the.. InArtificial World..

Thank You Writing 340

2009-05-08T23:55:00.000-07:00

Thank you Professor Smith!

It has been a great semester learning from you. I will always remember and recall all those interesting techniques, patterns, and discussions that you have mentioned in the class.

Suggestion: Less puzzle games, more stimulation games. I know you are an expert in films as well, do you think it is possible that you bring in more films to the class and share them with the students? I really liked it when you played us those TV drama clips!

Happy holidays!

Symantec Promotional Plan (Third Major Blog)

2009-05-08T22:18:00.000-07:00

Promotional Plan
Memo
To: Symantec Healthcare Industry Solutions Manager: John Lazarus
From: William Chen
Date: 5/8/2009
Re: Strategy in Promoting Symantec Vontu after the Acquisition
_________________________________________________________________________

Symantec has been established for almost 30 years, and it has gained its reputation in many different software industries. It went IPO in 1989, and it now has a market capacity of 12.22 billion and 17 thousands employees working globally in 40 countries. The company is very subtle, so a lot of people may not even be aware of its existence. However, almost everyone that has some kinds of basic computer experiences would know or heard of Norton Antivirus. Unsurprisingly, the developer of this famous antivirus program is Symantec.

Norton Antivirus is popular and widely accepted by many computer consumers; yet, that is only part of what Symantec actually does. Symantec focuses on helping customers protect their infrastructure, information and interactions by delivering software and services providing IT security, data privacy and compliance. Currently, the company is servicing more than 99% of the Fortune 1000 companies and possessing more than 400 patents worldwide.

A year and half ago, Symantec acquired the biggest healthcare data-loss-prevention (DLP) giant Vontu. The company is aiming to take a big share of the healthcare data industry; thus, it went under negotiation and finally bought out Vontu for 350 million dollars. Because Symantec is new into the field, it comes to a bottleneck of how the company is going to promote itself to medium to large hospitals and clinics with 200 beds or more in the US market.

In this advisory memo, I will focus on analyzing the market and the company ,and come up with a step-by-step promotional strategies that will help Symantec to sell itself by offering the most comprehensive protocol coverage with Vontu DLP program.
_________________________________________________________________________

Company Goals:

Symantec’s Mission:
Symantec seeks to become the leader in security, data privacy, and compliance in Healthcare. Vontu DLP supports this mission by offering the most comprehensive protocol coverage on the market, including the monitoring and securing the web traffic. It also allows organizations to protect intellectual property, demonstrate compliance, and guard their brand.

Expected Penetration:
Symantec is expecting to have a $30M annual booking for this product from Healthcare, as well as to increase market awareness by 40%. Assuming the price of this product is 150K, the company expects to sell 200 units of this product.

Marketing Budget:
Market budget will be determined by sales. I would recommend re-investing 10% of gross profit towards the marketing budget thereby allowing the marketing budget to be directly pegged to the success of Vontu.

Industry Overview:

The Need of the Industry:
Companies, especially hospitals, need to stop the confidential data from being sent outside their organization to ensure compliance with data security and privacy policies. Vontu Data Loss Prevention will give companies the ability to ensure that confidential data regarding their customers and employees is protected.

Market Potential:
In the U.S., there are 6013 hospitals, and 1629 hospitals with 200+ beds. Across endpoint, network, and storage system comprises of approximately 60% of the market share. The data loss prevention market is worth around $250 million in 2008.

Competition:
Many other firms exist in the DLP market, ranging from small firms like GLB and Code Green to big companies such as McAfee, Trend Micro, Websense, and Tiblus, a company which RSA, a sub-division of EMC, has bought. The problem with these companies is that none of them is comprehensive. Most of the products from these companies can only provide one or two needs. The solution to this problem is to create a product that would cover all customers’ needs. Vontu, now part of Symantec, has already occupied 60% of the market share and introduced its Vontu DLP 8.0 program that fulfills different areas of needs.

