Twitch TV Disrupting the Gaming Industry

25

October

2016

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There are currently 470 million gamers watching online gaming content. As explained by Peter Warman, CEO of Newzoo, “games are evolving towards cross-screen transmedia franchises, thusly Increasing focus on communities of both gamers and viewers.”

Twitch TV was founded in 2007 by 3 Yale graduates and a fourth member from MIT. The website was originally called Justin TV, which was broadcasting the life of founder Justin Kan, popularising the term ‘lifecasting’. A few months later, the founders, seeing the potential of their idea, chose to open their website to over 60 different channels. The various content allowed to attract a lot more traffic. In October 2007, Justin TV continued their expansion by becoming an open-network, thusly allowing any member of the public to register and start broadcasting. This enabled the company to notice the ‘hype’ around the gaming channels. As a result, the company launched Twitch TV to focus on this market segment and is now owned by Amazon since 2014 after a $970 ml acquisition. Following a freemium model, Twitch monetises its platform in 3 different ways: advertising, subscriptions, and partners. 

  1. Regarding advertising: the web page contains 13 ad units: 3 video ad units, 4 standard IAB ad units & 6 native ad units. Costs per impression charged by Twitch are highly seasonal, ranging from $2-10 per 1000 views.
  2. For subscriptions, customers can buy Twitch Turbo to access ad-free content for 8.99 per month.
  3. Finally, through their partners program: partners can monetise their content  in the following ways:
    1. Through a cut from ad revenue + $0.9-2 per 1,000 views.
    2. By integrating merchandise sales via Teespring, one of Twitch strategic partners.
    3. Through the Monthly channel subscription – with 50/50 split of the 4.99 monthly fee between Twitch and the streamers.
    4. Finally, with donations from users.

Twitch is used by almost 50% of Millennials. In 2014, the company ranked 4th in terms of general bandwidth consumption, behind Netflix, Google and Apple. Furthermore, the company is now organising eSport events, where teams of professional gamers battle it out for cash prises in front of physical crowds & Twitch viewers. For instance, a Counter-Strike event in Cologne attracted 1.3 ml viewers. All major game developers & publishers maintain channels on Twitch to conduct live-streams showing off their new games. SuperData Research shows top Twitch personalities can generate incomes above $30,000 a month.

Twitch TV’s main competitor is Google’s YouTube Gaming, a curated version of the massive video site focusing on live gameplay, and aspiring to become the single destination for all types of game content videos. Their value proposition differs from Twitch TV’s in several ways. First the “Personalization/customization” of the interface: streamers can use a mix of live and non-live clips, sometimes personalized based on the games and channels you follow, allowing the use of filters for specific content. Secondly, Youtube gaming reduces search time by displaying large icons, making it easier to find what you want to watch. Finally, in terms of Youtube Gaming’s revenue model, the company follows a similar partner programme, with a revenue sharing model.

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FinTech Startups Disrupting the Banking Industry in Singapore

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October

2016

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The FinTech industry represents another type of digital disruption that could have a direct impact on treasury centre activities. A FinTech company is one that utilises digital technologies in order to provide customers with financial services (BNY Mellon 2015). This industry is quickly changing the way people expect to buy and receive goods, and has the potential to dramatically change the role and responsibilities of a treasury centre. It changes the way money can be collected from customers, totally changing the retail market. For instance, it enables real-time transactions and allows users to not have to go directly through a bank. Disintermediation is FinTech’s most powerful weapon against banks, and it is a common trend in the various industries, as seen with Tesla’s centralised distribution strategy. First of all, it was important to study look at the business case of the FinTech industry for Asia as a whole, especially South East Asia, as there are many contributing factors that could lead to a rapid applications to a wide number of industries. The four main factors to consider are the following: geographic fragmentation, a growing consumer class, the large proportion of unbanked population, and the high mobile penetration rates.

First of all, the factor of geographic fragmentation refers to the large differences between the countries that make up the APAC region. First of all, each country has its own language, and often a few more regional dialects. This cultural difference is not negligible when dealing with the financial institutions in each country, which often require documents to be translated by a certified translator into their own language. Secondly, geographic fragmentation also refers to the large number of different currencies across the region. This means that the population that travels across various countries of the region will lose money on transaction fees each time he exchanges one currency for another. The FinTech industry could help clients to avoid these problems. First of all, the language of most of these applications is English, and some offer you the possibility to hold multiple wallets in various currencies at the same time, others also allow you to trade currencies at much more attractive rates than those provided by banks.

