Postcard Stories- Janis Joplin

I have a collection of postcards. Some came from friends, others were bought by myself. I decided to blog about those postcards, since each of them has its own story.

I got this postcard in 2008, while I was visiting my family member in San Fransisco. That city is famous for hippies. Nowadays, those flower kids became all kinds of souvenirs, for tourists like me to think of hippie culture.The postcard is one of the examples. Singer/ songwriter Janis Joplin, who was active in the 60s, was photographed in front of the Palace of Fine Arts with her Porsche 356.

Last year, I visited SF again and went to Palace of Fine Arts particularly, just for imagining the scene when Janis Joplin was here 40 years ago. I miss her and years of hippies which are already gone.

My Name is Jimi Hendrix

“My Name is Jimi Hendrix” is a song from a Taiwanese band, Wonfu. It was also my first experience with Jimi Hendrix. I’m glad that I have the chance to live in a same city with Jimi, so I enjoy finding him somewhere in Seattle. For example, the architecture of Experience Music Project was designed based on the shape of Jimi’s guitar. There is also an ongoing exhibit of Jimi Hendrix in the museum. In the neighborhood of Capitol Hill, a statue of Jimi is located in front of Everyday Music Records. Recently, I finally visited his grave in Renton.

Even Jimi Hendrix is a Seattle-ies, his music career didn’t relate to Seattle that much. He joined army after he dropped out from high school, then he moved to New York for his music career. He was found died in London in 1970 and his body was returned to his hometown, Renton.

The grave site was re-built in 2002 with three pillars and his autograph. In the center of the site locates his original gravestone. His father and grandmother’s grave sites are also nearby.

The grave is surrounded with flowers and marks of kisses on Jimi’s autograph are visible.  I believe that many people come visiting Jimi that he hardly feel longly. I should sing the Taiwanese song to him there.

Book Review: Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody is my first book required in MCDM program, but also the last one. I chose this one as my optional book because I know that I’ll learn something different from the first time I read it a year ago. In the book, Clay Shirky talks about a new model of group formation. With the development of social media, formation of collective action has been evolved, too. Now people are able to participate in group action without being organized formally. Websites like Wikipedia and Flickr are platforms that motivate people to contribute spontaneously. As a faculty of Interactive Telecommunication Program at NYU, Shirky doesn’t present his opinions from a technical part, but rather from social and economical perspectives. He affirms the new model of group formation and believes that it brings benefits to the society.

This book is informative by providing many familiar cases that are happening in our daily life. Shirky is good at telling stories and showing his statements from extension of each story. Therefore, the book is quite readable and enjoyable.

I did have different thoughts from my second time reading. I read the book when I just started the program fro the first time. Social media and social production were still new to me. Therefore, I couldn’t interact much with the book since I didn’t know much about social media. One year passed, and I’m graduating in two weeks. I’m thinking about that, as a MCDM student, what can we react differently with people who are not studying in social media?

The first thing comes to me is that the collapse of existing organizations. As Shirky discusses in the book, professional groups, market-orientated firms are all influenced by the new model. How about education system? We’re adopting social tools in the classroom already. I love using Twitter to see classmates, instructors and guest speakers’ conversations keep going on and on. Media Space is an ideal tool, but I feel more obligated than spontaneous to use it. What can we do to help students learning more efficiently out of a classroom? Students’ engagement in designing our curriculum is one idea. Students can decide which specific perspective they want to hear from the class by recommending guest speakers or suggesting topics for discussion in each class. I also expect students to work on projects with people not only from our program. A more collaborative work generates more thoughts to stimulate unexpected but amazing results.

Second, since we’ve known the power of social media from the program, how can we utilize it? I found personal brand becomes more important. Collective action happens more easily and frequently. Personal specialty and recognition are required for a social production project. For example, people might find a job through Twitter or Facebook. Their reviews on Yelp or Amazon might be shown in social search results. When they are talking online, that conversation becomes a part of personal brands. Since most of MCDMer’s jobs relate to social media. Our performances on social media might bring us more chances for our career life.

Third, MCDM students have responsibility to educate others about new group formation and social media. It will be challenging to convince our bosses or colleges who have been relied on the old model for many years, even decades. Moreover, the new model of group formation is shifting our structure of society so fast. But people’s adoption to the new model seems much slower. If a firm couldn’t keep updating the way it organizes people and work, it will be eliminated through out the competition, which is resulted from the new model.

I’m convinced by Shirky’s statements in the book. However, there are some questions I would like to ask. First, Shirky affirms the benefits from the new model of group formation. I’m wondering are there any features in traditional group formation couldn’t replaced by the new one? Is the new model so perfect?