Future:
As cost of data breach continues to rise, more companies are going to be aware of the importance of DLP. Once Symantec Vontu DLP 8.0 program has completely entered the market, it will continue to improve and ensure that the program, with its 3 dynamic sections
--network, storage, and endpoint-- strives to satisfy customer needs. Most importantly, Symantec Vontu will keep up with its customer service with all hospitals, as well as many of the Fortune companies. Lastly, it will continue to maintain its status as market leader.

Possible Promotional Strategies:

In order to achieve the expected penetration, Symantec will employ the following strategies:

Corporate Image: Symantec will connect its corporate image with Vontu. Symantec Vontu will be viewed as the leader in security for hospital data privacy, security, and compliance. Symantec Vontu will (1) assist organizations in the protection of their confidential and proprietary data, (2) focus on healthcare providers (i.e. medium to large hospitals), and (3) provide complete data loss prevention solutions as a trusted and experience company. Symantec Vontu has excellent corporate image, leveraging it will be essential in achieving the goal of increased awareness.

Position: Market Targets (lock): Large and mid-size hospitals (200 – 500+ beds) will be primarily targeted, due to the wealth of information they have that is susceptible to breaches. Product Image (key): Symantec Vontu will be positioned as a complete solution to data loss.

Symantec’s competitors are beginning to produce more “complete” data loss prevention solutions, which in turn may potentially hurt Vontu’s uniqueness. Therefore, to combat this, Symantec should focus its positioning on “quality”, “experience”, and “trust”.
Vontu should also aim to differentiate itself via the peripheral components of their product; for example, customer service.

Product: Comprehensive Symantec Vontu DLP program is needed and will be provided here.

Price: To protect Symantec’s “leader” positioning, it should utilize the “leader” pricing strategy. It should also utilize “volume pricing” and “bundle pricing”. These strategies will benefit Symantec. The price of Symantec Vontu is dependent on the amount of beds in the hospital and the number of hours resellers need to work with hospitals on implementation and maintenance. The price of Symantec Vontu’s DLP program should be charged at between $25,000 and $500,000 with the service cost being $120 per hour and 50 to 200 hours are needed.

Distribution: A direct sales force will be the primary distribution technique. A limited amount of the product will be available to resellers, who will need to be highly trained. Due to the complexity of setting up a complete system such as Symantec’s data loss prevention, Symantec should utilize a direct-to-end-buyer marketing strategy. In other words, Symantec needs to directly sell its products to the buyers in USA.

Promotion: Events such as trade shows (for example, ANI:Healthcare Finance Conference), seminars, and webinars will provide a focused and detailed promotion. A newsletter mailed to those ,who have expressed interest, will help to maintain interest and awareness. A website is available online, with detailed information available on the compliance, analyst research, and others, which requires a user to provide his or her name and email address in order to access these documents. Users’ info will allow Symantec to keep in contact with those who would be interested in this information. Ads will be run in Healthcare Financial Management and Hospitals & Health Networks, two healthcare-management magazines.

Market Information System (MIS): Constant monitoring of market needs is a requirement for success. In order to collect information from the marketplace, Symantec is going to focus on booked revenues, opportunities, qualified leads, leads, customer satisfaction (or NPS), average deal size, and sales cycle.

Conclusion (Recommendation):

To be successful in marketing the company, Symantec requires identifying its goal, understanding the industry situation, and providing comprehensive promotional strategies. Most importantly, Symantec needs all the steps and possible strategies listed above in the promotional strategy section. Marketing is incomplete when one of the building blocks of strategies (corporate image, positioning, etc.) is missing. Marketing, especially promotion, requires companies to have a full picture. There are may be other possible routes to success in promoting Symantec, but if all the strategies above are followed, the company should be able to give itself a unique opportunity to satisfy its goals/missions.

Faithful in Sony

2009-05-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

After having read what the author, Jesus Diaz, has said about SONY's glorious widget history and its current situation, I feel both corresponded and a little bit of disapprobation.