One of the most obvious factors to look at, when looking at the possible impacts of the FinTech industry, is the mobile penetration rates. Indeed, in the SEA region, the average inhabitant has an average of 1.19 mobile phones, which is significantly higher than the global average of 0.98. The average Singaporean citizen has on average just over 1.5 phones (Vanzyl, 2015). When comparing these figures with those of unbanked population in the region, it is fair to assume that the access to digital financial technologies is better than the access to banks. However, one of the remaining concerns is that a majority of these services require the user to have a credit card. This concern is not extremely relevant in Daimler’s case, as it is fair to assume that their customers are banked, and have a credit card if they have the financial means to buy their products or services.

Furthermore the case for Singapore to become a business-hub for the industry is relatively easy to argue, although its main rivals are Australia and Hong Kong in the region. The concentration of expertise and financial startups in Singapore would represent a great opportunity for the local treasury centre to lead Daimler AG in terms of cash collections and FX hedging. The Digital Evolution Index (DEI) is an index developed by MasterCard and the Fletcher School (Chakravorti et al., 2014). It can be seen that Singapore is among the highest scoring across the four dimensions that make up the DEI and has been one of the fastest growers from 2008 to 2013. These four drivers are: demand conditions, supply conditions, institutional environment, and innovation & change (Chakravorti et al., 2014). The model shows that Singapore is placed in the ‘Stand Out’ category, indicating that the country has displayed high levels of digital development historically, and are likely to maintain the same levels (Chakravorti et al., 2014).

The future of the various industries does not only revolve around innovations in terms or performance, but rather in the ways to finance such a product, or relating to changes in ownership (i.e. Uber user rather than car owner), or in the way the car is used. Through both vertical and horizontal integration, firms can build up their capabilities to stay on track with the current developments that the digital disruption is bringing along. These changes will mostly impact the financial service departments of organisations, as they are the ones required to provide financial instruments to their customers, and also mobility services. Although most of the contributing factors leading to the evolution of the FinTech industry do not seem to be of direct interest to Singapore, it is essential to take this disruption into account because customers adhering to such services will expect services of the same or higher standards from the large corporations.

BNY Mellon, October 2015. Innovation in Payments: The Future is Fintech. https://www.bnymellon.com/_global-assets/pdf/our-thinking/innovation-in- payments-the- future-is-fintech.pdf

Chakravorti, Chatuverdi & Tunnard. September 2014. Digital Planet: Readying for the Rise of the e-Consumer – A report on the state and trajectory of global digital evolution. http://fletcher.tufts.edu/eBiz/fletcher.tufts.edu/~/media/Fletcher/Microsites/Planet%20eBiz/EBIZ_DigitalPlanet_FINAL.pdf

Choudhury, Saheli Roy. CNBC. The Next Big Opportunity in FinTech is Here. May 19 th 2016. http://www.fintech.finance/news/the-fin- ternet-of- things-how- iot-affects- financial-services/

Vanzyl, Adrian. June 5 th 2015. eCommerce in Southeast Asia. Ardent Capital, http://fr.slideshare.net/JaredPolites/e-commerce- in-southeast- asia-june- 2015

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Digital Transformation Project STAR

25

October

2016

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STAR is the study association of the Rotterdam School of Management. STAR’s mission is to ‘enrich the life of RSM students’. One of the projects through which STAR tries to reach that goal is the booksale. The main goal of the boosale is to offer students the cheapest books on-campus. In its current business model, STAR buys the books from Studystore, their supplier but also their competitor. Through a sponsorship contract with Studystore, STAR is able to sell the books for the lowest price on-campus. Students can pick-up their books at the University, but only at limited moments. Furthermore, as of the pick-up moments, the operational workload for STAR is quite high. Throughout a critical evaluation on the current business model and IT of STAR, the implementation of an e-book platform is investigated. Technical and strategic, the e-book platform would almost perfectly align with the business needs from STAR. However, the e-book platform would not be financial feasible and therefore the recommendation would be to find a partner to collaborate with so that STAR can make use of their platform and does not have to cover all the costs and operational workload.

 

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Two Open Source E-Commerce Platforms for Small Businesses

24

October

2016

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According to Eisenmann, Parker and van Alstyne, authors of the praised article Platform Envelopment (2009): Platform business model beats product business model.
Michiel Schipperus, CEO of SANA, states that only 37% of the B2B companies have already started with E-Commerce. Besides he mentions that the yearly growth estimate for the B2B E-Commerce market is 19%.

