Advantages & Disadvanatages of Blogs

What are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing internal versus external employee blogs in a corporate setting? Are there certain industries where one of these strategies makes more sense?

Advantages of both Internal and External
Authors of blogs have the luxury of focusing on a single issue as long as they want to
Bloggers can supply a mix of supporting information such as background research, links to other online materials, copies of other documents, and photographs
No space restriction, can post or link to all relevant information
Ability to disseminate information even quicker than traditional publication channels
Technologies to support blogging are widespread and often free
Keeping up with blog posts made infinitely easier by RSS
External blogs can be a source of revenue with ads
Posts to external blogs often give a behind-the-scenes look at the company
Internal blogs create a loyal following; help raise awareness of issues that need to be addressed
“Blog Monitoring” helps companies mine for external blogs for customer sentiments about the company and its products
External blogs are a good marketing tool, can be used to advertise in a tone and language to match brand campaign of a new product
Internal blogs allow for collaboration across functions, increased cooperation and the ability to share information quickly and efficiently
Blogs, both internal and external, create a record of an organization’s thoughts and conversations; this record is then searchable and consultable
Blogging is a growing trend in communication around the world
Internal blogging helps with knowledge sharing
Blogging creates an aspect of self-gratification that can not be measured
Blogs increase transparency and ultimately benefit companies who can be quick to issue corrections

Disadvantages of both Internal and External
Blogs are unsupervised, unedited, and unpremeditated
May be a waste of time for employees, it can be tedious in terms of upkeep
External corporate bloggers do not have complete freedom, companies often provide guidelines
External blogs are risky because the author could reveal a company secret, violate client confidentiality, or attract unwanted attention from a regulator or enforcer
External blogs would have to be reviewed by some kind of internal media relations group
Legal and compliance officers were weary of external company blogs arguing that not everyone has the right “voice” or “skill set” to blog

Blogs can be used in any industry. Blogs are a place for a group of similar-minded people to discuss any topic. Bloggers can comment on reviews on new products. Bloggers can comment on new software or IT problems and solutions. Bloggers might want to discuss child-rearing, finance, or exercise. Bloggers can blog about their daily lives, be it boring and exciting, and still develop a loyal following. The extremely rapid growth in blogs as shown in Exhibit 2 indicates that people are blogging and they are blogging about anything and everything. The sky’s the limit.

Pomegranate Phone

Shave and talk at the same time? Nice feature.

http://www.pomegranatephone.com/

Apple iPhone & Digital Music Market

Has the digital music market irreversibly tipped in Apple’s favor?

Mobile phone manufacturers’ worst nightmare came true when the iPhone was introduced in the U.S. on June 29, 2007. The iPhone’s international success was followed by the release of the iPhone 3G on July 11, 2008. Today, Apple is the third largest mobile phone manufacturer, after Nokia and Samsung. The digital music market and the mobile phone market have irreversibly tipped in Apple’s favor. The iPod is the kind of innovation that changes generations. People cannot live without their iPod and now some people can’t live without their iPhone. The only thing keeping me from getting an iPhone are switching costs. I would have to change from Verizon to AT&T/Cingular and that would mean losing my free mobile to mobile minutes with my husband and family because everyone else is on Verizon. I have an 80GB iPod so I don’t need it for digital music reasons so I can’t exactly justify the expense. But, a part of me still gets really jealous when someone whips out their brand new iPhone 3G. It was that same feeling that made me purchase my iPod in the first place. I guess I have just been brainwashed by Apple into feeling that false sense of need. As far as the digital music market is concerned, iTunes is still a loss leader for the iPod. It may have inadvertently created a price structure for subscription and non-subscription services but it still offers the most complete library. The sad thing is, illegal downloading is still a problem. When Apple reported in 2006 that its billionth song had been downloaded, consumers were still illegally downloading an estimated billion songs every month worldwide. This makes the digital music industry less and less attractive for handset manufacturers and carriers alike. Prices for subscription services may be going down but people are still finding free ways to trade music and I am not sure anyone can compete with that- not even Apple.

Brightcove

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Brightcove’s business model?

Strengths:
Turnkey software platform for creating & maintaining broadband video channels that was faster than anything else on the market
Early customers included big names like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal creating a roster of reference clients
Bundled software platform service with content delivery network (CDN) fees generated a lot of revenue
AdNet Select advertising strategy was great at tracking impressions and targeting specific consumer groups- a big selling point to advertisers
Truveo search engine gives consumers robust search capability
All tools are branded, like Google

Weakness:
Platform is strong, but not so strong that other engineers couldn’t recreate in 10 months
Customizing the platform for big name clients drained engineering resources
CDN prices were likely to fall and revenue service might dry up, sense of urgency to generate revenue from advertising might lead to bad business decisions
Attracting high quality publishers when shifting more of its customers to revenue sharing arrangement was difficult
Brightcove had trouble identifying their ideal customer or audience
Third party affiliates or niche publishers were leery to give control to Brightcove
Do you want to have to negotiate with one of your competitors for search capability?
Pitching online advertising to companies was difficult; Brightcove was not investing rapidly enough to expand ad sales team