Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Crowd Sourcing and Accountability - How Social Media is Changing Business Ethics

Groupon is a website that taps into the social aspect of sales and marketing.  Once you signup for Groupon, it emails you one heavily discounted offer based on your Geo location. If a certain number of people sign up for the offer, then all members get the Groupon offer. If a minimum isn't reached, then the deal is off.  Lately, the trend has caught on fire as many startups have started to operate on similar models (Kgbdeals, citydeals and the likes).  Groupon has been a runaway success since it was able to tap into the social aspect of web.  


However, recently one of Groupon's deal got sour when users discovered foul play.  Groupon displayed a deal for one hour professional photography session with Dana Dawes, an Atlanta based photographer.  






Midway through the deal, some users noticed that Dana (photographer) was displaying slightly edited versions of photos from a different photographer and claiming as her own.  Slowly and steadily users started to complain about the apparent plagiarism and chided Groupon and the Dana Dawes for misinformation.   This turned so ugly that Groupon had to refund everyone's money and close down the deal.  This incident highlights that in the age of Social Media, businesses are forced to address the rapid facebook sharing, tweeting and digging (digg it).  A small misstep in handling customer perception can quickly turn into an ugly situation.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Gun Self Defense

One quick note:  When you redirect the line of fire (semi automatic), holding the slide will most likely also jam the gun (although it may burn your hand).  This is because the slide needs enough force to recoil and holding slide will disrupt the normal recoil.




Silat (Malaysian Martial Arts)

Monday, September 13, 2010

Zatoichi (The Blind Swordsman) Viewer Discretion Advised

Facebook on the Path to Greater Monetization

September 13, 2010

Facebook just launched a new web app that allows users to discover pages that are similar to what they already like or what their friends like.  This is like the Genius app from iTunes that uses algorithmic calculations to determine music you might like based on your preference already stored by iTunes.  It’s a visual interface that aims to build upon their attempt to further monetize by creating profiles based on your likes.
The app divides pages into nine categories: Musicians, Sports, Celebrities, Movies, TV Shows, Media, Politicians, Brands and Games. You can view images representing different pages in each category, or you can view pages from all categories, which include other things like local businesses or photographer friends’ pages, for example.
On the right, Facebook has included a list of the friends who have the most pages in common with you. Clicking on any of the names will pop up a list of your mutual likes, and you can click on the “All Likes” tab to see the other things they like.
You can also look at the most popular pages by country with the drop-down menu in the top right corner of the site.  This little bit is quite interesting as it will allow companies to find out brand popularity by country.
Users will also see pages in your friends’ news feed updates and profiles.
Facebook wants to be a portal that connects consumers and brands because it can provide services or advertise to both, so its not surprising that Facebook is adding new ways to build those connections.  As Facebook grows and builds these vast databases profiling user preferences, this could prove a goldmine for Facebook as long as they are able to steer clear of privacy concerns that has already malign its reputation.