These three findings together provide reason enough to invest in a platform. However, small businesses experience problems with setting up a platform due to the shortage of resources.
For these small business, I will discuss two free open source platforms which can become the foundation of their future E-Commerce activities.

Magento Community Edition
Magento is a well-known player in the platform industry. Their Magento Enterprise Edition is used by many large companies. With licence fees of over 10,000 euros per year, this platform solution is probably not affordable for all small business. For small business that still have to learn a lot about platforms and E-Commerce, spending such a big amount of money is probably not the best idea. However, there’s a great alternative for Magento Enterprise Edition, and that’s the Magento Community Edition. This open source platform provides lots of features. As the name suggests, there is a large community behind the platform. It provides useful guidelines to learn more about E-Commerce and the open source platform. Next to that, there is a lively community that is willing to help new players in the field when they experience problems or when something is unclear.

Learn more about Magento Community Edition here: https://www.magentocommerce.com/download

Opencart
Opencart is the second open source platform provider for E-Commerce I want to highlight. This platform is in particular useful for small businesses that don’t have programming knowledge. The simple platform interface allows users to add all kinds of plugins like products reviews and ratings. With Opencart, you can design an E-Commerce platform with unlimited categories, products and manufacturers. Compared to Magento, there is a smaller online community that can help you out it case of problems. However, this is getting compensated with the easiness and simplicity of the program.

Learn more about Opencart here:
https://www.opencart.com/

 

Sources:

Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., and Van Alstyne, M.W. 2009. Opening Platforms: How, When and Why? in Platforms, Markets and Innovation, Gawer, A. (ed.), Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, pp. 131-162.

Guestlecture Michiel Schipperus (2016) An introduction to Business-to-buiness (B2B) E-commerce, 3 October 2016

https://magento.com/products/community-edition, retrieved on October 22th 2016

https://www.magentocommerce.com/download, retrieved on October 22th 2016

https://www.opencart.com/, retrieved on October 22th 2016

https://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=feature/feature, retrieved on October 22th 2016

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End to End message encryption and privacy/safety concerns

24

October

2016

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In the beginning of the era of man, people talked with each face to face. A personal way of communicating with each other and private one, unless some else was eavesdropping. The evolution of man generated also new forms of communication between people. First the letter came due to the ability of people to express themselves in letters and words. Right now, the telecommunication and text messages and an important form of communication for us. All these new forms of communication are receptive for privacy and safety issues.
For instance, a phone call can be bugged and text messages between people could also be looked into by intelligence agencies. Basically are these main, new, forms of communication not private anymore since it could be possible that there is someone checking the content of these communications all the time. This might seem as a major drawback but on the other hand could screening these types of communication for societal threats, terrorism, also save lives.
Nevertheless are more and more of these communication channels protected by encryption which makes it harder or sometimes even impossible for external parties to look into these “private” messages. Popular at the moment is the “End to End Encryption” of messages on apps like WhatsApp and Facebook. This encryption means that it is indeed difficult to look into the certain messages for 3rd parties but also for the host of these messages platforms. WhatsApp for instance can’t even see their “own” messages that people sent to each other. Sending a spicy picture on the web “seems” to be more safe now. But are we not giving in on something else at the same time?
Is this increase in our privacy/safety feeling towards messaging, indeed such an improvement of our overall safety for instance? The agencies which are more or less responsible for our safety are facing increasingly difficulties regarding looking into our communication channels. So was it last year the FBI that had a broil with Apple because they could not break into a phone of a terrorist. The same thing goes for our communication channels. So what is more important, a higher feeling of privacy/safety when sending someone a message or the higher feeling of safety for the overall population. This is a very difficult trade-off, especially in times where terrorist attacks are a larger threat to our safety than war with another country. Should intelligence agencies get exemption for looking into our communication channels and devices? For which channels is this more important? Will hackers be the world savers of the future I this wat? Or do we just accept the loss of overall safety in favour of our personal feeling of safety and privacy, in a world where almost all information is already on the world wide web? What do you think?

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Securly, this startup keeps your kids safe online.

24

October

2016

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A kid that commits suicide because of intense bullying at school or videos that go viral of children getting beat up by other children you see or hear these kind of stories very often now a days. With the coming of the internet bullying does not stop when school is over, is goes on and on via the internet and all the communication possibilities that come with it.