I agree with the author that Sony was a pioneer in its field for many years. It was the number one and had been a revolutionist in creating its products including, Sony Walkman, U-Matic and Beta Video, and Playstation. Yet, I don't quite agree with Diaz that Sony's design is a bland now and no longer the "world's firsts." If Diaz opinion were to be true, then that should also be applied to many other companies or giants in the field today. How come I don't see Nitendo coming out with a new game widget either, besides the Wii that everyone has been playing for a while?

The author forgets to compare Sony with many other companies out there today. During this economic crisis, it is hard to imagine companies will still have the budgets to create something ground-breaking. It's true they should, if they really want to stand out and make a profit especially during this period of time. However, reality is always hitting companies harder than they think. Plus, to a degree, the author is very subject in his view that he didn't talk about how Sony is still a pioneer in creating portable video-game widget like PSP and many other games. Moreover, Sony is still the ground-breaking company in providing better graphics with HDTV and Blue-Ray supported PS3. Lastly, the author probably didn't check out some of the Sony Ericsson phones lately because they are cool with lots of functions than expected.

Though regression is seem almost everywhere in every industry today, things will get better, at least we are not in another Great Depression. Rather than thinking gloomy, it's better to have more faith. This is only the beginning of the recession, perhaps a year down the road, Sony will come out with something crazy if it wants to save itself from this market turmoil.

Hollywoodland

2009-05-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

Looking at the map of LA, about 10 miles northwest of Los Angeles, a city named Hollywood is found. Across the globe, many people know the importance of this city. It is famous for its cinema industry, where both Universal City Studios and Warner Brothers Studios are located. Many movies are filmed and delivered to the rest of the world from this city every year. And not far away from these studios, the famous big white sign of HOLLYWOOD is also seen on the mountain. People, including many of us living in Los Angeles area, seem to think this city is extremely busy and noisy, especially around Hollywood Blvd.. But, it is not until today, I discovered a little bit more about this city. First of all, the city was originally called Hollywoodland, not Hollywood. People adopted to the name Hollywood after a mudslide that had caused the letters “land” to disappear from the HOLLYWOODLAND sign. Second, Hollywood is not only a place for partying and clubbing, most importantly, it is and can be a wonderful place to live. The designs of houses there are unique, pretty, and creative. Most houses possess beautiful views of the greater LA area, and the actual neighborhood that lies northeast of the freeway 101 is very quiet and clean. For the first time, my perception of Hollywood has changed. Next time, perhaps when you want go to Hollywood, try driving further west or north a little bit, maybe you'll find yourself in a very different Hollywoodland.

Salesforce: CRM (Second Major Blog Post)

2009-05-08T07:23:00.001-07:00

Recently, Fortune Magazine published an article about how the big software company, Salesforce, hits its stride. The article was interesting enough to catch some IT people’s eyes when flipping through the magazine. Not saying I am an IT guy, but an article about Salesforce is definitely something that many would be aware of. It is one of the fastest growing companies at the turn of the century with today’s market capacity hitting 5.46 billion and stock market price of $43.6 a share. Very hard to imagine, a decade ago this company didn’t even exist, but now it’s being one of the best 100 companies to work for.

In 1999, Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, announced that software industry was dead. Earlier that year, he quit his job at Oracle, another well known software company, and decided to start his own company: Salesforce. Benioff believed the industry was not providing what the customers truly wanted; sooner or later, people would end up searching for something else to replace the industry. So, he wanted to search for a new key that would satisfy the consumer’s demand-lock. As a result, he came up with the idea of letting companies to rent the software instead of buying it. The software that Benioff was aiming to provide is a web-based program that manages customer relationship and data. Everyone was able to access the program through the use of the Internet, as long as one has registered and paid to be a subscriber. The idea was unheard of, but it worked. The company is making a billion dollars a year and growing at a rate of 60% per year. Benioff successfully provided companies and business people with what they have always been looking for.

People like Salesforce, and many reasons contribute to its strength and success. The first thing that people like about Salesforce.com is its convenience. Staffs in companies can operate Salesforce.com’s programs easily through the use of the Internet. In other words, people don’t have to be in offices to work on their projects or to receive services; as long as they are connected to the Internet, Salesforce’s on-demand services can be provided, which is extremely convenient.

