UC3M: 10th Excercise - Free Topic Choice: Fiat wants to take over Opel

In our last session of Multimedia Creacion we got the Opporunity to chose a free topic. I decided to report about the Problems in the Car-Industry and about the traditional German Car Manufacturer Opel which has to face the consequences of the financial Crisis right now. By finding a soulution out of the reds, Opel must consider the Italian Fiat company as possible Buyer of Opel. Therefore Fiat is bidding to take over Opel. Fiat head Sergio Marchionne confirmed on Thursday that his company has a keen interest in the deal. At least Opel could then assure that many work places will be continue to exist, even if not all. However, although no decisions have been taken, the European press is buzzing with the news of a possible takeover. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung fears massive job cuts in Germany after the announcement of a possible takeover of Opel by Italian car maker Fiat: "It must be admitted that Fiat has undergone radical change under CEO Sergio Marchionne. He understands the business, and he's playing with the idea of buying into Chrysler. He will have carefully considered whether an Opel takeover will let him play in the same league with VW and Toyota, and if there's money to be made there. But one should have no illusions. Plants will be closed and thousands will lose their jobs if the deal goes through, and even then the German federal and state governments will not be able to avoid providing state warrantees. In these times of adversity we must seek comfort where we can: without a partner Opel is certain to go under. The company has more chance of success with an industrial than with a financial investor. And such a scenario is certainly preferable to maintaining the sickly status quo at the expense of the state." (24/04/2009)

UC3M: Ninth Exercise - Blog Evaluation

Today I am going to analyze the followings Blogs:
1. Denker Ueber
2. Enrique Dans
3.

I will be looking at the following criteria:
a) Author
b) Topic
c) Frequency of publication and Maturity
d) Reason for, origin of the blog
e) Recommendations for the further development of the blog
f) Ranking en bitácoras.com
g) Analyzing if the blog is part of a bigger social Network and connected to more
blogs


1. Denker ueber



2. Enrique Dans
a) Author:
Enrique Dans is writing his blog enriquedans.com for 5 years and it is one of the well knownst blogs in the spanish language, worldwide. Furthermore he works since 1990 as Profesor Information Systems at the IE Business School. He recieved his Doctor title (Ph.D.) in Management, specialised in Information Systems at the University of California(UCLA). Furthermore he made his MBA in these fields of study and is sometimes guest at the Havard University. His intrests lies on the effects the new technologies have on people and companies. he also is writes for big Spanish newspapers, like El País, El Mundo, Público, ABC, Expansión, Cinco Días, Libertad Digital o PC Actual about topics related to the development of the new technologies, the media and the internet.

b)Topic
The topic of the blog is everything related to media, new technologies, internet, actual happenings within the whole world and so on. There are many differnet themes, like CRM, Blogging, P2P, Online Communities, News, Newspapers etc. Through his blog Enrrique Dans wants to explains the effects the Internet, new technologies have on individuals, companies and the society as a whole.

c)Frequency of publication and Maturity
Enrique Dans is writing is blog for 5 years, everyday. Sometimes he even publishes a articles twice a day as to be seen in his archive.

d) Reason for, origin of the blog
Reason for this Blog are Enrique Dans desire to explain the ongoing technological processses in the world, their power and their effects on the world itsself as well as on the economy and the society. He wants to make people think about whats happening with the technologies and the media around them.

e) Recommendations for the further development of the blog
Personally I think there are no real further recommendations to make to this Blog. To justify my decision I will just give the hint that like mentioned above it id one of the well knownst spanish blogs in the world. Therefore the only point to think about could be that Enrique Dans is going to offer his blog in different languages, like English, German ,Chinese.

f) Ranking at bitacoras.com
At the general Ranking list of Bitacoras.com the blog of Enrique Dans is at place 8 of 10001 places.

g) Analyzing if the blog is part of a bigger social Network and connected to more blogs
This blog is part of bigger social networks and also connected to communities, like flicker.de, facebook.com; as well as to more then 30 other blogs, listed on the right side of the Startpage

UCM3: 8th Excercise - Traditional Media vs. Social Media

I think the main difference between and tradtional Media is that social media has a significant impact on brand awareness and popularity, this medium cares less about financial aspects of a product and more about the product itself, its usability, and the voices surrounding it.

