Information Technology Application in Marketing - Essay Example

?Question Social media is the need of modern world. It has to have access to everybody. People are now so addicted to using social media websites for information sharing or to interact with their loved ones, friends, family and colleagues. The main question that people look for is from where do these websites generate profit. Nobody is there to serve for philanthropy; obviously they have their business models that are relatively different from that owned by usual organizations. In this report, business model of various social media platforms has been explained. FACEBOOK Firstly talking about the most preferred social networking website, Facebook. Facebook, unlike other social networking websites, has a clearly defined target market that starts from students who are enrolled in high schools, college and university. The differentiating factor for Facebook is that it is all focused towards students only through creating study groups, keeping in touch with distant friends and getting information. Students use it to make their social life prominent through using various features of Facebook such as uploading, sharing and commenting on photos. Facebook earns its profit mainly through advertising. It gets involved in three different ways of advertising. One is banner ads, sponsored groups and text announcements. The visitors’ traffic and the time spent on the site also serve as a major indicator for Facebook success (Mitchell, n.d.). GOOGLE Another social media website selected is Google. Google is the most visited website that provides solutions and answers for almost all the questions through its search optimization system. Google is primarily a search engine and serves almost everyone in thirst of some knowledge or information regarding anything. Google generates its profits through online advertising (Channel 4, 2012). Google has involved in an activity called targeted advertising through which organizations use Google Adwords and Adsense to get their names or articles to get displayed on the top (Splatf, 2011). WIKIPEDIA Wikipedia is another social media network that helps individual to gain information on related topics. The business model that Wikipedia has implemented is that people who love to write and want to make their contribution can write an article and then hence upload it. Wikipedia provides a feature to make amendments to article or edit it. And even if any conflict is observed in the provided information it is then resolved by Wikipedia resolution party. The writers or authors here are voluntary writers. They do not do it for any monetary rewards but for internal satisfaction and interest. Wikipedia has some donors as well who provide funds to the site, and they are called wiki donors. Wikipedia does not display advertisements as other sites do and also does not charge any subscription fees. It still earns through the web traffic it has, and the number of time spent on the site by each visitor. It does not employ more than 35 employees in its organization and has managed to reduce its administration and operation costs to the least. Sustainability of the models All these three sites are sustaining because of the differentiated service and user interface experience they provide. The value that they are providing to their users is of immense importance. Their business models are different from others and quite uniquely profitable in nature. Facebook earns through its online advertising whereas Google earns through its online search optimization and its own advertising techniques and Wikipedia earns profits through minimizing its overhead cost. Future of Social Media Sites The future of these sites would be a more co-operative and user friendly one. These sites would progress now more towards working on virtual reality and making some efforts towards surprising users through adding features more inclined towards 3D virtual reality. How Social media sites are adapting to cell phones and PCs As technology is advancing, access to these websites is to be made from multiple devices that are smartphones, tablets, PCs. This is what is already being done as well. As all these social media sites have separate versions of their site depending upon from where it is being accessed. These sites have separate versions for PCs, separate for tablets and even a variety of versions are available for various operating systems of cell phones and smart phones. For a smart phone having Windows Operating system will experience a different interface where as an Android operating system holder will see another version. This has been made possible with the transformation of websites to web 2.0. Question 2: Over the last few years, there has been an increase in the sales of Smart phones. Mobile phone users have welcomed the concept of smart phones, and this is the reason why the competition in the mobile operating system has started to increase. With the increasing number of mobile phone users throughout the world and these users are trying to find more and more applications that could suit their way and help them in their daily life, the market is becoming competitive, and people are coming up with new mobile applications. Mobile operating systems previously were led by Symbian. Symbian was the operating system installed in different mobile phones, and it was the pioneer in the mobile operating system. The operating system introduced by Symbian led the way and helped others to find and innovate with the mobile operating system. Android today is considered as the most useful and most used mobile operating system. This operating system is generally available in mobile phones that have the feature of touch screens. This operating system was introduced by Android. Android operating system was backed up financially by Google. Later on Google bought Android. Android is not only used in mobile phones, but it is also designed for tablets. It has been found that more than 1 billion android devices have been activated. Android has overtaken Symbian as the most used mobile operating system in the year 2010 (Victor, 2011). The share of Android in the global smartphone industry is 80%. (Harper, 2013). The increase in the Android products has resulted in the smartphone wars. In order to compete with Android, Microsoft has come up with Windows Mobile for smart phone users as well as for Pocket PCs. However, this was deprecated with the introduction of Windows Phone. Windows phone was launched in October, 2010. It is a new kind of a mobile operating system and with a new user interface (Chacos, 2012). This interface features a design language which is named as Modern (Chacos, 2012). Nokia, Huawei and HTC have been the leading companies that are using Windows Phone 8. Micromax, and LG are also planning to use Windows Phone 8. Samsung has also come up with Windows Phone 8 mobile devices. Android has been the most successful mobile operating system. This is the reason why Google has bought Android in comparison to the other mobile operating system. Moreover, Windows Phone has emerged over the last few years but still the market