Second of all, ever since 1999 when the company was founded, Salesforce has been expanding dramatically. It now has more than 3300 employees working for the company. On top of that, it has a large customer base of 55,400 and over 1.5 million subscribers.

Salesforce provides many different programs that satisfy customers’ demand. Some of these programs include the most frequently used CRM (Customer Relationship Management), AppExchange, Force.com Platform, etc. Today, these programs are called “software as a service.” To further enhance its programs, Salesforce allows users or customers to customize their applications and software.

As a result of its success, Salesforce is now ranked 43rd on the list of the largest software companies. It is no longer an American company, but a global one. It has regional headquarters in Dublin, Singapore, Tokyo, serving Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Moreover, it has offices in Toronto, New York, London, Sydney and San Mateo. Also, the software and application that they provide are also available in many other languages.

The strongest strength of Salesforce mainly comes from the passionate professions that operate and invest in this company. Some of these people include former executive Marc Benioff, (founder of Salesforce), Larry Ellison (co-founder and CEO of Oracle), and Halsey Minor (founder of CNET). These people give the company a very strong background.

A lot of people are investing in this company, and they continue to have good words about its success. Simply looking at the company’s most recent SEC 10K report filed in January this year, it is impressive. Based on a recent financial analysis done by Morgan Stanley, the result of the company’s previous quarter’s revenue was, in fact, unexpectedly higher than predicted, especially during this recessionary period of the economy. Although the numbers are doing well, there are many other factors that start to worry the investors and users of the CRM software. It is true that this new idea is hot, and people are interested about it, but people are also wondering how long this hot idea is actually going to last when they start to spot some crucial problems with this company.

There are a lot of problems with Salesforce, but the obvious one is its company’s software demos. Many users that have used or experienced Salesforce’s software complained that the demos are nice and make the software seemed to be something easy to use, but in reality, the software is complicated and hard to operate. Hence, it is to say that the demos give a false image of what the actual software is like.

Second of all, Salesforce, like many other vendors, is believed to have a very high turnover rate. Because switching cost is low and hardly any restrictions exist, subscribers can easily cancel their subscriptions.

Third, though customizing function of the software is allowed and given, for small business owners, customization is costly. Furthermore, even if people do buy the customizing functions, once again, it turns out to be hard to use.

Another big problem with Salesforce is that it doesn’t have any service level agreement with its customers. So, the company has the right to shut down its servers whenever it wants to. Though the company will shut down its servers randomly, if it does, for sure it will bring a lot of troubles and losses for its customers. Customers have complained that outages and downtime occurred before.

The second biggest problem with Salesforce is its customer service. It has been noted by many people that the company’s sales representatives are overly aggressive and tend to think they know better than their customers. Especially when the sales representatives are informed that they are no longer being considered, they tend to perform some outrageous revengeful actions towards the customers by filing some law suits or complaining to people in higher positions of the customer’s company that the project management team was not making the right decision to choose Salesforce. This kind of situation happened many times as if that was the company’s routine behavior. In essence, the company’s sales representatives’ arrogance has transformed into unethical behaviors.

The biggest problem with Salesforce.com is that the company’s strategy is short term and mismatched. The company likes to boost its sales and revenues by keeping stock price high, but in long run, this doesn’t really help big enterprises. And, the company defines itself as helping customers to manage their customer relationship database, but the “corporate DNA” is still about pushing sales and getting as many customers as possible, not exactly helping.

Consequently, the company’s success should start to become a question mark for people who have truly looked beyond the content in magazine pages. Putting aside all the successful stories or numbers that have been heard or out-performed, the company’s sales teams’ unethical attitude and its unfit strategy are definitely not going to make the company survive in the next 10 or 15 years. I wouldn’t say people who are buying or using its service today are naïve, because it is understandable that this is a new product strategy and everybody wants to give it a try. But, people are rational; therefore, it would be hard to imagine that customers will want to go back to Salesforce again.

