"chestia" care ne mănâncă timpul

V-ați întrebat vreodată de unde vine vorba asta? Sincer.. nici eu eu pana acum! Dar când văd prostia umană ridicată la rang de jurnalism, îmi fac o cruce mare, bat trei mătanii și încep să mă gândesc serios să văd ce anti-depresive mai am prin dulap.

Citesc azi:

Recolta record de bumbac din India și Brazilia ar putea ieftini blugii

(Autor: Laurențiu Luca, sursa: Adevărul.ro )

N-are niciun rost să citez din articol. Ar însemna să îi dau o importanță oarecare.

Mă întreb (și, sincer, nu știu de ce o mai fac!) ce o fi în mintea ăstora care se cred ziariști: titlul articolului nu decât o tangență vagă cu conținutul lui, se discută cu niște termeni și un limbaj atât de snob și scorțos, încât ai spune că acum a aterizat sărăcuțul din caleașca Financial Times și nu se adaptează condițiilor locale.

Sfatul meu:

Dragul meu ziarist, când scoți pe gură un rahat, asigură-te că te-ai asigurat (sic!) că e rahat.

În tot articolul nu apare nici măcar o dată sintagma ”preț de vânzare” legată de vreun produs finit. Reprezentanții GAP se bucură că le scad costurile de achiziție. Atât!

Cât crezi tu că ai plătit pentru bumbacul efectiv din ”blugii” pe care i-ai tras pe tine azi dimineață? Îți spun eu: undeva între 10 și 15%! Adică … tivul pantalonilor! Chiar ai tu impresia că o să simți o reducere cu 16-50%  a prețului de achiziție a bumbacului? Restul sunt cheltuieli cu distribuția, marketingul, taxe, branding etc etc etc.

Așa că, dragul meu jurnalist de mâna a treia, venit de la Pocreaca din Vale, stai jos. Ai nota 2 la economie!

It is a known fact that people innovate by looking at what others need. It is an established fact that all inventions have to be valued as an asset in order to get recognition for the inventor. But what happens when you put patent on creativity? It all becomes a war. 

After the war on patents broke loose on the mobile manufacturers, shooting patent infrigement law-suits and requesting bans on sales, another war started in the social networking market. Three major players on the Internet capture the essence of a human need: the need to connect. Facebook, Google and Yahoo, they all claim a piece of this sense of belonging and make billions by enabling people all over the world to stay in touch.

The recent IPO announced by Facebook spurred the attention of the other well established giants on social networking that saw their value going down the drain and the much needed buzz entering into a cone of silence. Facebook is on everyone’s lips and it’s considered to be the ground-breaking event of the year that will create several billionaires overnight.

Jealousy leads to sin

Needless to say that such potential could not be left untouched by the long arm of the patent law. On Moday (March 12th, 2012), Yahoo filled a lawsuit on Facebook for 10 infringements on his patents. Ultimately, the claim is that:

Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo!’s patented social networking technology.

On a different scale and in other words put, the lawsuit states: “We admit that Facebook is successful. But they achieved this using our inventions. We want a portion of the money they earned. And we’re jealous.

Of course they want money! According to the US law, they are entitled to request them. Their inability to get them on their own was party due to a faulty management, incoherent response to market challenges.

Jealousy? It comes natural to those in despair. Yahoo! is loosing the game on social networking and it’s using any means to stay in public focus. And the long arm of law became a weapon.

The patent bag

Yahoo!’s over 1000 patents come from a series of long aquisitions and merges, captured over the years by superfluous moves on the market: “If you can’t beat them, buy them!” This huge portfolio of patents cover about anything when it comes to social networking:

  • World modeling using a relationship network with communication channels to entities - Patent #7,747,648
  • Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user - Patent #7,269,590
  • Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected content based on another user’s authorization level - Patent #7,599,935
  • System and method for instant messaging using an e-mail protocol - Patent #7,406,501
  • System and method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network - Patent #7,668,861
  • Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage - Patent #6,907,566, #7,100,111, and #7,373,599
  • Online playback system with community bias - Patent #7,454,509
  • Dynamic page generator - Patent #5,983,227

All these patents, awarded to Yahoo!,  are allegedly infringed by Facebook.

With a mere 21 patents in their portfolio, covering precise aspects of the social interaction, Facebook is asked to recognize that it infringed Yahoo!’s right to organize the world as a social network.

The wheel patent

Is it ok to patent innovation? Yes! It’s the right way to protect your intellectual property and profit from usage. Brilliant minds need to be rewarded for their effort.

But is is ok to patent everything, from wheel to warm water? Here, the line becomes blurred: how can you patent models that are on this Earth since its invention? The social network is a concept that has been here since the dawn of mankind. You cannot patent that. Yet, the US Patent Office, granted it.

