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Transferring money to someone has changed a lot in the last few decades. In the past, you had to bring your cash to someone else, or send it by post, which was dangerous. The last few years, online banking is very popular. Just a few clicks and your money is transferred safely to that person. With smartphones, applications make it much more easy to transfer money to someone. The convenience and security has greatly improved.

Fast forward today, there is one bank that wants to do it a little bit different. That bank is called Knab. For those of you who have not seen it yet, Knab is Bank in reverse. So what is so special about Knab? Well, Knab allows you to transfer money to your Facebook-friends or friends with a phone number, without knowing the bank account number of that person. The person who wants to transfer money has to be a customer of Knab, whilst the receiver does not. According to Knab, transferring money should be a lot easier using this ‘method’.

However, I have my doubts about Knab. First of all, they say that transferring money should be a lot easier using this ‘method’. I currently have a mobile app of my bank and with it I can easily transfer money to people. Although most of my friends have Facebook, not everyone does. So transferring money to them using this ‘method’ is not possible. And secondly, Facebook has a lot of privacy issues. It collects a lot of data of your Facebook page, and with the integration of Facebook in this Knab application, they can possibly know to whom you are transferring to and what you have transferred.

What do you think about this feature? Would you use it if it were offered to you? Personally, I would not use it, because I prefer using my bank app. I think it’s already very easy and most of all secure. Facebook already knows a lot about me, and I prefer to keep my transactions secret.

Sources:
Wokke, A. (2014) ‘Knab laat klanten geld overmaken naar Facebook-contacten‘, http://tweakers.net/nieuws/98069/knab-laat-klanten-geld-overmaken-naar-facebook-contacten.html, 27 August 2014.

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Diffusion and social influence play a significant role in daily life through traditional media, word of mouth but especially through social media with the many messages, videos and photo’s spread over the Internet. The articles discuss the findings on how diffusion and viral trends arise on social media and how it can influence people or peers, but also how people make use of those information and content on social media. In this report, I mainly focus on the diffusion and viral trends on social media.

The first article ‘Strategies for two sides markets’ focuses on two-sides network, which consists of 2 groups: the ‘subsidy side’ and the ‘money side’. This article examines in what way executives have to handle with three challenges of two-sided networks; how to determine a price, how to choose between cooperation or working independently and last how to handle with the threat of rivals.

The second article ‘Creating Social Contagion Through Viral Product Design: A Randomized Trial of Peer Influence in Networks’ discusses how firms can design products that will be more likely shared (viral). Personalized referrals are more efficient than automated broadcast notifications, but less effective due to the large amount of contacts the passive option reaches (Aral and Walker, 2011).

The third article ‘Leveraging Public Sentiment to Beat the Market: An Empirical Study of Social Media Information and Stock Market Performance’ discusses how social media information, on Twitter, can be a measure of current or future stock performance and how Twitter can be used to make better investment decisions in the stock market. The results in this article are that there is indeed information out there that is not instantaneously reflected in prices and an investment strategy including Twitter sentiment analysis might be profitable.

The additional article ‘Two hearts in three-quarter time: How to waltz the social media/viral marketing dance’ provides insight into relationship between social media and viral marketing and gives six steps that executives can apply in viral marketing. It also discusses three required conditions to create a viral marketing (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011).

Good examples of viral trends and diffusion are the ALS Ice Bucket challenge and the ‘bendable’ iPhone 6+. They show how you should reach your audience and why you need to use certain tactics and it also shows that intervention is not a good idea. Viral marketing is also important nowadays, and the competitors (and even non-competitors) took advantage with mockery.

In conclusion, a lot of companies use social media to send a message or promote their products. However, sending a message is one thing. Reaching your audience is another problem. Sometimes it is wiser to use personal referrals, whilst in other cases involving all potential participants is a better move. Nowadays, going viral is absolutely vital for success.

Sources:

Articles:

Aral, S. and Walker, D. (2011) ‘Creating social contagion through viral product design: A randomized trial of peer influence in networks’, Management Science, vol. 57(9), pp. 1623-1639.

Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., and Van Alstyne, M.W. (2006) ‘Strategies for Two-Sided Markets’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 84(10), pp. 92-101.

Kaplan, A. M., and Haenlein, M. (2011) ‘Two hearts in three-quarter time: How to waltz the social media/viral marketing dance’, Business Horizons, vol. 54, pp. 253-263.

Li, T., Sprengers, D., and van Dalen, J. (2013), ‘Leveraging public sentiment to beat the market’, Working Paper.