is dominated by Android. Thus, it can be said that Google made the right decision to buy Android. The competition in the years to come would become tough as different companies have started using Windows Phone. Moreover, there are companies that have already launched their phones with Windows Phone 8 as the operating system. However, the features and style along with the user interface of Android is exceptional, and it would be difficult for even a giant like Microsoft to beat Android. Nevertheless, it is crucial for Android to modify their operating system with the passage of time in order to meet the changing needs of the consumers. Question 3 BIG DATA Big data is referred to a term that represents a collection of large data or data present in a massive volume. This huge amount of data is structured in a very complex manner because of its complexity and unorganized nature. It becomes extremely difficult to manage this data with simple data management tools and software or traditional means of managing data. The term big data has been initiated from the web companies who operate in an environment where they have to search for a large amount of information from various sources, available in an unstructured manner and then select the relevant information and then sorting out that information in terms of their significance. After that they store that information, share it with concerned people analyze it and transfer it after making useful decision out of the processed information. In short, it can be said that processes of big data include capturing, storing, sharing, analyzing, transferring and visualizing data (SAS, n.d.). Big data can be created through many reasons. It can be because of the speedy nature of data or if it is coming out from various sources. When there is a large volume of transactions taking place. If sales are happening from various sources such as a retail shop, an online store, through a social networking site, a vending machine or through a company owned outlet, fountain stores or there can be many places from where the same product is being sold. Besides happening from various sides, these sales happen within no time. The record of such sales is huge and hard to manage. Inflow of information from various sides and in a speedy manner, create what is called big data. Apart from the above two mentioned factor, another reason can be the varying format of data that mean if some data is coming in numeric form, some in symbols and other in alphabetic nature. It becomes extremely difficult to organize those data thus a large number of data gets gathered. All of these factors have added complexity to the field of data management especially when it is massive in volume like big data. Thus, this is a true process that many organization go through, and it is not just a hype but a reality. It becomes sometimes difficult for many business organizations to manage large set of big data as there are no proper tools available to manage the massive amount of unstructured data thus it becomes very hard for those organizations to search for some information in a pool where already more than billion, trillion records are stored (SAS, n.d.). What Big Data Provides? Big data however provides an in-depth knowledge over an issue, and tits massiveness can be utilized in making a well informed decision. For big data to be profitable, it is essential that it must be large enough that it is manageable. If it is managed well or in an efficient manner, then it can help in identifying the weakest or the strongest point of any organization. It can help a company to identify its most profitable customer and also the weakest customers and then devise plan accordingly. It can help an organization to see the trends of its sales and identify the points or periods at which sales are at peak or are at the lowest point. Then analyzing this information to devise strategy according to the real time knowledge of sales. To have an overall result of on-going processes and operations To keep track of whatever and wherever is happening related to the product or service. Risks with Big Data The biggest risk that big data faces is to be so big and massive in volume that it becomes impossible to be managed easily through any software or tool. If it becomes so huge that it cannot be managed then it becomes a challenge for an organization because the cost of managing data is already incurring and data is still not being manageable. In such a case, time is also being wasted as timely decisions cannot be made because of inability to have access to relevant information or data. As the data is too large in amount and all is unstructured, finding out relevant information become highly important. Another issue with big data is to select relevant information. It means to decide what information needs to be stored and what needs to be deleted. There is some information about which one is not sure at the real time that whether one would need it or not, at that time the decision to choose whether to store or not has to be made, an important factor that affects this decision is how easily information can be accessed (SAS, n.d.). To decide out of millions of information pieces that what is important and what are not, what to analyze and what not. Information in a raw form is not much helpful however, after some processing over it; it’s worth can be assessed. But if analysis is done on every other piece of information this would lead to a situation where a lot of wastage of effort and time would have happened. So some effective on-time decision making skills are required to have an idea at one glance that what would most probably be the useful piece of information (SAS, n.d.). Using the right information at the right time in the right way is the biggest challenge to accomplish which is overcome after much practice and experience. References Chacos, B. (2012). Microsoft Now Calling It’s Windows 8 Metro Interface “Modern UI”. Laptop Mag, Retrieved December 8, 2013 from http://blog.laptopmag.com/microsoft-now-calling-its-windows-8-metro-interface-modern-ui Channel 4. (2012). If Google is free, how does it make so much money?. Retrieved December 8, 2013 from http://www.channel4.com/news/if-google-is-free-how-does-it-make-so-much-money Harper, T. (2013). Android Tops 80% Global Smartphone Market Share – Windows Phone up 156% Year on Year. Highlight Press, Retrieved December 8, 2013 from http://www.highlightpress.com/android-tops-80-global-smartphone-market-share-windows-phone-up-156-year-on-year/6708/tharper Mitchell, M. (n.d.). Business Model of Facebook. Retrieved December 8, 2013 from http://www.modir21.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/facebook_business_model.pdf SAS. (n.d.). What is Big Data. Retrieved December 8, 2013 from http://www.sas.com/big-data/ Splatf. (2011). How does Google make money?. Retrieved December 8, 2013 from http://www.splatf.com/2011/10/google-revenue/ Victor, H. (2011). Android steals Symbian's Top Smartphone OS crown. Phone Arena, Retrieved December 8, 2013 from http://www.phonearena.com/news/Android-steals-Symbians-Top-Smartphone-OS-crown_id16332 Read More