The bottom line

Waking up from a bad dream, Yahoo! saw itself in the position to claim the invention of the social network as a concept and ask to be reimbursed for this. Their innovations (achieved either by internal effort or by grabbing from others), granted with too much ease by the US Patent Office, lack the ability to act and be successful.

What if tomorrow you won’t be allowed to gather with your friends over a beer because you infringed the Yahoo!’s patent on social network?

Facebook down!

People, Facebook was down all over Europe this morning.

Short advice: GET A LIFE!

Motivation for MBA

The decision to embark on an MBA (especially a full-time one!) is a difficult step to make. All those sleepless nights when you leaned over difficult business decisions will have to sum up in an even greater one: is it the right time to take an MBA?

First of all, full-time MBA requires your complete dedication. Finding the financial and emotional resources to cope for the whole period might prove a challenge itself. It becomes the single most important thing you need to achieve and it hooks you into a web of intensive work.

Second, when you think of taking an MBA, you need to realize that preparing for it you need to develop a different mindset from any exam you’ve taken. The implications of this are oriented towards you, rather than being focused on a specific theme. You need to bare in mind that the most important thing is your path in life and career and the decisions you took that got you where you are right now.

Third, you need to stay focused and up to date on anything that moves in the world. You need to start realizing which implications have political decisions over businesses and how big players shape the landscape of businesses worldwide. A thorough analysis and thinking outside the box hepls. You have to stay hungry for information. 

Forth, you need to think three steps ahead and fully understand the implications the MBA will have on your career. Without a complete understanding of this big picture you want to draw in the future, an MBA can rapidly turn into a complete and useless waste of time. The MBA is not a goal per se, it’s a step in achieving your career goals.

The decision to embark on the MBA path might prove the toughest decision you ever done in your career, so it needs to be fully analyzed from all perspectives: you and your family, your career and your goals. Without understanding the big picture it might prove difficult to realize what an MBA is all about.

Timelining brands

Despite the opposition to it’s Timeline interface launched in September 2011, Facebook takes it a step further and it’s introducing the new interface to the brands pages. How will the brands adapt to it?

According to Mashable, a social media news site, “the new profile pages are thought to constitute one of Facebook’s most extreme redesigns so far, completely reimagining what a social networking profile can be“. The criticism over the new design is as widely spread as the praise: some accept the new format as a way to better organize a huge pile of activity on Facebook, while others consider it gives the ability to surface information about a person that was previously hard to access, making it a privacy concern.

The gap between the “Timelined profiles”, the News Feed and Pages is huge, and many users reject the new features just because it does not fit with their overall experience on Facebook. Now, the introduction of Timeline for Pages is set to narrow this rupture in the network’s look and feel and enhance the ability of brand pages to stand out more in the crowd.

The new Timeline for Pages does not change the rules of the game: Facebook remains a place where people interact with each other and with brands, but the new interface brings an aesthetically more pleasing experience. The huge space given to the cover image is set to be an opportunity to feature something powerful and captivating. Brands can enhance the user experience by changing it more frequently, giving users more reasons to like their pages.

As it did with the Timeline interface for users, this new enhancement of the brand pages brings administrators the ability to add events prior to Facebook itself, depicting the whole history of a brand.

Announced with bang! in June 2011, Google’s rival to Facebook, is dying slowly of boredom. The early adopters turned fast into anti-evangelists for the social network that was expected to grow like weed and redefine what social meant.

A recent comScore study revealed that on average the Google+ user spends between  3 minutes a month (worldwide) and 6 minutes a month (US statistics) on the social space of Google, compared to six to seven hours on Facebook.

After a fast growing user base, the evolution of Google+ reached almost 90 million users, but most of them do not use it. The growth trend is expected to continue, at least for a while, because of the large number of Android devices that are activated daily. But having barely 17% active users, it does not look promising for Google+

Without any activity, Google+ lacks the user engagement it needs to raise attention to advertisers. The reason behind this rapid downfall of Google+ network relies on the flocking effect that Facebook has: if users have to choose, they will use whatever social network their friends use. The Google+ network started to look more and more like a “virtual ghost town”. The network is loosing the pool of social media consumers, which Google tried several times to tap into, because of its agressive way of capturing the users, but lacking the necessary buzz to keep them awake in the network.

One policy to rule them all

By integrating all its products under one umbrella, that of the Google+, and one set of rules (the new unified privacy policy, expected to take effect on March 1st, 2012), Google tries to bind every product it has in order to harness the power of usage data across it’s vast network of products.