Nowadays it seems that most of traditional media are integrating the social media into their traditional way to keep up-to-date, to create brand awrness and to gain competitive advantage over other traditional media.

Main diferences between traditional, also calles industrial media and social media are: Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience. Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are generally available to anyone at little or no cost. Usability — industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training. Most social media does not, or in some cases reinvents skills, so anyone can operate the means of production. Recency — the time lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks, or even months) compared to social media (which can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses; only the participants determine any delay in response). As industrial media is currently adopting social media tools, this feature may well not be distinctive anymore in some time. Permanence - industrial media once created cannot be altered (once a magazine article is printed and distributed changes cannot be made to that same article) whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing.

A social media ranking for different companies can be done by comparing each brand's "share of voice ranking". This ranking is determined by how successfuly the brand is using the various social media or how social media has embraced the brand. The different social media looked at can be: Blogosphere, videos implemented on YouTube, Studivz- Groups, Facebook Groups, Photobucket, Clipfish and many more. One of the brands/ companies which most successfully integrated the use of social media to create Brand Awareness is Google and also BMW by looking on the "share of voices" obtained. BMW is also in the top because it has a lot of Video spreaded and also many existing communities in the whole world. You can see one example for its successfull vieo spreading (viral Marketing) below.

To conclude we can definitely say that the truth shows the integration of social media no longer is a "could have". Nowadays it is a "Must have" to survive the croud.

UC3M: Seventh Exercise in Multimedia Creation - The future development of the internet and its use

In today´s class we watched two movies about the future development of the internet.

1. Video published by Microsoft

This video shows possible technical developments in the future. Which may right now seem to be impossible is here shown as everday life in a couple of years. Furthermore Microsoft clearly elaborates the advantages of being mobile, which means being absolutly independent from time and space, no matter if it is about private issues tou have to do or your job.



One main issue in this video is the usage of small plastic cards in the size of a credit card, used for flights. In the airport they first work as boarding pass, then as remote control and lter one as guide to the luggage pick up. This fact that Microsoft wants to establish multifunctional technical supports in one appearance.
Internet world as we know it today has undergone far-reaching and profound changes since its early days while becoming a critical communications infrastructure underpinning our economic performance and social welfare. With an estimate of 1.1 billion users world-wide today the Internet is poised to become a fully pervasive infrastructure providing anywhere, anytime connectivity. Thanks in particular to the further deployment of wireless technologies, the number of users of the Internet is expected to jump to some 4 billion in a matter of few years. (http://www.future-internet.eu/)
But the internet is still an open source everybody can join unlimited. Even this is the fact why companies like google.de and yahoo.de are so succesfull it is to question if tchanges have to be made here. Concerning the increase in the numbers of internet users, there will be more unsafety spread arounf the e-world for all participants. (http://www.searchandgo.com/articles/internet/future-dev-7.php). Futhermore reflecting the example of google and yahoo a takeover would also eliminate the basic principal of openess of the interenet, because it is obvious that the trend here goes to a monopoly which will control the online world and spy all ur data - google.de (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/yahoo-and-future-of-internet.html). In this case it is to question which limits are needed to support the technical developments of the internet and at the same time prevent the fact to totally drow out all your data just becaus going with the trend, and getting more and more mobile. The Internet is certainly the most valuable information resource , with, actually, over 800 million people using it everyday. When the Internet was developed 30 years ago, it was mainly used by governments, scientists, researchers and university teachers. Today, the Internet is used by many different types of people, from students to CEO's and the waitress to the politician. Regarding these facts the further develpment of the internet and the techncial advices shown in the movie need to underly certain rules to not overgo the point of safety in this case. (http://www.internettrends.org/).
To show further trend developments I would like you to advice you to the following blog published by Frank Feather, Business Futurist/ Strategist. Recently he published an interview between FAZ, an well known German newspaper and the CEO of Google.de, Eric Schmidt.


2. Video published by lainformacion.com

This video shows a outlook to the year 2025.


