Can we go Virtual?

According to Jessica Lipnack and Jeffery Stamps of the Net Age, virtual team will be the next solution to business conference. In their article for Milestone Group, Jessica and Jeffrey suggested several the pros and cons of virtual team. From my understanding, virtual team has two pros and one cons.
Pro: effective for storming
a highly efficient way to transfer information on a non face-to-face level
Cons: require the leader's hard work
I personally do not disagree with their opinion. However, I think that companies will need time to be able to take complete advantage of that kind of team work.

Yes, diversity is crucial for storming ideas, and virtual team certainly can help bring that characteristics to the team and team members. Well we have to remember that virtual team is a non face-to-face way of communication and diversity might not play a good role for the team.

In my opinion, it is harder for team members to communicate with each other online as effectively as in person. Therefore, I think it is still uncertain that a diverse group of people can work well together in a virtual way. Yes, you might argue with me that advanced technology will solve that problem by connecting people through conference calls, webcam etc... Technology, however, has not been able to let team members communicating in a virtual "face-to-face" way.

Why do I insist on the aspect of "face-to-face" communicating?

I experience the problem when I enter a private chat room with friends. Once we start the chat, the conversation might go completely unorganized and it is really hard to control the topic. We experience less the same kind of problem when talking to each other in person. As much leader's work need to be put in as the article mentioned, there is also no proof that team members pay 100% attention to the conference because the leader/organizer himself is not in the same room with these members. Therefore, the leader can not completely control such unexpected elements that occur throughout the conference.

Virtual team is such a new and interesting way of communicating. I think there will be more technology being developed to cater to this kind of communication. One day leaders might not need to put in as much hard work or have problem with organizing conference any more. Why? Because they probably can pint-point the crucial topic and who the lazy guy is. :)

The future of journalism: the online way

These days I don't read papers any more. It just feels lazy when you have to get up and go outside in order to get a news copy, especially in the chilly fall weather of Washington D.C. Therefore, I enjoy staying inside and reading online articles.

There is a certain element of convenience that attract so many people to the online world of journalism. After just a click, readers can get directly to the article without any hassle. The online world is a generous source of information, and I found that sometime the information are completely free. Since marketing companies team up with websites and bloggers, readers don't have to pay to watch/read/use online articles a lot of the times. Because web users are encouraged to look up information online, they found that they can get any particular information of their interest in a much easier manner. Therefore, they appreciate its variety and low cost over print journalism. As a result, newspapers experience their suffer due to the shift in the industry. Lets hear what the expert say:




As mentioned in the video, online journalism faces the lack of credibility as anyone can publish their personal posts. I think that there is probably a chance of getting biased information but it is the choice of readers to determine which websites or blogs to visit. For example, Perezhilton.com is notorious for its juicy tabloid information. Although Perez is a highly opinionated blogger, readers can't help but come back and read his websites. He has no qualification whatsoever for journalism but he is doing it and making profit from it through advertising. According to the above video, we can explain that he speaks with a strong voice that sometimes is hard to find in general publication. In my experience, his writing style has something that I can relate to as it is always fresh and funny.

Evidently, there is a decrease in profit but many people are still interested in reading papers. It will take a long time for them to completely switch to having only online reading habit. For me, I still have strong influence over their established credibility. However, it is hard to imagine the future of these print journalism companies. A lot of them have switched to releasing news from their own website through online subscription. These companies, therefore, need to find a balance between their online and print publishing.

Business online network = The new "Connector"?

As a marketing major, I think that it is very important for job seekers to market themselves in today economy. Finding the right "connector" that links you to the job opportunity is crucial. In order to improve the chances, many professionals are going the online way for job hunting. According to ABC News, websites such as LinkedIn and Ryez.com are helping customers strengthen weak ties with their professional colleagues and getting noticed in the job market. I think that these ideas are very practical and have bright future impact on the job finding path.

A good job opportunity in many times is the result of effective networking. The online way of networking requires users to be presented popularly among professionals in very similar manner of networking in real life. Therefore, they will have to establish a good reputation and makes their name trust-worthy on the market. In order to help consumers present themselves in such sense, online networks for job hunters should be able to provide big pool of professionals and companies. According to the ABC News, online networks for professionals have no problem attract new users but in trouble of keeping users revisit their websites.

Unlike a social network such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Ryez.com do not give consumers the thrive to check back daily. The less time users spend to stay connected, the weaker the ties with colleagues and companies will be. So as job opportunities. The network, therefore, will lose its core users and fall flat on the market. In order for these websites to become the new "Connector" for professionals, they need to keep their network broad and strong. In my opinion, they should find positive job-related tools to gain consumers' excitement. Once the problem is solved, there is no doubt that these websites are new ways to find jobs

Is Facebook good or bad for you?