Second, Shirky uses open source as a successful example because it’s failure for free. I doubt that if “failure for free” is more positive than negative. In a market-based firm, making profits is their first priority. The firm can’t afford trying and invest the product which is potential to make profit. An open source project has no restricts on budgets or profits. There are many projects failed to make one case to be successful. “It is not an organization, it is an ecosystem, and one that is remarkably tolerant of failure. Open source doesn’t reduce the likehood of failure; it reduces the cost of failure.” (P246) In my opinion, although failure for free encourages people to try everything, it also brings more opportunities for failure. People who work under the structure of traditional firms might try their best to success because they get paid from the job. When it comes to open source project which isn’t profitable, people becomes less stressful about the results. Therefore, I doubt the effectiveness of failure for free. This issue also shows my concern about the transition. While both of the models coexist in the society, how can we transfer from one to the other?

I enjoyed reading Shirky’s book. It’s hard for me to argue with him. This is a best introduction for MCDM new students, who are eager to know what’s happening. The book is also highly-recommended for people who are going to engage in the new model as a professional. Just like me now. People can learn a lot about new group formation from and book and get ready to use the power of organizing without organizations.

References:

Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.

A Battle over Online Music Search in China

According to the IFPI, an organization representing the recording industry worldwide, 99 percent of music downloads in China are illegal. In such an unfriendly environment, how can record labels survive?

Google’s answer to the question is its new Music Search feature. Chinese users of Google Music Search can download free tracks and preview music from the partner, Top100.cn, while Google profits from ads on search results. According to The New York Times, “About 84 percent of China’s nearly 300 million Internet users download music over the Web, and most of it is used for cellphone ring tones.”

Google believes that Music Search will help it compete with Baidu, a dominant search engine in China that earns the majority of its traffic from music searching. However, most music files downloaded through Baidu have been illegal. From Google’s music search engine, users can get authorized, high-quality files from record labels such as EMI, SonyBMG, Universal and Warner Music.

Record labels seem confident about the new deals with Google. Sandy Monteiro, a senior vice president at the Universal Music Group, said “The level of online advertising in China is quite mature, so we’re willing to try this out.”

Google Music Search with free downloads is only available in China. It was launched seven months ago, and The Wall Street Journal reports that five advertisers have committed $370,000 to the music service. But these numbers are still far from Google’s goal: 30 advertisers, some of them paying $1,000,000 within six months. However, there is potential for growth. Five million songs have been downloaded per day through Google’s music service in China. This number shows that the service is popular with Chinese users.

Baidu has reacted by announcing a partnership with Qtrax, an ad-supported music-downloading service. Now Google won’t be the only provider in China of free, legal online music, and the competition has intensified.

According to TechCrunch, MySpace may move to a pay model; its revenue from advertising does not currently offset its costs of streaming music for free. It’s still hard to tell if an ad-supported music service could profit. However, the proliferation of online music downloads in China has led to a new business model for music distribution.

References:

Google and Music Labels Bet on Downloads in China

Baidu Partners With Qtrax For Ad-Supported Music Downloads

Early Results From Google’s China Music Service

Imagine resource: http://www.google-kai.com/free-google-music-mp3-search-in-china.html

A Lesson from the Shutdown Notice of Cyworld

In the MCDM program, we study many positive examples of digital media. Now I would like to share information about the shutdown of Cyworld, a negative example of brand management and customer service in social media.

As the largest social networking site in South Korea, Cyworld started reaching an overseas market in 2006. Local offices were launched in the U.S., Taiwan, Japan and China. However, Cyworld’s big dream of globalization crashed in 2008. Most local offices were closed, but those services were still maintained by Cyworld headquarters in South Korea. Then in early November this year, an announcement of the closure of the Cyworld U.S. service was posted on its U.S. website and mailed to its American members. The content was poorly written and full of grammatical errors, as reported by TechCrunch. The same embarrassing thing also happened with the closure notice for Cyworld Taiwan: inappropriate phrases, grammar errors and bad layout. For loyal Cyworld users, the shutdown notices were rough and thoughtless.

What have I learned from Cyworld? First, the closing should not have happened. Chris Anderson’s book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, states that technical costs such as storage and bandwidth are approaching zero, which makes web services become free. Cyworld isn’t disappearing completely; the South Korea and China sites are stable enough. The removal of diaries, photos and other data was frustrating for users of Cyworld sites that were shut down. They should have been provided with an appropriate tool to copy all of their data.

Secondly, Cyworld failed to do customer service. The poorly written shutdown notices are one example. The notice should guide users to the Korean service since their local service will not be available. Many users register for Cyworld because of their interest in Korean pop culture. One of the reasons that Cyworld failed in most of their overseas markets is that the local service couldn’t connect to the Cyworld Korean service, leading to user disappointment. If Cyworld supported multi-language services, it won’t lose so many members globally.

The Cyworld U.S. shutdown notice does not only show the loss of Cyworld’s international markets; it also displays bad branding and marketing. Having strong branding and marketing is especially important to companies in the digital age.