This video states that in 2025 either newspapers are only available online or some cheap gratis printed versions. It is even stated that the biggest Newspaper of the US, the New York Times will disappear from the printed newspaper versions and only follow the online and mobile trend.
I oersonally disagree with this issue. My opinion is that there will be many changes in the news-world and of course with high tendency to the online and mobile world to gain competitive advantage this trend development will also grow really fast. However, I believe in the fact that newspapers will still publish parts of it as printed version and also not only gratis. Newspapers are something u still want to touch, feel, store in your shelves. There are portable and you are not always having the feeling of bringing your laptop and electricity with you, even your laptop is really handy.

Please feel free to comment this post and giving some valuable feedback.

UC3M: Sixth exercise in Multimedia Creation - Media and the Importance of Advertising

Advertising it’s a simple word which is often not considered to have so much power. Advertising is the one thing which keeps the different mediums going. Many people might think ads are just the annoying something which television plays between the most important scene in the movie, or the annoying slogan which appears in the end of a song and ruins its emotional ending.
However by talking about advertising we have to consider many different aspects.

1. First of all, what is advertising in general:

Advertising is often thought of as the paid, non-personal promotion of a cause, idea, product, or service by an identified sponsor attempting to inform or persuade a particular target audience. Advertising has taken many different forms since the beginning of time. For instance, archaeo-logists have uncovered walls painted in Rome announcing gladiator fights as well as rock paintings along Phoenician trade routes used to advertise wares. From this early beginning, advertising has evolved to take a variety of forms and to permeate nearly every aspect of modern society. The various delivery mechanisms for advertising include banners at sporting events, billboards, Internet Web sites, logos on clothing, magazines, newspapers, radio spots, and television commercials. Advertising has so permeated everyday life that individuals can expect to be exposed to more than 1,200 different messages each day. While advertising may seem like the perfect way to get a message out, it does have several limitations, the most commonly noted ones being its inability to (1) focus on an individual consumer's specific needs, (2) provide in-depth information about a product, and (3) be cost-effective for small companies.

Psychological tricks in Advertising


2. Advertising objectives
a) Advertising objectives are the communication tasks to be accomplished with specific customers that a company is trying to reach during a particular time frame. A company that advertises usually strives to achieve one of four advertising objectives: trial, continuity, brand switching, and switchback. Which of the four advertising objectives is selected usually depends on where the product is in its life cycle.
b) Trial The purpose of the trial objective is to encourage customers to make an initial purchase of a new product. Companies will typically employ creative advertising strategies in order to cut through other competing advertisements. The reason is simple: Without that first trial of a product by customers, there will not be any re peat purchases.
c) Continuity Continuity advertising is a strategy to keep current customers using a particular product. Existing customers are targeted and are usually provided new and different information about a product that is designed to build consumer loyalty.
d) Brand Switching Companies adopt brand switching as an objective when they want customers to switch from competitors' brands to their brands. A common strategy is for a company to compare product price or quality in order to convince customers to switch to its product brand.

A very famous example herefore is the following videoclip of Pepsi


e) Switchback Companies subscribe to this advertising objective when they want to get back former users of their product brand. A company might highlight new product features, price reductions, or other important product information in order to get former customers of its product to switchback.


3. Important aspects to consider when publishing own advertising
a) Frequency refers to the average number of times that an average consumer is exposed to the advertising campaign. A company usually establishes frequency goals, which can vary for each advertising campaign. For example, a company might want to have the average consumer exposed to the message at least six times during the advertising campaign. This number might seem high, but in a crowded and competitive market repetition is one of the best methods to increase the product's visibility and to increase company sales. The more exposure a company desires for its product, the more expensive the advertising campaign. Thus, often only large companies can afford to have high-frequency advertisements during a campaign.
b) Media Impact generally refers to how effective advertising will be through the various media outlets (e.g., television, Internet, print). A company must decide, based on its product, the best method to maximize consumer interest and awareness. For example, a company promoting a new laundry detergent might fare better with television commercials rather than simple print ads because more consumers are likely to see the television commercial. Similarly, a company such as Mercedes-Benz, which markets expensive products, might advertise in specialty car magazines to reach a high percentage of its potential customers. Before any money is spent on any advertising media, a thorough analysis is done of each one's strengths and weaknesses in comparison to the cost. Once the analysis is done, the company will make the best decision possible and embark on its advertising campaign.
c) Media Timing, another major consideration for any company engaging in an advertising campaign is when to run the advertisements. For example, some companies run ads during the holidays to promote season-specific products. The other major consideration for a company is whether it wants to employ a continuous or pulsing pattern of advertisements. Continuous refers to advertisements that are run on a scheduled basis for a given time period. The advantage of this tactic is that an advertising campaign can run longer and might provide more exposure over time. For example, a company could run an advertising campaign for a particular product that lasts years with the hope of keeping the product in the minds of customers. Pulsing indicates that advertisements will be scheduled in a disproportionate manner within a given time frame. Thus, a company could run thirty-two television commercials over a three-or six-month period to promote the specific product is wants to sell. The advantage with the pulsing strategy is twofold. The company could spend less money on advertising over a shorter time period but still gain the same recognition because the advertising campaign is more intense.
d) Reach Reach refers to the percentage of customers in the target market who are exposed to the advertising campaign for a given time period. A company might have a goal of reaching at least 80 percent of its target audience during a given time frame. The goal is to be as close to 100 percent as possible, because the more the target audience is exposed to the message, the higher the chance of future sales.