The Childrens’ Internet Protection Act tries to prevent these kind of things by preventing students to access harmful or obscene content online, which could result in this extreme behavior.

The startup Securly is supporting this Act by investing in new tools that can detect when children are putting harmful content online, kids that are struggling with suicidal thoughts or kids trying to harm other children. The startup is using machine learning, to determine if a kid is just browsing on the internet for certain information or is really engaging in the before mentioned extreme behavior, based on natural language processing and emotional learning. If Securly detects any of these activities it will alert parent by text so that they can take action.

The information a parent can get about their child’s internet behavior can vary with age. But for now Securly is selling its software only to schools directly. If a school is interested a IT administrator can get a special IP address from Securly and then put it into a DNS server field in their system, and within 15 minutes the school’s browsing activity is protected by the web filter created by Securly.

The next focus is on creating a ‘’Home’’ version for parents that want to look after their child’s internet behavior, and their current business model of selling their software to school districts has huge potential because students all over the world can be in need of this protection. And let’s face it, every parent would like their child to be protected from these kinds of events.

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Is Tesla finally getting serious competition?

24

October

2016

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For years we are talking about the ‘real’ breakthrough of electric vehicles. However, the large and established car manufacturers are far behind Tesla Motors since the introduction of their Model S in 2009 and Tesla has new, even better models that are on their way.
The Paris Motor Show, that took place from the 1st till the 16th of October this year, showed us that a transition in the automotive industry is happening and competition for Tesla is getting bigger and more serious with every new model being introduced to the market.

Paris Motor Show has finished, and most of the new vehicles and concepts introduced by the biggest automotive players were hybrid or full electric. Volkswagen, Opel and Mercedes showed they are seriously working towards manufacturing electric cars that can drive >300km with a full charge, which now is only possible with a Tesla Model S.

Volkswagen was recently involved in the large emission scandal that shocked the world. Now, it’s time to clean up their act. ‘Our future is electric’ says Herbert Dies, the CEO of Volkswagen Passenger Cars. Volkswagen introduced the Volkswagen I.D., a concept car that is in the same class as the popular Volkswagen Golf. The I.D. has a range of 400 to 600 kilometers dependent on what battery the buyer chooses, but the launch date is set to 2020.

Mercedes showcased the Mercedes Generation EQ, a concept car that will not be produced, but it does show that Mercedes is capable of manufacturing batteries that can make cars drive a range of 500 kilometers.

Unlike Volkswagen and Mercedes, Opel did not showcase a concept car. Opel showcased the Ampera-e, a European version of the Chevrolet Bolt. With a range of 500 kilometers on a single charge, the Ampera-e is one of the best electric vehicles yet to date. Also, the Ampera-e makes use of regenerative technology that Tesla cars also use. This is a technology that makes it possible to regenerate energy while running.

Looking at the cars and concepts presented at the Paris Motor show, we can conclude that big automotive players are serious about electric vehicles and that electric vehicles are the future. Tesla did not have serious competition until now but it seems like the time has come to face serious competition. We will have to wait to see how big automotive players will attack the well-established position of Tesla in the electric vehicle industry.

 

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TransferWise, the disruption of FinTech, and giving back (some of) the power of networking to the people.

24

October

2016

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TransferWise has disrupted international transactions in many ways. When you make a transfer through their system, instead of going through the “traditional” money route of brokers or physical or online banks and then to the recipient in another country, the money you send is instead redirected to someone who is receiving money in the opposite direction (from the country you are sending it to).

 

What this has allowed was to avoid currency conversion fees. While we may believe that a worldwide money transfer company manages transfers across borders, the disruption rests in the fact that all outbound and inbound transactions stay within the originating country.


The revenue of TransferWise is based on fixed transactions fees and a percentage of the transfer. The transaction fee is either 2£, 2€, 2$ or 0.5% of the amount transferred, whichever is highest.

 

The novelty and disruptive attributes of TransferWise is that it uses Peer-to-Peer, a way of networking that is increasingly viewed as relatively unsafe (as you route data through third party computers and servers) which might have hinder the adoption of the technology in the corporate sphere for applications such as Skype. Other prominent tech companies are substituting away from peer-to-peer, such as Spotify as operating servers internally yields more flexibility. However, the security concerns do not seem to be relevant in TransferWise’s model.