Salesforce is “the leader in customer relationship management (CRM) and cloud computing,” but how ironic its sales-force team does not even understand how to manage its customer relationship. Four years ago, there was a major competitor in the field named Sieble System; it functioned and provided something very much like Salesforce. But, at the end, it was bought out by Oracle for 5.9 billion dollars. So, if Salesforce continues the way it is today, it is not hard to predict its future.

Green Green Green: Revised Version

2009-05-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

Did you know that according to American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), in year 2007, only 56% of all the paper products were recycled? For every ton of paper we use, 17 trees are cut and 50% more water is used. And a ton of paper that is used, we produce an extra 3.3 cubic yards of waste in national's landfill. But, that doesn’t mean our planet will be exploited soon because people aren’t recycling.

Luckily for many of us who are really lazy to recycle, the single-stream technology is out there to save our natural resources. The single-stream technology helps us to recycle when we throw everything into one-single container. And when these one-single containers arrive at the waste management plants, the waste will be sorted by screening devices that separate fiber waste that is needed from the others.

Amazingly, this technology allows people to put all their waste in one-single container instead of separating waste into many different containers --one for paper, one for cans, another one for plastic, etc.

Based on Waste Management Recycle America, single-stream technology has increased its company's recycled volume from a range of 30% to 100%. Yet, only 30% of WM's 105 mills use this technology because this technology is costly. Of course, that doesn’t mean this number won’t grow. Due to uprising issues in global warming and increasing participation in green movements, soon enough, further implementations will definitely occur.

Did you know?

2009-04-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

Amazing YouTube video.
It's beyond interesting. It makes you quite speechless after you watched this video. It makes you wonder what life is about. It's very scary too, because it feels like we are going to be conquered by computers and robots pretty soon!!

Are You Facebooking? (First Major Blog)

2009-03-05T04:38:00.000-08:00

Are you facebooking? Wait a minute; did you even realize something wrong or weird with my first question? Perhaps many of you, especially if you are a normal college student, wouldn’t. Yet, there’s a serious issue going on with my first sentence. If you don’t believe it, try typing it out in your Office Word Processer. The word facebooking doesn’t even exist in normal English dictionary. Unbelievably, this very ordinary question of “Are you facebooking?” is appearing everywhere in our daily conversations. Just like the word “Google,” Facebook is no longer just a noun or adjective because it is so popular and used so often, people have adopted this word that they cannot even find in a dictionary, very unconsciously, into a verb. It is amazing! Out of billion operating business in this world, Facebook has managed to create a revolutionary English term in our lives.

Though Facebook is becoming an essential part of many people’s lives today, the amount of critics that it is receiving is also increasing. Recently, Facebook has changed platform to a new design. Based on the poll application on the website, 94% of the 63 thousand people that participated in the poll hate the new design of the platform and 1.7 million people signed a petition hoping that Facebook could bring back the old design.

However, the biggest critic in regards to Facebook is whether or not it’s going to last. In fact, there are people out there that think this new toy is just a temporary hype that will soon fade as another new widget comes out. However, that is not necessary true. It is expected that growth rate will slow down eventually, which company doesn’t? But, when will that happen is what people need to think about. Ten years? Twenty years? Also, with the amount of users that have already existed on Facebook, even if a new widget does come out, the turnover rate may not be high because people might have already adapted to Facebook’s platform.

A new widget doesn’t always mean it will have the possibility to completely take over the old one. Looking at Facebook and MySpace today, MySpace is still popular, and there are still a lot of people using it. In fact, the newest trend today in society is to have both. People, who have used MySpace before, are also Facebook users now. Though both platforms try to perform in a very similar matter, every platform is unique in its way. There are things that Facebook has that MySpace may not have. Because of that, there are facts that need to be considered why this company will strive to survive for the next decade or so.