4. The importance of advertising and selecting the right audience

Advertising brings more than 50% of revenues of most mediums.

How are content and advertising markets related?
• The two markets, of course, are intricately related
– Better contents attract more audience attention – more audience attention means a better product sold to advertisers – media can charge higher for the same amount of advertising space
– But advertisers do not simply want more audience, they want the right type of audience
– Some contents attract particular types of audience – some types of audience are more attractive to some types of advertisers

How does theory call this close relationship?
• The spiral of circulation and advertising or … 2-sided-theory
• Another approach: The theory of 2-sided markets

How important is this interrelationship?
Media industries are important drivers of popular culture. A large fraction of leisure time is devoted to radio, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, and television (the illustrative example henceforth). Most advertising expenditures are incurred for these media. They are also mainly supported by advertising revenue. Early work stressed possible market failures in program duplication and catering to the Lowest Common Denominator, indicating lack of cultural diversity and quality. The business model for most media industries is underscored by advertisers’ demand to reach prospective customers. This business model has important implications for performance in the market since viewer sovereignty is indirect. Viewers are attracted by programming, though they dislike the ads it carries, and advertisers want viewers as potential consumers. The two sides are coordinated by broadcasters (or 'platforms') that choose ad levels and program types, and advertising finances the programming. Competition for viewers of the demographics most desired by advertisers implies that programming choices will be biased towards the tastes of those with such demographics. The ability to use subscription pricing may help improve performance by catering to the tastes of those otherwise under-represented, though higher full prices tend to favour broadcasters at the expense of viewers and advertisers. If advertising demand is weak, program equilibrium program selection may be too extreme as broadcasters strive to avoid ruinous subscription price competition, but strong advertising demand may lead to strong competition for viewers and hence minimum differentiation (la pensee unique). Markets (such as newspapers) with a high proportion of ad-lovers may be served only by monopoly due to a circulation spiral: advertisers want to place ads in the paper with most readers, but readers want to buy the paper with more ads.

UC£M: Fifth Exercise in Multimedia Creation - Analysis of Ineractivity Elements in different Homepages

1. Study of the interactive elements in different Information Homepages:
A journalistic communication medium, a newsportal, a social news board.

If we enter homepages nowadays, we see enormous differences to the ones 3 years ago.
The Homepages today, are in need of interactivity elements, like RSS-feeds, Foums, Hyperlinks, Comment Writing and many more. The more interactivity you offer the more likely is it that you are able to attract more and more participants to your website. In General the two journalism professors at Boston College, McMillan and Downes (1998) wrote that interactivity increases as:
• the goal of communication is more to exchange information than to persuade participants have greater control of the communication environment
• participants take an active role to fully benefit from the communication
• participants act and react to messages via two-way communication
• timing of communication is flexible and responsive to demands of participants
• communication environment creates a sense of place

To further proceed with attracting customers newspapers ahould concentrate on the following particular factors:
• Detect visitors and track their behavior and interests
• Gather analytics and usage information
• Optimize and personalize content presentation dynamically by audience
• Enable online communities through “social media” such as Blogs, and external social site content
• Provide for comments and "user generated content" direct from your site visitors

Referring to above mentioned results we can conclude, that particularly mediums of qualitative journalistic communication and newsportals should concentrate on Detect visitors and track their behavior and interests through interaction, eg RSS feeds, Optimize and personalize content presentation dynamically, eg Startpage. They should additionally offer the possibilty to the readers, to give personal feedback directly to the articels. In this way they create a win-win situation, because the reader gains more satisfaction by expressing his opinión, and the newspaper can gain deeper knowledge of user’s needs and possible improvements needed for the homepage.

