One of my favorite youtubers called Tobuscus started a crowdfunding campaign last year to create his own game called ‘Tobuscus Adventures: The Game”. Because I really liked his youtube videos I decided to donate a little bit.

This youtube comedian wanted to raise 240k. To make it more attractive to donate something, there were perks. Perks are rewards when you donate more than a certain amount of money. When you donated more than 10 dollar you get a free version of a game and some more ‘awesome’ stuff. When you were really generous and donated more than 10k your name will be in the game credits and website and you can visit the game studio where you will meet Tobuscus.

As I said earlier Tobuscus initial goal was to raise 240k. Then only a IOS game was created for Iphone and Ipad. But when people donated more than 340k the game was also launched on Android. In The end people donated over 550k so also a pc version of the game will be created.

After reaching enough money to develop the game the campaign was closed at 5 july 2013. After waiting for more than a year the game is’nt published yet.  Because it takes so long I’m way less excited as I first was. He missed alot of deadlines but I still hope that he releases the game soon.

Did you ever contributed to a crowdfunding campaign and what was your experience with it?

The case Prediction Markets: A new Tool for Strategic Decision Making is about a new way of preventing uncertainty when making important strategic decision by private businesses and public agencies.  With prediction market you have a theoretical proof that your decision is correct because it is based on betting markets.  Even with its limitations I think it is a good thing that more methods are being introduced. Decision makers can decide by themselves which one they like to use.

The case The Collective Intelligence Genome is about the building blocks of websites based on collective intelligence. To find these building blocks you have to answer 4 questions: what, who, why or how? The answers are called ‘genes’ and the combination of genes can be viewed as the ‘genome’ of that system. This case identifies them, explores the condition under which each gene is useful and suggests possibilities to combine the genes.With the Collective Intelligence framework, managers can choose a combination of genes to maximize their websites potential. I think this is a good way to do this because the possibilities to build a website based on collective intelligence are quite complex but a framework gives a better overview of them.

The case Which Kind of Collaboration Is Right for You? Is about the different types of collaboration you can make use of when you are a business. There are 4 dimensions called, Open, Closed, Hierarchical and Flat which you can combine at 4 different ways. All dimensions have their advantages and disadvantages and are only effective under certain scenarios. I think it’s important to carefully think about which collaboration you choose for. When you choose for a combination of dimension which not match to your strategy, then your strategy will likely fail.  This case gives a good explanation to prevent this from happening.

My related article is called Putting crowd wisdom to work. In this article Google explains that they  they make use of prediction markets because they want to forecast more precisely thing that are strategic important to Google, like product launch dates and new office openings. I can understand that Google tries this new way of predicting markets. As I say earlier there is empirical proof that predicting the market by use of a bet system often works.  Of course the system does not always work and there are more cons to consider but the prediction market is relatively new and Google has always been the first in trying new things out.

To clarify the accuracy of the prediction market concept I will explain two mini-case examples. The first one tells us more about the flaws of the system. It is called “Interpreting the Predictions of Prediction Markets”. The second one shows us that the prediction markets do work under certain conditions and it is called “Risk Aversion, Beliefs, and Prediction Market Equilibrium. I think the second one is the better case because it extends the first case with better variables.

According to a research from Piper Jaffray, a American investment banking, less than halve of the American teens use Facebook nowadays. For this research he asked 7200 American teens. In spring 2014 he did the same research and then 45% of the teens use Facebook. Facebook was the most social medium but has been replaced by Instagram 76%  and Twitter 59%.

Facebook aims to be a multi-sided platform. Age doesn’t matter that much. But when teens leave Facebook there will be less diffusion. If the American youth decides to move to Instagram, Facebook still makes money because they own Instagram. But the problem is that Facebook isn’t really monetizing Instagram yet. And when they move to Twitter, the problem is even bigger.

To make Facebook more popular for teenagers they have to add more features for them. But too many ‘Teenage stuff’ will give Facebook a too childish look and will annoy other users. For example, the dutch social network called Hyves had lots of, personalisation options, emoticons etc. but many people choose to move to Facebook because of the more professional look. That’s why they have to add new features carrefully.

Example of a too ‘childish’ look of a extinct Social network site called Hyves

Have you noticed that Teenagers leave Facebook?  Why do you think they leave Facebook? What can Facebook do to attrack more Teenagers? Whats your opinion about this subject? leave a comment below.

References:

Click to access Taking%20Stock%20Teach-In%20Fall%202014.pdf

http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/10/08/teens_flee_facebook_for_twitter_instagram.html