Facebook “helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” (Company slogan as it appears when one visits facebook.com) The CEO of this website, Mark Zuckerberg, strongly states that Facebook is a “social utility.” It sounds original, but more importantly, it is extremely powerful in terms of its popularity. It took 89 years for telephone to reach 150 million users, and thinking about something popular recently, iPod took 7 years to reach that same number of users, but Facebook only took 5 years from 2004 to today. Every week, 5 million users are joining this website globally. The growth rate is significant, and it is too popular that one probably cannot resist to even sign-up an account for it. Today, there are more than 175 million users on Facebook. This number is 20 million short to the population of Brazil and 10 million above Pakistan. In other words, Facebook users can form a country!

With these fascinating numbers in mind, it is evident that the company is one of the most popular websites. That tells a lot. Because so many users are around, it can’t fail right away unless there are some serious issues with its service. Imagine Facebook as Citigroup, a new big and popular bank that opens tomorrow may affect Citigroup, but the damage won’t make the entire cooperation collapse.

Globalization: It’s NOT American; it is the WORLD.
Though the founder of this website is an American born in New York who dropped out from the prestigious Harvard University, the website itself is not American at all. Like Google, MSN, and many other web service providers, Facebook now offers more than 63 languages since 2008. When a website offers this kind of language utility, it opens up its market and gives this organization a potential to attract a lot of other business outside of the States. In fact, many will probably think Facebook is heavily used by Americans, those people are wrong. More than 70% of the users on this website are outside of America. Let’s look at this beautiful stats table of top 10 countries with the most Facebook users produced by Nick Burcher, Head of Social Media and Audience Messages EMEA in London:

Country		Number of Facebook Users
USA		27,811,560
UK		11,171,540
Canada		9,621,820
Turkey		3,464,640
Australia		3,217,380
France		2,461,140
Colombia		2,412,000
Chile		2,105,820
Norway		1,170,660
Sweden		1,141,700

http://www.nickburcher.com/2008/07/facebook-user-numbers-by-country-and.html

Cool enough to notice, there are approximately 147 million users that are not American. On top of that, it is noted from other statistics tables in Nick Burcher’s website that USA is not in the top 10 countries of “highest Facebook penetration.” The winner of the number of Facebook users as a percentage of population is actually Canada with close to 29% of its country’s population. “Half of all Canadians on the internet are also users of Facebook,” said Wagman, a professor at Carlton University in Canada. (http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/494494) USA is, for sure, the center of the world’s financial sector, but that does not mean all the money in this world flow directly to USA only. To be a successful business, one has to realize that there are many other currencies out there that can make one valuable; Facebook has captured this thought. Without customers, there is no profit. Hence, Facebook has done a great job in recruiting so many members, and this is only the beginning of its true success in the long run.

Diversity in Age and Purposes.

Someone who can read a graph and understand basic statistic will say this graph is skewed to the right with lots of outliers and its mode is in the age of 19 or 20. Well, it is obvious because it is understandable that many Internet users are around those ages. However, throwing statistics aside, what is more interesting about this graph is there are actually users above the age of 50s, even 60s (The age of grandparents). Unlike MySpace, whose target audience is said to be teenagers but actually most users are above the age of 35, Facebook is more like a real organization. Zuckerberg has created a platform for everyone from any age to use. By having reached to this point, Zuckerberg has really gone beyond his original purpose. Facebook is not just a “social utility.” It is now a major form of communication with multi-purposes depending on who the user is and what he or she is looking for. For a college student, Facebook may be a social utility to make friends, stalk the person that one likes, or even to learn more information about companies. Yet, for parents and even grandparents, their purposes can be complicated. Parents may use it to check out what their kids are doing or saying over the Internet, and grandparents are probably primarily searching for their old friends, long disappearing neighbors, or someone who they miss. Looking around a lot of successful business in this world, one would conclude that a lot of businesses do not solely focus on one product or service. Instead, they are conglomerates, a combination of many ventures in different industries. Two things in common between the top 100 Fortune companies and Facebook are that they all provide many different purposes based on customers’ choices, and they serve not only to a specific group of people, but a variety of people in all ages and many aspects.

