’s own price), five factors might cause change in demand: price of a demand-related product, income per capita, number of potential buyers, expectations regarding future price, and tastes. The factor that stands out here in the iPhone case is the number of potential buyers. As the original iPhone was only sold in the United States, the new 3G iPhone is available in 21 countries in the world. As in chapter 3 it says that “the population served by a market is a good indicator of the number of potential buyers,” the greater the population in a market, the greater the demand. When Apple made iPhone available in 21 countries, the market is expanded and the demand is higher, other things being equal. It is not the new iPhone is more popular or merely because it is cheaper, but also because the market is now bigger thus the demand is higher.
I think having an understanding in media economics gives us a great tool to explain and predict social phenomena, as well as seeing through the basic principles of these phenomena. I also think the principles of demand and supply can be applied to users’ news demand, but it is still very vague for me at this point since I feel news products are close substitutes to each other.
As for the three tech sites, I do visit the tech section of major news sites often, including NY Times, Washington Post, CNET, etc. Let me include these three here: digg.com's tech section, Search Engine Watch (cause I like google), and Techdirt.
From the chapters we learned that there is “change in quantity demand” and “change in demand.” Change in quantity demand is affected by the own price of the product while change in demand is affected by other external factors other than the product’s own price (such as change in income per capita). When the authors explain Law of Demand, they also use empirical examples of how often firms ignore Law of Demand, purposefully or not (p.20).
One thing that came to mind was iPhone (bear with me if you hear this word often enough already). iPhone came out in the summer of 2007 and the latest iPhone 3G was launched on July 11th this summer. One significant difference, in term of economics, is there was a significant decrease in the product’s own price: it dropped from $399 to $199 (for 8G storage space model). After the “better and cheaper” 3G iPhone was launched on July 11th, Apple’s press release on July 14th quoted the CEO Steve Jobs saying, “iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend. It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones [in 2006], so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.” The comparison here is: a million iPhones, 74 days v.s. 3 days.
Demand of iPhone 3G seems to be much higher, but in what way? Is it merely because it is $200 cheaper? In addition to change in quantity demand (affected by the product’s own price), five factors might cause change in demand: price of a demand-related product, income per capita, number of potential buyers, expectations regarding future price, and tastes. The factor that stands out here in the iPhone case is the number of potential buyers. As the original iPhone was only sold in the United States, the new 3G iPhone is available in 21 countries in the world. As in chapter 3 it says that “the population served by a market is a good indicator of the number of potential buyers,” the greater the population in a market, the greater the demand. When Apple made iPhone available in 21 countries, the market is expanded and the demand is higher, other things being equal. It is not the new iPhone is more popular or merely because it is cheaper, but also because the market is now bigger thus the demand is higher.
I think having an understanding in media economics gives us a great tool to explain and predict social phenomena, as well as seeing through the basic principles of these phenomena. I also think the principles of demand and supply can be applied to users’ news demand, but it is still very vague for me at this point since I feel news products are close substitutes to each other.
As for the three tech sites, I do visit the tech section of major news sites often, including NY Times, Washington Post, CNET, etc. Let me include these three here: digg.com's tech section, Search Engine Watch (cause I like google), and Techdirt.
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