Recently it integrated the results from Google+ into it’s organic search results, disrupting the model upon which many businesses have been building their marketing strategies. By doing so, it forced the SEOs to make use of the Google+ in order to improve their rankings search engine results pages (SERP), adding a huge amount of junk results into their results.

Another aspect is that all of  Gmail, YouTube, Blogger new users are automatically provided with a Google+ profile. Soon Chrome, Android, search results, will all become puzzle pieces in this network.

The oxigen tube for Google+

Not being able to breathe on its own and in a very dramatic situation when it comes to its users’ activity, Google+ will rely on the feedback provided by the integration with all other products Google has. The data collected from every product integrated with Google+ will become the activity the network strives to have. It does not matter that not many actually use it.

The evangelists are dead

Promising a whole new approach on the social experience, Google+was introduced in the same style as all of the other products Google developed: by invitation only. Their bet on creating a high demand by denial of entrance paid off and the people crowded at the gates to see the trendiest place to be. Online evangelists praised the new social place and promised a Holy Land for all that entered its realms.  But shortly, their buzz went off and even the search engine’s own staff was criticising the site. Google+ as a network lacked too many components that could make it a real competitor for Facebook.

Since it was a dissapointment for the advertisers, by struggling to enhance its internal statistics, will Google succeed in reviving the infant Google+ ?

A future colleague of mine asked me today “How do you find Leuven itself and Vlerick campus?“, as he has never been there yet. Here’s my answer, Andrei:

I love the Leuven campus of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. It has a very minimalistic approach in it’s design and the use of space is solved brilliantly. You’ll find it a bit tricky to get around in the first few days, but after that you’ll just feel like home.

Although it’s a structure of exposed concrete, without other finishes in most parts, it does not feel cold. Actually, the combination between the concrete and glass it’s done in wonderful way allowing a lot of the natural light to enter, all the way to the basement. It’s deceiving from the outside, because the architects kept the facade of an old building (I think partly due to the municipality planning requirements) but when you get inside, you enter a totally different world.

The first thing you’ll notice will be people smiling. And that’s the first sign that you are among friends.

Leuven on the other side, is a tipical Flemish town, a small and cosy place to hang out. Actually it’s so small you can cross from one side to another in just half an hour on foot. And during the Winter Hollidays it turns into a magic place. I’ve been there just before Christmas and it is a fairytale.

The city is full of students as Leuven is home to the Catholic University, so you’ll find people from all over the world. And with them comes a wide variety of restaurants, pubs and bars. After you’ll stay for a couple of days in Leuven and then visit Brussels (20 minutes by train), I’m sure you’ll hate the crowded and cosmopolited Brussels.

If you don’t know how to ride a bike, you’d better put off your driver’s permit and start learning. Bikes are the main mean of transportation around the city. You’ll be surprised to see large parking lots full of bikes.
In Romania, we have a saying: “on the street it has priority the one with most metal on him”. That is: trams first, busses after, cars, bikes and last… people on foot. In Leuven it’s the other way around.

MBA: new directions

At some point in life, you need to realize that some things have to be changed in order to allow yourself to grow: a small change in your daily habits (maybe the brand of coffee or tea), a new goal treach at the gym, the decision to marry. All these make life an interesting place to be.

When I decided to embark on the MBA quest, things looked so abstract and yet so easily achieveable. Nobody told me that the decision I made was actually the one that turned my life around. Not all the sleepless nights studying, not all the mornings hanging over financial and political newspapers. That simple decision to take the MBA path was the turn-around point.

Now, after three months of hard work and countless coffee cups, it started paying dividends: I got accepted at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School to enroll in the 2012-2013 Full Time MBA cohort. Those I called so far “my colleagues from the school” will actually become mentors as they will move towards new challenges in the year to come.

I’m not entirely sure that I realize the importance of that moment when I received the email that read:

We are pleased to announce that you have been admitted to our Full-time MBA. We would like to congratulate you and welcome you to Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School.

All I could say was: “I got the email! This is it! I got in!” … and I froze.

E ciudat paradoxal: jurnalismul ar trebui sa fie obiectiv, social media este eminamente subiectivă.

Mutarea strategică

În vremea ziarelor tipărite, ne permiteam să apreciem un ziar după calitatea articolelor publicate, reflectând această calitate asupra oamenilor care scriau.

Acum, lucrurile s-au schimbat un pic: din cauza cererii din ce în ce mai mici, din cauza penetrării masive a Internetului în zona urbană, unele ziare au decis să elimine complet edițiile tipărite. În acest sens, Gândul a renunțat încă din 8 aprilie 2011 la ediția sa tipărită.

Online, pe iPad si pe mobil, cititorii vor avea acces la informatiile exclusive cu care ziarul i-a obisnuit, la opiniile unora dintre cei mai apreciati editorialisti din presa romaneasca, dar si la infografice, fotografii si video ce valorifica potentialul de multimedia si de interactivitate pe care il ofera web-ul si dispozitivele mobile.