Culture: Passion Driven and Strong Management:

In the most recent article published in Fortune’s magazine in February, “How Facebook is taking over our lives?” the writer Jessi Hempel questions her readers if or not Facebook is a real business. The question seems absurd and ironic in a sense because one might wonder if Facebook is not a real business then why it is even published in Fortune, a real business magazine writing about companies. Having read the article and thought a lot about general misleading information taught by society, the purpose of Jessi Hempel’s question became more visible and transparent. When one thinks of business, one will definitely relates this word to profit, money, investment, and many other financial related words. However, the correlation of these words to Facebook is, from an investment banker’s perspective, weakly associated. In fact, Hempel is trying to address the misconception of the word “business.” Facebook is not earning tons of billions, and it is not even in the top 500 Fortune companies. It possesses the opposite mission of AOL of which its parent company, Time Warner, hammers heavily on making profits and producing more revenues for the company. Facebook does not make its users feel like there are tons of ads flashing everywhere when visiting the website. (If you go visit MySpace right now; you will realize what I am talking about.) To elaborate a little bit on advertisement, Facebook actually gives its users a chance to decide what ads should show up based on the user’s preferences. Therefore, a business operation does not strictly mean it has to make a lot of profits for its shareholders, but most of all, it should have a sense of culture that provides the company with a mission or passion to achieve something beyond money.

“Zuckerberg prefers to leave the question of revenues to Sandberg [COO of Facebook], who punts: “I think what’s really important is that we are able to fund our expansion, and we’re very focused on that”…Early board member Jim Breyer, who put in $1 million of his own money and 12.7 million from an Accel Partners fund, says that profits are “a secondary consideration in this stage of the growth.” ”

Here is a quick view of some key people in the organization, current positions, and their formal companies:

Name	Current Position	Formal Company/Position
Sheryl Sandberg	Chief Operating Officer	Google; built AdWords Formal student and follower of Larry Summers (head of the White House’s National Economic Council)
Gideon Yu	Finance	YouTube CFO
Don Graham	Board Member	Washington Post publisher
Jim Breyer	Board Member	Venture capitalist
Peter Thiel	Technology	PayPal co-founder
Marc Andreessen	Technology	Netscape founder

Seriously looking at these people and their backgrounds, it’s crazy! They are prestigious, well-known in their fields, and very valuable people to big-money-making companies. Their goal in Facebook is not to make themselves billionaires; if they were, they would’ve stayed in their original companies or even gone to other places. Many of the people in senior management level of Facebook are very passionate to create a new generation of mass media. As a result, it is evident to say that Facebook gets a strong culture going on. People wear jeans and t-shirts to work, very similar to employees at Google. People inside that organization are creative and responsible to work together. They are trying to be the next Microsoft; they are hoping to create a legend of communication that is spread over the world through Internet. These people are making enough money through some advertisements that are sustainable for its growth. At the end, it is impossible to deny that Facebook is a real business because it has a very influential culture that provides the solution to many people’s needs, and it is and will be successful as long as it remains the way it is until new changes in situations and customer demands.

Green Green Green

2009-02-25T00:24:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you wrote something wrong and decided to throw away your paper but you didn't even bother to look for a recycle bin? When you walked down the streets on campus and you tried to throw away a can of Coke you just finished, where was the recycle bin? Don't worry because there is a solution.

Luckily for many of us who are really lazy to recycle, the single-stream technology is growing in many American paper mills. The single-stream technology solves the problem when there isn't an extra recycle bin around because it allows people to put all their waste in one-single container instead of separating waste into many different containers --one for paper, one for cans, another one for plastic, etc. Later, when these one-single containers arrive at the plant, waste will be sorted by screening devices that separate fiber waste that is needed from the others.

So how is recycling beneficial to us?

1. For every ton of paper we recycle, 17 trees are saved and 50% less water is used. 2. On top of that, a ton of paper that is recycled, we don't produces an extra 3.3 cubic yards of waste in national's landfill.

Did you know that according to American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), in year 2007, only 56% of all the paper products was recycled? Though this number may seem to be descent, it can definitely be improved, especially with this single-stream technology. (AF&PA aims to recover 60% of the papers Americans consume by the year of 2012.)

