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The article “Are donations effective for open source projects?” discusses that developing time is the key element for open source projects rather than donations and donations for open sources lack the urgency and personal empathy that charity causes have. It simply states donations aren’t effective if donations can’t buy time. Furthermore it gives the example of a man named Jeff Atwood, who donated $5,000 to a .NET open source project. After asking the developer where the money was used for, Jeff found out his money had been untouched for months. “Open source projects run on time, not money”, his friend Join Galloway said.

However, I do believe donations can contribute in improving the quality of open source projects. Even if the time spent on the project is rather little, financial recourses could help improve the quality of the time spent. But to make the project more credible, developers should explain clearly where they specifically are planning to use the donations for. Furthermore they should engage people more, like charities.

Although I believe donations can help improve open source projects, I don’t think I will donate to open source projects. The biggest risk for me is that you’re not sure how long they will continue with this project and therefore will actually use your money for the things you expect them to use it for. It seems like a no-strings grant. There could be a certain point that the donations aren’t enough to serve the financial costs of the project which could lead to ending the project sooner. Almost 95% of open source projects are no longer maintained after a year (Open Source By The Numbers)

So some people may be concerned their donations are simply a “thank you” note to the researchers than actually improving the certain project. Do you agree with the Join Galloway’s statement? Would you donate to open source projects? How do you think open sources can attract more donations?

References:

http://opensource.com/business/13/7/donations-open-source-projects

http://www.binpress.com/blog/2013/04/14/open-source-cannot-live-on-donations-alone/

http://blog.codinghorror.com/is-money-useless-to-open-source-projects/

http://www.slideshare.net/blackducksoftware/open-source-by-the-numbers

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Over time there has been changes in buyers’ behavior. Customers are more active online, doing research about specific products/services and making online purchases. For a company to not be active on social media nowadays results in a competitive disadvantage. According to Business.com 55% of buyers turn to social media when they’re searching for information (Giamanco and Gregoire, 2012). But how do you create a successful social media campaign? How do you engage customers?

The first article Tweet Me, Friend Me, Make Me Buy discusses how companies can sell, making use of social media in a consisting, productive way. It shows how a sales rep can react in an effective way to for example tweets about poor quality, by offering them a better deal. A smart way to sell products and keeping your customers satisfied.

The second article Corporate Twitter Channels has some very interesting findings on using a corporate Twitter channel and the effects on corporate reputation, where corporate reputation is explained by user engagement and informedness. The article can also help managers to choose the degree of corporate involvement and whether to create different kind of accounts for different purposes. Results show that user engagement decreases when there is a high degree of corporate involvement and a channel with a generic purpose whereas user engagement increases with also a high degree of corporate involvement but a channel with a specific purpose (Li, et al., 2014). I think in addition it should consider the difference in companies, product/service/non-profit, size, target group etcetera as the results of the experiment are based on a fictitious company called Beans ‘n Coffee.

The third article Is Your Social Media Strategy effective? focuses on Facebook campaigns and how you can make them successful. Some interesting factors that can lead to success are (Li and Soonius, 2012): posting a minimum number of campaigns in a given day, focusing on getting Likes and Polls, posting on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, around 11:00, 15:00 and 20:00, not posting campaigns in the weekend and between 14:00-15:00, use contests, a question, LIKE and a Thank You Note (Li and Soonius, 2012).

An additional article emphasizes how consumer engagement and making consumers co-creators can create business value, using Nike as an example. Another company who engages customers by running a contest is Lay’s. Their campaigns Raad de Smaak (Guess the Flavor) and Do Us a Flavor are both examples of where a company engages consumers by interactively involving them. By running a competition and using money as an incentive, they attract people to participate. Do Us a Flavor made it possible for consumers to come up with their own flavors, making prosumers out of consumers. Learning about consumers engagement and prosumers, I think this a crucial topic for companies to be able to gain competitive advantage but also create a base of loyal customers.

Giamanco, B., and Gregoire, K. (2012), ‘Tweet Me, Friend Me, Make Me Buy’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 90(7/8), pp. 88-93.