I frequent Facebook regularly on a daily basis. When I don't log on, I feel as anxious as if my routine of online activities is not completed. I feel that I will miss to see a new posted comment, a new tagged picture of me, etc. In a way, my life is somewhat controlled by Facebook these day. I can't wait to get on my home page to read what my friends are up to and to see if they are telling each other something that I should know. Facebook creates this whole anxiety of controlling your popularity virtually in hoping it would translate the same to reality.

In my own knowledge, Facebook is an online social network that helps connect users together. The reason I join Facebook is to keep in touch with my friends. However, looking at the politics behind this effective network through "With friends like these..." opens me to many surprises. According to Tom Hodgkinson, the philosophy behind the creater of Facebook brings harmful risks of capitalism. From the perspective of an international marketing major, I think it is purely genius.

This type of online social networking is the exact effective tool for marketers. It helps to control consumer database and provide better information about consumers' needs and wants. In my mentioned experience, Facebook is so addictive. It definitely has the "stickiness factor" ("The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" by Malcom Gladwell) that every politicians/marketers try to create in their message. This is not an easy task if we have taken a marketing course. Consumers are hard to predict and their behavior makes an important factor in sales and the like. By obtaining consumer information, we can control how consumers perceive the brand or go as far as change the brand's image.

As discussed in the article, Facebook has some serious harmful ideas through invasive capitalism. In one of my previous posts, I have also contemplate the worthiness of joining Facebook. I think I have stopped my doubts. I think Facebook opens a new way to look at politics and the best way to become "popular". The lesseson learned is that we should never underestimate the virtual world as it does have its power. Furthermore, there is always an "opt in" option. Facebook addicts can not blame the network for their loyal behavior because it is after all their own choices.

Unlike myspace with its way of meeting complete strangers, Facebook has a way to link its users together more effectively and therefore, it becomes more "sticky". I think it is the best way to test human experience. Therefore, we can make good use out of this idea of networking.

Online marketing should become interactive, but what way?

As a shopper, I sometimes find myself wanting to buy a product but still debating whether its plus outweigh its minuses. In that situation, an outside opinion from a friend is often needed.

The idea of social interaction for retailing can be an effective way to address the needs and wants of customers. According to the article "Social retailing-the Future of Retail Online", companies might need consider building a virtual environment for online shoppers as this will help increase their business growth. I do not think that will easy be the case.

In a real shopping environment, shoppers are at the store and able to judge the product effectively. Therefore, they tend to rely more on an outside opinion and are then persuaded to make the purchase. In my opinion, I will not be persuaded to make the purchase unless the opinion comes from someone with reliable expertise. In a virtual environment, companies will have to establish mutual trust between customers in order for the persuading process to happen. In another hand, the social interaction can potentially backfire the companies as the online "word of mouth" ruins the product reputation.

In the article "Conversational Marketing: Can we talk?", social interaction makes more sense because companies themselves can control and select the expertise given to customers through their own channels. For example, I shop online frequently and I appreciate the help of an online sale assistant when evaluating a product. I also find informative business blogs to be very helpful as it is more convenient to keep track of new merchandise that I might want on my "wish list". I think this marketing mechanism is certainly more effective and will be adopted by many companies in the future.

Regardless of how companies making online marketing more interactive, they will have to find a way to inform their customers. Their target should be the young and tech-savvy demographics because these are key to help online mechanism educational

A shocking but not so shocking comment

Reading news on the internet has been my one of my long-time habit. I enjoy getting information from many different sources under a mouse click. It shocks me to learn that the newly awarded Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing thinks otherwise. She concluded the internet seduced a generation and people "know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other" from computer. In my opinion, the internet is the most convenient way for updating your knowledge. Born in the communist environment, I appreciate greatly the educational aspect of the internet. After the Vietnam war, there is a huge resistance of Westernism. Before we reach our current level of information tolerance, I used to rely solely on the internet. Because of online knowledge, I learned so much about other parts of the world. Therefore, I could not comprehend at first the cause of Ms. Lessing's outrageously ignorant comment. As a Nobel award winner, she sounded very disconnected from reality. The Internet has certainly changed how people see the world in the last few decades. It might be not as important in her time but no one can deny its impact. I think her comment is a defense mechanism of older generation not being able to keep up with today technology. And this is nothing new. Therefore, it is a shocking but not so shocking comment.

Will artificial intelligence exceed the human mind?

When I read the article "Artificial Intelligence, with helps from human mind", I am not so surprised that the human mind still is the efficient agent that does most of today work. After all, computer is just additional help to complete programmed tasks. The article discussed the existent online employment where human mind is still the only way despite nowadays computer's ability. How sufficient the job is done, however, is still a question of debate.

In the article, computer users pay for guidance from other computer users to the correct information/website. Their use of "crowd sourcing" sometime results in delay and incorrect information through the experience described by the author. Why do these jobs exist even though computers have become better at info sourcing than human? I think it proves that humans still believe in work done by themselves rather than by machines. As humans, we require the quality of "customer service" when a job is needed to get done. Although technology is becoming more and more advanced, there are certain tasks that computers will never exceed humans because they can not perform a decision making with emotional involvement.