2. The influence of major media has decreased a lot since the Internet came into play. How do major media re-position their roles in this new environment as a way to regain their significance?

3. How do major media strike a balance between commercialization and public interests?

In the process of leading discussion, I tried to lure everyone to speak. That’s why I speak the main ideas of the thesis and ask my peers their opinions about the author’s thoughts. Do they agree or disagree with the author. Why did they disagree with him and what is the problem of the author’s thoughts. I think it is the main purpose of leading discussion. First of all, I should delivering the main idea of the thesis, and then lead the discussion. The problem here is, some of my questions may not really stimulate the discussion. One of the reasons is still the language. I couldn’t express the questions clearly that my peers could really understand what I mean. Another problem may be the questions were not quite worth of discussion. I probably should think the questions clearer before asking it.

The overall presentation was not bad, but I should take more time to prepare for it. After all, I am not a native speaker and I really need to prepare it longer than anyone else.

In Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites, Eszter Hargittai questions about the difference between users and non-users of SNSs, which most of the academic researches ignores. Eszter thinks this is an antecedent question that should be answered before studying other behaviors of use of SNSs.  Accordingly, Eszter adopts regression analysis to examine the correlation between multiple variations.

The following are the findings of the research. Originally, people think no one knows who you are in the cyberspace. However, the use of SNSs reflects the person’s social network in everyday life. We can see different races have a tendency to use different SNSs, such as Hispanic students are considered more likely to use MySpace, while Asians/Asian Americans are considerably more likely to use Xanga and Friendster. Different family backgrounds could also mirror the tendency of using different SNSs. In the research, there seems to be a positive relationship between parental schooling and the use of Facebook and Xanga, and a negative relationship between parental education and the use of MySpace.

We can say the use of SNSs is a way to stay connected with acquaintances. Most people take SNSs as a tool that maintains and deepens the relationship of someone we have already known. Thus, the online social activities of a person are not independent from the person’s physical social activities. The behavior and the social norms in SNSs have come closer to reality because the anonymity seems no more exists in this environment.

The interesting thing is: if students who are less likely to build relationships on campus in the first place, are also less likely to use SNSs that facilitate additional interactions with their friends or classmates. Accordingly, these students are even lonelier than before SNSs have been widely accepted. We can conclude that people who are already constrained due to particular circumstances are precisely the ones not benefiting from some of the Web’s potential.

Eszter also implies that students who live with its family may influence the well-connection with its peers. Eszter states that by spending less time on campus, students who live with their parents know fewer of their peers and know less about them, thus perhaps having less of a desire to keep in touch with them. On the other hand, students who live by themselves or in dorms are more active on SNSs.

In conclusion, SNSs facilitate the process of forming relationships with someone we already known. Thus, the use of SNSs is not all decided by one’s’ will, but the peer group may influence the decision. Because of the above factor, the use of SNSs reveals one’s social networks in everyday life. It may also reveal one’s demographic backgrounds, such as racial and ethical background, parental education statues and so on. Accordingly, SNSs helps people form strong relationship or interact with someone who shares similar backgrounds, and SNSs lead people to reduce the chances to get to know someone who shares less similarities.

Garrett takes several unsolvable situations in human society to prove the correlation between the excessive human population and the tragedy of the commons, such as the arms race and pollution. He believes that if the human population continuously rising up, the number of people visit parks everyday will be restricted someday in order to protect the scarcity of nature resources. Of course, human takes certain means to solve some of the problems. The coercion of the government, such as tax, is of the examples that human accepts as a way to maintain the harmony of the society, even if no one likes it.

Garrett’s saying looks rebellious while almost every government on this planet suggests its citizens to breed more children and advocates the benefits of gaining more young population. However, some examples could prove Garrett is right in certain cases. “Kyoto Protocol” is a typical example of the tragedy of the common. In 1992, Kyoto Protocol was signed by most of the countries for reducing the green house gases. Each country has to reduce the certain amount of green house gases emission year by year. The protocol shows the global warming is highly concerned by the members of global village and leaders of each country knows the serious consequence if the situation continuously worsened. However, no country follows the rule. The current economic growth is more important than anything else. No country could bear the economic stagnation because of following the protocol that it has to reduce the production or other economic activities. If a country falls into economic downturn, the unemployment rate will climb and then leads to more social problems. Accordingly, the problem backs to the excessive population. In another word, because of the excessive population, there should always have enough working positions in order to maintain the steadiness of a society and the tragedy of the common shows up.

Although, Garrett’s saying of reducing the population sounds reasonable in today’s world, some potential problem still exists. Thirty years ago, the Chinese government launched the one-child policy. Each family could only breed one child in order to control the booming of population. The result is serious imbalance ratio between male and female. The reason is only male could breed children who will inherit the family name. Accordingly, a lot of families would rather breed male and abort female. Twenty years later, many male could not find his mate and results in a lot of social problems. To breed children is human nature, if any external force restricts it, some unexpected results may happen.

2. From the innovative theories’ point of view, what is the best strategy for AMD or other entrants to challenge Intel’s leading role in the industry?

3. Foundries don’t have the ability to design chips hence they are highly depending on fabless companies or IDMs. Is it better for foundries to possess the competence of designing chips?