2. Elige un medio digital (puede ser regional o nacional); el portal de noticias es Terra.es y el marcador es Meneame.net;

The New York Times
One of the most impressive Newspapers from my oint of view is The New Cork Times.
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded in 1851 and published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United Status. Regarding the interactivity features of the New York Times, they are one of the leaders and is having a strong presence on the Web since 1995, and has been ranked one of the top Web sites. Accessing some articles requires registration, though this can be bypassed by using a link generator or in some cases through Times RSS feeds. The website had 555 million pageviews in March 2005. The domain nytimes.com attracted at least 146 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.comstudy. The Times website ranks 59th by number of unique visitors, with over 14 million unique visitors in August 2008. Besides the RSS feeds The Times is also the first newspaper to offer a video game as part of its editorial content, Food Import Folly by Persuasive Games.

Terra.es
Terra Networks usually referred to as "Terra", is an Internet multinational company with headquarters in Spain. Part of Telefónica Group (the former Spain's public telephone monopoly and now one of the most important telecommunications companies in the world), Terra operates both as a web portal and/or an internet access provider in the U.S., Spain, and 16 Latin American countries. Terra was publicly traded on NASDAQ under the symbol TRLY and on the Spanish stock market under the symbol TRR.Terra was founded in 1999 by Juan Villalonga, Telefonica's president between 1996 and 2000, and quickly turned into a major internet player through the aggressive acquisition of several local startups in main Latin American markets: Olé (Spain), Zaz (Brazil), Infosel (Mexico), Gauchonet y Donde (Argentina), Chevere (Venezuela).

Regarding the interactivity of terra.es the users can find many possibilities, like for example:
• Blogs
• Chat
• Compras
• Correo
• Descargas de software
• Foros
• Personaliza tu móvil
• Recarga Movistar
• Envía SMS/MMS
These features help, resides, the entertainment sections, to bind the users more and more to terra.es / terra.com.


Meneame.net
Meneame.net is a Spanish Language based Social Voting site.With many improvements and a new layout v3.0 is hoping to ensure Meneame’s position as the top Spanish based social voting site.
Meneame.net is Spanish language based but can often be translated into English.
My first impression was that it seems kina of unorganized and World not force me to use it.
However i talos offers binding interctivities featuers, called +menéame:
• para móviles
• nótame
• blog
• Jaiku
• Twitter
Furthermore meneame.net offers its users the possibility of regstering for RSS feeds about:
• publicadas
• en cola
• todos los comentarios

What is very useful and makes Website really authentic, is the fact that it added a ranking to each user. That gives an idea of how many people have a higher karma. So all that will have 20 # 1, and those with 6, for example, also have the same ranking as all others with the same karma. The ranking is visible in the user profile and also in the tooltips. It is updated instantly, meaning that if someone modifies it karma during the day the change is reflected immediately.


3. Analiza los espacios que tiene el medio para lograr la interacción del usuario, así como el modo que tienen el portal y el marcador de buscar la participación de los usuarios (es necesario o no registrarse…)

For users it is getting more and more important to Express themselves in the media, to create a image and a profile of themselves. However, many useres also are affriad of loosing their control of personal information circulating in the WWW. On the otherside Companies not just use the registration for gathbering useful information about their users to push for example the circulation spiral. Furtermore its also a way to guarantee higher quality, especially in social networking homepages.
Therefore registartion is a comlicated point to judge about. A newspaper who offers many interactive features, has a higher chance for registration of useres, then some which just offer a couple of features.
However, nowadays interactivity features, like RSS-feeds, possible profile creation, Blogs and personal feebacks should be seen as basis for every succesfull homepage.

UCM3: Fourth exercise in Multimedia Creation - Analysis of a youtube.com Videoclip

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