Single-stream technology has existed for a while, but it has not been implemented widely because it's expensive! Yet, it did become popular until the last 5 years or so as people started to really worry about global warming, and of course, the number of green active environmentalists grew rapidly. As a result, more awareness and, therefore, more money is invested in this technology. Waste Management Recycle America --for people who don't know this company, this it the company that sends out those BIG green garbage trucks with WM logo on them -- states that single-stream technology has increased its company's recycled volume from a range of 30% to 100%.

Today, 30% of WM's 105 mills uses this technology. Let's hope the implementation of this technology continues to grow, which I believe it will, since people are becoming lazier than ever. :)

Market Positioing

2009-02-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

Company makes money by meeting customer's demand. In marketing, positioning is one of the key aspects to establish a good marketing strategy. The lock represents the market and consumers, and the key is a product or service that a company must provide that fits the lock.

In the late 19th century, people didn't shower, instead, they bathed . They sat inside their bathtub to enjoy their time. However, there was a problem. People were having problems trying to find their soap when they were inside their bathtub. It is hard for us to imagine this to happen today because soap floats. Soap back then used to sink all the way to the bottom, and it was often difficult to find it because the water would become murky and probably dirty. It was inconvenient, and people continued to live with it.

Then, a small accident happened at a soap factory owned by P&G. The company tried to develop a high quality soap named "White Soap." One day, workers of the factory left the factory forgetting to turn off the machines. When the workers returned, the soap had been mixing for a long time, air bubbles got in, causing the soap to float. The company did not want to waste the soap made, so the workers kept it and later had the soap framed, packaged, and sold to the market.

Amazingly, the soap became popular because it fits the customer's lock. It was a product that satisfied the demand of the market. Later, the founder of the company named this "White Soap" Ivory when he was at church one day while listening to bible reading. ("Ivory was early used in decorations by the Egyptians, and a great trade in it was carried on by the Assyrians")

The company became prosperous because of this small accident. The company got lucky. But, do a lot of companies get lucky like P&G? Perhaps not. To me, i find the important lesson to get out of this example is that a company wants to be successful can not depend on its luck, rather a company needs to focus more on what the consumers want and really spend its time on researching and surveying the market to find out what key will fit the lock. It is not easy, but a good positioning strategy is definitely needed.

BLAH! What I Think of Blogs!

2009-02-04T01:03:00.000-08:00

I am not a huge fan of blogs. I don't read people's blogs either. Yet, I do see the points of blogging.

Two decade ago, common household didn't even have computers. Letters and telephones were the best ways for communication. Life appeared to be very simple. People wrote things down to keep track of things. A lot of people would buy those tiny booklets so called diary to write their journals. Then, people would express and expose their feelings and secrets in their journals and put the diary away into their dark hidden drawer. It was still a very conservative and closed society.

Suddenly, a decade ago, computers in common household became very popular. It was a new technology and a trend that you must follow. It was a new toy for everybody that was so irresistible to buy. That was the beginning of an era when Microsoft and Intel began to make tons of money. I still remember very vividly it was 1998, I started learning how to use Windows 98 at home and the very first pioneer generation of Macintosh computer at my elementary school. Things developed very quickly. People have learnt to save money and time by using computer and Internet. The world has advanced from an independent state to a global market. Communication improved as E-mails, instant messagers, and others continued to dominate the traditional methods. Majority of the people have shifted from physcially writing things down into their notebooks with their ballpoint-inked pens to typing letters into the computer monitors in front of them through the keyboards. Consequently, the emergence of blogs, Facebook, MySpace was not something unusal or unexpected. It was coming to us like the water coming down from a stream. Blogs signified a transformation for the society and its people. Blogs are replacing diaries and continue to challenge people to open up and share their individual values with rest of the world.

Hence, blogging is a method for our new generation to understand and adapt to the dramatic change and progress of society, as well as it serves to be the new way of communication. Finally, to really relate blogging back to this course, the use of blogging is like a digital journal entry, where it helps the person who inputs these entries to improve his/her writing skills.