 

 

However, reports from specialised information channels actually shed light on some details that are unknown to the public. It is argued that matching all outbound transfers to inbound transfers is very difficult. Traditional banks have a matching rate that is close to 100% because they have been building, expanding and consolidating networks and points of sale worldwide. When a payment is not matched by a payment going the opposite way on TransferWise, it has to be completed using reserve liquidity from the bank or transactions on the traditional Forex (foreign exchange) markets.

 

Anon (n.d.) The growing pains of P2P FX /Euromoney magazine [online]. Available from: http://www.euromoney.com/article/3591063/the-growing-pains-of-p2p-fx.html (Accessed 23 October 2016).

Anon (n.d.) TransferWise explained – everything.explained.today [online]. Available from: http://everything.explained.today/transferwise/ (Accessed 23 October 2016).

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How safe is the use of Internet?

24

October

2016

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Cybercrime is not a new phenomenon nowadays, but it is getting worse every time it takes place. A massive cyber attack on major Internet Company, Dyn, took place last Friday 21 October ‘16. A large part of the Internet activity on the American east coast was paralyzed. Dyn is a company that houses a part of the Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is a crucial part of the Internet. It converts URL’s, for example digitalsocialstrategy.org, to a sequence of numbers in which computer use to communicate with each other. If this fails, websites cannot be accessed anymore.

As the rate of cyber attacks increases, so does the cost of securityFoto Blog 2 for business and damage control. As you can see in the figure shown below, consumers compromised by data hacks in 2015 was more than four times higher compared with 2005. The cost of cybercrime to an average U.S. Business Company was around 1.5 million in 2015, which is incredibly high compared towards 24.000 dollar in 2005. Check in the figure these additional comparisons.

The US government believes that security of computer systems is important to the world for two reasons. The role of Information Technology increased over years and the growth of the e-commerce sector has made cyber security an essential component of our economy. In extend, cyber security is vital to the operation of safety critical system, such as emergency response, infrastructure and even the federal government.

Often, the perpetrators of cyber attacks are not identified immediately. This provides also speculations. As is often speculated that Russia is attacking America by the use of the web. As a result, one can state that cyber attacks should be treated as acts of war. Despite the fact that the attacks look little like the armed attacks that the law of war traditionally regulated.

Existing law effectively addresses only a small fraction of potential cyber attacks. Seen this growing issue, shouldn’t we pay much more attention on this topic?

What is your opinion in this?

Sources:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/280386
http://www.nu.nl/internet/4339457/cyberaanvallen-in-vs-voorbij.html

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Healthy lifestyle due to Technology

24

October

2016

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Staying in shape, small figure, healthy lifestyle those are all words that have been in our society over decades. When I was a young kid I remember my mom going to a loose weight shop and a dietician would talk with her, give her exercises and a food schedule. The food schedule mainly consisted of eating Modifast or Herbal Life 2 times per day and a decent meal as a third meal. For the rookies, Modifast and Herbal life are some sort of liquid, jelly, soupy thing that any normal person would not even consider of eating it or calling it a meal. The only way to receive Modifast or Herbal Life was by entering the store and buying it from the dietician.

Nowadays the market is taken over by a lot of different online stores or apps that are also focused on losing weight and helping customers to get (back) in shape. For instance Personal Body plan or the Body and Fit shop. They are both online stores that focus on the healthy body. They have different business models but do serve the same customer.

Personal body plan developed an application where customers can sign up on and have their personal page where customized information is displayed. Personal body plan assigns a coach to every customer that signs up on their website. This coach will stay in touch with the customer and take track of the developments of the customer. The coach develops a plan for the customer that is completely customized to the wishes of the customer. If they want to lose weight it is a different program than if they want to gain muscles. Besides training schedules, they also offer food schedules which will help the customer with their goal. This is all done through an app, no physical contact is needed.

Body and Fit for instance is a shop that focusses on offering different types of protein. A very hot item nowadays is the protein powder, to gain muscle or to for quick recovery. These items where basically not available for the general type of people, only athletes could use them and it wasn’t legal up till 1994.

We can see a big shift from seeking local help from a dietary in a store to online applications that helps you take track of what you eat and when you eat it and also which exercises will suit you best.

 

 

https://personalbodyplan.com/

https://www.bodyenfitshop.nl/

85 A.B.A. J. 60 (1999), Hard to Swallow; Higgins, Michael

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