Li, T., Berens, G., and de Maertelaere, M. (2014), ‘Corporate Twitter channels: The impact of engagement and informedness on corporate reputation’, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, forthcoming.

Li, T. and Soonius, G. (2012), ‘Is your social media strategy effective? An empirical study of the factors influencing the success of Facebook campaigns’, Proceedings of the Workshop on Electronic Business, Orlando, FL, December.

Ramaswamy, V. (2008), ‘Co-creating value through customers’ experiences: the Nike case’, Strategy & Leadership, vol. 36 (5) pp. 9 – 14.

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Online shopping has become something quite normal nowadays. However a new achievement has been made. In the UK online shopping via a smartphone, with a 52% figure, has outnumbered the visits made via a desktop for the first time. Figures show 36% of UK online sales are now completed on a smartphone or tablet. Social commerce is hereby a large driver of online shopping.

Last Wednesday, we discussed in class whether we buy items online via our mobile phones. The result was that most of us don’t prefer using this channel for online shopping, including myself. However there is not only a market for buying items online but also for selling them.

One of the applications that’s becoming more popular at the moment is called Depop. it’s an online marketplace that looks like a cross between Ebay and Instagram selling everything from clothing to art, in other words a combination between m-commerce and social networking. It has a very modern looking interface, as it looks a lot like Instagram. Users can follow each other, which makes it easier to see when your friends/ favorite sellers have something for sale. It also has several independent stores as partners and a lot of bloggers have a Depop-account and post about it. A new milestone was when Kate Moss’s sister, a Calvin Klein model, shared her Depop account with her many followers, which can contribute to their credibility.

I actually just made an account because I saw a lot of interesting Instagram users using this app, which made me want to follow them. So the social aspect of it definitely convinced me to download this app. While learning more about Depop, I discovered the most convenient aspect of it is that it works very quickly. I’ve been wanting to sell some of my clothing and shoes for a while, but never wanted to take the time to sell it via Ebay or Marktplaats as it seems too time-consuming. Although I don’t prefer buying items via my smartphone, I do prefer selling them via my smartphone.

Would you prefer selling your items via your smartphone? Knowing about Depop now would you choose this as a channel to sell your clothes, because of the social aspect it has, rather than via Ebay/Marktplaats? Do you think Depop will outplay these big competitors?

Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/02/online-shopping-mobiles-overtakes-desktop

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2726884/GIRL-ABOUT-TOWN-Kate-Mosss-sister-sells-bras-dont-cost-Lottie.html

https://econsultancy.com/blog/64389-depop-s-app-trumps-ebay-with-a-slick-combination-of-m-commerce-and-social#i.vm25qf17cpcpyu

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Digital personalisation and trading data, it can be fun. We, as consumers, can feel more related to a brand. If we look at the Share a Coke campaign by Coca Cola, a lot of people seemed to enjoy having their names on the Coca Cola bottles and sharing them with people they care about. But some companies may cross the line by how they use this data.

Facebook recently forced their users to download Facebook Messenger in order to be able to keep sending private messages. The main reason a lot of Facebook users were not amused about it was because of privacy concerns. The app requires you to allow access to a big amount of personal data. This resulted into figures showing nearly 94% rated the app with just one star.

Another example is where dating website OKCupid set up bad matches to see if these people would connect. However, they told the mismatching pairs they were a 90% match instead of the 30% match they actually were. I think companies have to be aware that there is a gap between what consumers and marketers think is acceptable and they should not be giving false information to their consumers. If it’s not beneficial to the consumers they will probably feel used. Many users felt like the experiment by OKCupid was also unethical. Some of them expressed their feelings on Twitter.

Here are a few examples:

In defense, OKCupid president Christian Rudder said, “If you use the internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any time, on every site. That’s how websites work.”

With whom do you agree? Do you think it is unacceptable that companies experiment without your notion? Or do you think the responsibility simply lies with the consumer, knowing a lot of companies can and probably will use personal data nowadays?

Sources:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28542642

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/19/tailored-experience-or-digital-stalking-has-personalisation-gone-too-far

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-messenger-app-store-reviews-are-humiliating-2014-8

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/29/okcupid-profile-experiments-online-dating/13308865/