There is an interesting metaphor in the book: corporations are like Pinocchio, their noses grow longer at the oddest moments. They want to be human, but they are not. The metaphor implies the confusion and difficulty that all corporations are facing, which is the communication with the customers. Ever since the web 2.0 environment comes out as an influential communication channel, the traditional ways of conveying messages to the consumers has become complicated. The Internet decentralized the attentions of audiences and the communication channels. It also provides rich data that everything about the services and products of the corporations could be found on the Internet. The borderless, direct access and openness attributes of the Internet reduce the barriers of communication between people, now they can communicate or retrieve information at any time. The information is no longer scarcity and time and distance are not necessary the problems of communicating with each other, the real headache of corporations shows up.  

In the past, corporations spend huge amount of money on advertising, public relations and some other marketing mix tools could usually get good sells, as long as they target at the right audiences and come along with the right strategy. However, things have changed dramatically, let alone the competition has become harsh, the consumers have become really smart and hardly satisfied. They would rather listen to other consumers’ opinions on the Internet than listen to advertisements or news presses of corporations. They always doubt corporations’ saying, and they will search the best answers by themselves. If corporations try to reach or convince customers secretly, such as stealth marketing and product placement, they will always get caught because there are always some consumers smarter than corporations. Just like Pinocchio, corporations try to have normal conversations with consumers, but consumers don’t buy it. Now corporations use other cunning methods to reach the consumers, but they can’t cover their long nose and sometimes they annoyed their customers by doing so.

P&G launched an online community, Capessa, for women on 2007, where women discuss anything that they concern, including money, career, health and family issues. P&G intends to gather its target audiences around and try to communicate, advertise and research its target market. P&G doesn’t hide the truth that they sponsor the site and intend to have a better understanding and connection with its target market. I think it’s a smart idea because P&G knows that the connection and communication with consumers are valuable to collect data to improve products and services, as well as get the consumer insight to convey the most precise message to the customers. The company also knows its customers are way too smart to deceive, so it doesn’t even try to hide the truth. Contrarily, the company suits itself in the community and makes itself belong to the community. The community provides a platform for women to search for information, share experiences, get benefits and deepen the impression of P&G’s brand name. This is a good example of leveraging the web 2.0 environment as a precise channel of communication.

Of course, the web 2.0 environment also impacts corporations’ inner communication. The company could control the work process of its employees easily. However, employees could influence each other’s feelings toward the company easily. The intranet system facilitates the management, but it also facilitates the complaint and negative emotions to spread all over the company. It also drifts apart the human relationship within the company because the face to face communication might reduce. Some conflicts between employers and employees have started to grow, for example, employees hate the feeling of being watched, controlled and distrusted. Sometimes employees don’t think it’s necessary to work in the office because the Internet is so convenient they could send their paperwork by e-mail, and even worse, they doubt the existence of organizations.

The internal social-networking site of Best Buy is a good example of how the corporate connects its employees together and forms a powerfully positive emotion among its employees. This positive power not only improves its employee’s productivity but also influences the cognition of the public, hence shapes a great brand image. According to this example, not only directly communicate with the customers can generate positive brand image, but also some other noticeable changes can generate buzzes or the interests of the mass media and forms a good image.

The Internet has greatly changed human communication, which leads to corporations are having hard time to get used to it. How to leverage web 2.0 environment effectively is still an issue of most corporations. In fact, corporations have to accept that consumers are smart and well-informed. Only listen to customers carefully and communicate with them sincerely could lead to long term prosperity.

The case study shows that the incumbent may overlook some crucial attributes of the new technology hence lose the best time to catch up on the new trend. Seagate Technology didn’t do enough research about their new competitor. What they did was adopting the data based on their current customers and the report of their financial department. Accordingly, they didn’t insight the overshot customer’s needs and the potential power of non-market. The financial department didn’t want to make change, as well as they have invested huge resources on current research and development. Various reasons led the company passively dealt with the start-ups and lost the market. The company was unwilling to face the inconvenient truth, which was the main reason to get defeated.

Christensen believes that corporations should not be afraid of changing, even if corporations have to get rid of some units in the company. When new technology comes out, the incumbent should consider building a disruptive-technology business in an independent organization. The existing financial structure may be a barrier and the risk of gaining nothing may be high. That is why Kodak didn’t respond to digital camera at prime time because the company believes the stability of the current market and they didn’t see digital camera as a fruitful market. Kodak decided to reject the new technology and let the start-ups lead the trend of emerging-markets. This is another example of a company failed to leverage the new technology.

Christensen’s idea of building an independent disruptive-business and eliminate the out-dated units in corporations may be a good method. However, it’s risky and may under the pressure of the public opinions. Recently, Google adopts acquisition strategy, which may also be a good way to deal with disruptive-businesses. The company acquired lots of potential competitors, such as facebook, youtube and so on to become an integrated Internet based platform. The News Group is another example of adopting acquisition strategy that it acquires a lot of media companies. Various companies in different industries acquire burgeoning competitors before they threaten the incumbents.

However, the strategy of acquisition is not always successful. After all, the competition in the business world is complicated. Microsoft was highly interested to acquire Yahoo in order to compete with Google. At that time, the CEO of Yahoo seemed perfunctory and insincere. The ambiguous attitude finally irritated Microsoft, which resulted in the unfriendliness between the two companies. In conclusion, no matter what corporations decide to do, building an independent disruptive business organization or acquire the burgeoning competitors, corporations have to make a quick decision. Being cautious with the surrounding changes and don’t be afraid to make innovation are the ways to maintain the leading roles in the market.