[redactorul-sef Gândul, Claudiu Pandaru, wall-street.ro]

Alții încă nu s-au decis să facă acest pas, însă restrâng activitatea:

Adevărul rămâne cu prezență editorială la nivel local, spune Răzvan Ionescu, director editorial Adevărul Holding.

Redacțiile locale vor lucra în continuare pentru “cele opt ediții metropolitane ale Adevărul și cele cinci regionale”, care apar inserate în ziarul Adevărul.

Rămân și “cele 39 de ediții locale pe internet.”

[Pagina de media]

 Social media ca mediu de promovare

Oricât ar dori ziarele să își păstreze masa critică de cititori, care să le asigure supraviețuirea, este clar că ele nu au nicio sansă să îi obțină și să îi păstreze folosindu-se de metodele tradiționale de promovare în online: SEO nu ar putea face față fluxurilor rapide de știri, SEM ar fi o investiție nerentabilă, newsletterul este o metodă care nu activează implicarea cititorilor, iar fluxurile RSS nu sunt atât de răspândite în rândul utilizatorilor români.

Social media a devenit în acest moment singura alternativă de promovare rapidă și de implicare a cititorilor. Cei 4 milioane de utilizatori de Facebook din România și alte câteva zeci de mii de utilizatori români de Twitter sunt acei oameni care consumă informație instant.

Problema de fond

Intrarea în social media a ziarelor a venit cu problemele care țin de natura social media: subiectivitatea social media. Nu te poți promova în zona socială, fără să te adaptezi mediului. Dar intervine dihotomia subiectului și a obiectivității jurnalistului: tratez un subiect serios, dar cum îl prezint sa fie atragător? Relatez o întâmplare, dar cum rămân obiectiv?

Nu ăsta e scopul jurnalismului? Să relateze întâmplări și evenimente fără să distorsioneze prea mult?

Ce se vede?

Din păcate, jurnalismul pe care îl văd tot mai des prin publicațiile românești se împarte în trei mari clase:

  • jurnalismul de scandal, unde nu trebuie decât să pui o poză și să inventezi un zvon oarecare cu un titlu în care folosești obligatoriu ”EXCLUSIV”
  • jurnalismul de duzină, când titlurile se fabrică după ecuația ”(Întâmplare din viitor)” + ”Vezi aici” +”(adverb modal: cum, când, cât etc.)”
  • jurnalismul de senzațional, când nu ai de făcut mai nimic, trebuie doar să ai ”breaking news” scris negru pe galben, pentru că articolul îl poți scrie pe măsură ce se desfășoară evenimentul

Restul jurnaliștilor sunt strânși în câteva caste mici, care nu sunt relevante pentru marea masă de cititori. Ei sunt analiști financiari, ziariști de investigație, editorialiști etc.

Cum au înțeles ziariștii să se promoveze în social media? Două exemple spun tot:

Ziariștii de la Adevărul care comentează pe subiect și pe lângă subiect:

Ziariștii de la Gândul care nu spun nimic și nici nu arată nimic:


Modul în care ziarele au ales să își promoveze materialele în social media, ține de felul în care au înțeles că trebuie să  atragă implicarea cititorilor.

Social media este un univers în care difuzia informației este necontrolată, consumul este instantaneu dar diferențiat cantitativ, iar implicarea publicurilor este părtinitoare.

Ce trebuie făcut?

În primul rând ziarele și ziariștii ar trebui să înțeleagă mai bine acest mediu. Plecând de la cele 4 atribute putem spune că:

  • difuzia necontrolată, ar trebui monitorizată atent. Sursa primară (articolul din ziar) trebuie să fie întotdeauna completă și obiectivă.
  • consumul instantaneu trebuie exploatat la maxim. Care este rostul publicării unui articol la o oră la care nimeni nu îl citește?
  • diferențiarea cantitativă a consumului trebuie înțeleasă atât din perspectiva selectivității interesului publicului, dar și din perspectiva capacităților echipamentelor utilizate pentru accesarea social media. Spre exemplu, accesarea Facebook pe un telefon mobil nu permite aceeași interacțiune comparativ cu accesarea aceluiași site pe un calculator.
  • implicarea părtinitoare a publicurilor trebuie gestionată atent pentru a preveni atacurile sau transformarea unui subiect într-o discuție inflamată de injurii și denigrări.

 

Cei patru apostoli au fost trei: Luca și …. ăăărm… Paul. Ba nu! Pavel! Oare?

După ce s-au săturat de evanghelizat, s-au apucat de făcut covrigi.