Websites:

Hein, B. (2014) ‚ Bendgate Day 3: Best bendy iPhone 6 jokes to ease your pain’, http://www.cultofmac.com/297744/bendgate-day-3-brands-brands-brands-jokes-jokes-jokes/, September 25, 2014.

Lowensohn, J.  (2014) ‘ALS association abandons its effort to trademark the ‘Ice Bucket challenge’’, http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/29/6084725/als-association-abandons-its-effort-to-trademark-the-ice-bucket, August 29, 2014.

Oh, C. and Sheng, O., (2011) ‘Investigating predictive power of stock micro blog sentiment in forecasting future stock price directional movement’, http://www.misrc.csom.umn.edu/workshops/2011/fall/OliviaSheng_Paper.pdf, 2011.

Reddy, S. (2014)  ‘how the Ice Bucket challenge got its start’,  http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-the-ice-bucket-challenge-got-its-start-1408049557, August 14, 2014.

Welch, C. (2014) ‘Apple says iPhone 6 Plus bending through normal use is ‘extremely rare’, http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6844943/apple-says-iphone-bending-extremely-rare, September 25, 2014.

‘The ALS Ice Bucket challenge: The Impact of Social Media on Health Communication’, http://sites.tufts.edu/publichealth/2014/09/18/the-als-ice-bucket-challenge-the-impact-of-social-media-on-health-communication/ , September 18, 2014.

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So you’ve probably heard about the Ice Bucket Challenge, or have seen it on Facebook or even done it yourself! Well, for those of you who didn’t heard about it at all; The challenge dares you to throw a bucket of ice water over yourself, film it and nominating three new people for this challenge within 24 hours. The Ice Bucket challenge is a gesture for charity for the muscle disease ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), to donate money. The participant who throws the bucket of ice water over their head is expected to donate $10, and $100 if they have not.

But, where and how did it started? It all started in Boston in the United States, where the baseball player Pete Frates got diagnosed with ALS.  To create ‘awareness’ for this bad disease, he decided to throw a bucket of ice water over him and challenged his old baseball teammates from ‘Boston College baseball team’ to do the same. So Pete Frates posted the challenge on Twitter and the ‘ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’ was born.

So, one thing led to another; the Ice Bucket challenge spread all over the internet and millions of people have done the challenge already, even celebrities like Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga and many others. Also, one in six Britons participated in the challenge, but one in ten participants in Britain have actually donated. The Ice Bucket challenge is known worldwide now and through social media it has become a huge hype.

What do you think of the Ice Bucket Challenge? Do you think it’s a good way to support the charity for the disease ALS ? And last: did you do the ALS Ice Bucket challenge? 🙂

Sources:

http://www.als.nl/wat-kunt-u-doen/doneren/icebucketchallenge/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Bucket_Challenge

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/21/10-more-of-the-best-celebrity-takes-on-the-ice-bucket-challenge-als

http://www.z24.nl/bijzaken/koude-doche-slechts-1-op-10-britse-deelnemers-ice-bucket-challenge-gaf-geld-495979

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Last week, the iCloud Hack played a major role in the news. What happened exactly? First of all, iCloud is a server on the internet from Apple, where people can have their own account and where they can make a back up from their own files, like data, photos, videos, music and much more. The problem is that last week many iCloud accounts, mainly from celebrities, were hacked. The hacker stole hundreds of their nude photos and videos and spread and shared it on the internet, on the website 4chan. 4chan has the pictures quickly removed, but there are still plenty of screenshots spread online. Some celebrities said the pictures are fake, but others admit they were theirs. Most celebrities stated they would take legal action.

The big question is; how could this happen? It is unclear who is/are responsible for this hack and how it was possible. Personally, I don’t have an iCloud account. I’m not familiar with it and I think that it is very risky to use those iCloud accounts where you can put your files on, because there are more and more smarter people who can hack. The danger is that all your private files can be hacked and spread over the entire Internet, with the result that all your private data is turned into public data. As long as you don’t upload too private data/photos/videos, I don’t think it’s risky that a hacker would hack your account.

What do you think about the danger and the hack of iCloud? Do you think it’s dangerous to have such an account? And do you have an iCloud account?

 

Sources:

– http://www.macinaminute.com/what-is-icloud-and-do-i-need-it

– http://bgr.com/2014/09/01/icloud-hack-celebrities-nude-pictures/

– http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/1/6092089/nude-celebrity-hack