As previously mention on creating a world record for the most downloaded software in 1 day from Firefox, now Mozilla has released Firefox 3.o. Go download it and set the world record.
Image via WikipediaIn older days, if you ask the people what is marketing? and they will tell you about how about advertisement, branding, voucher, attracting visitor using mass media, and in conclusion: "Let people know about your offer and how good is your product and services" and the keyword here is "how good is your product".
That means, telling people "as compare to my competitor, we have these advantages and lower price", "our product has this, this and this features which others don't", "we are giving away 50% discount during this New Year, come and grab it". This will be the typical marketing words.
Now, the consumer or buyer are more aware of these, the effectiveness of this marketing style has been decrease for the following reasons.
Consumer is more intelligent and choosy now.
Too many product or services is using the same techniques, so yours don't stand out from the crowd.
If the marketing campaign is good, then your sales effort will be decrease in order to achieve sales target. Marketing is the amplifier to sales effort.
If your marketing effectiveness score 5, and your sales effort is 10, then your sales revenue will be 5x10 = 50.
Thus, by increasing your marketing effectiveness to 10, and maintain the sales effort on 10, your sales revenue will increase to 10x10=100.
So, let's introduce two new marketing concepts: Permission Marketing & Educational Marketing.
Permission Marketing Definition: Buyer is giving you the permission to market to them. (Previously it was push marketing where you push your TV ads to them, you push your insurance policy to them, you push the radio ads to them.) Application:Google AdWords. Google Adwords is using permission marketing to the core. Let's say you are looking for a new house in Malaysia, and you typed in house in Malaysia. Not only you get the natural search result from Google, but you also get relevant ads from them. When you found the ads is interesting and applicable to you, and thus clicked the ads. This means that you are giving permission to the advertiser to market to you. They didn't find you, you found them, and you are ready to accept their offers.
Educational Marketing Definition: Giving your potential valuable information by educating them about your business. (Previously it was hard selling, you hard sell your advantages and features, you hard sell with your low price.. ect) Application:Instead of telling them your benefits, you teach them how to choose a good product, how to use your product to achieve something or how your services works in term of details. For example, some food advertiser are teaching how to live a healthy life, by balancing your work, exercise and healthy food, and of course they are using their own product in this. Educational marketing is very powerful because consumer are more interested in viewing it because it gave them valuable information, and they tends to like your product more and believe that it can help them.
More example:
If you are selling English learning course, give them some free tools or tips that teach them how to write a good letter.
If you are selling cars, give them tips on how to save fuel or maintain their car performance for free.
If you are selling camera, teach them how to snap a great photo, design a free mini course for them.
Think about this, business model is more important than product or services you sell. Why? Because business model is where you differentiate from the crowd.
A very simple example, what is McDonald selling ? Answer: Burger. So, is there anybody else selling burger? Yes, of course. So, McDonald is no different the the stall on the street selling burger if we look at the product they sell.
So, what is the business model of McDonald? Answer: Franchise. Yeah, you get it. This is how McDonald differentiate themselves from the crowd of selling burger.
Furthermore, many may not notice that McDonald is also in the property business. Look at their location, you will notice that most of the McDonald is located at the premium location, the heart of the city, shopping complex.. etc. They are able to buy the location then rent the location to the franchise owner with the condition that McDonald is allow to increase the rental every few years. Fantastic business model!
Another interesting example, electronics devices manufacturer in China is able to sell their product to other country at their cost price. Some even lower than their cost price!! You heard it right. So, are they losing money? No, they are earning, because china have 17% tax rebate on the export product. When the manufacturer export the product, they are actually earning from the rebate. This is an innovative business model !!
More example to think about:
Dell - selling computer. Business model = allow the customer to built their own PC in their own room.
Amazon - selling books (and other stuff). Business model = online bookstore with neutral review.
Do you know how other business model operate? Please comment.
There are a lot of people wondering how open souce technology make money, as they are giving out their most valuable technology to other people. Here are some business model for open source:
Support - This is normally how people think open source business is all about. Enterprise user need proffesional support, if not they will not use the technology, they can't afford to have breakdown and can't fix it. Microsoft (proprietary technology) offer support, so does Java.
Customization of software - Another form of open source business model is to allow the developer to build customization of the software on top of open source technology. Some user will outsource their development, and it's (normally) cheaper to use open source technology. So, these people that work with open source technology will offer their expertise to build the customized software. Example, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL andPHP) is used for a lot of web application development.
Vertical component - Some open source software suite is quite general, it is not suitable for some industry unless there are some plugin or module built speciafically for them. For example, CRM is the general software suite, so the developer can build a specific module for a construction company and sell the solution to these companies.
Selling accessories/hardware - There are open source company that offer their sofware as open source and selling the hardware that support it. For example, Digium has created Asterisk (open source PBX system), and sell the hardware.
Built then sell it - You built an open source technology with the help of community and attract the big boys to buy it. Yahoo bought Zimbra for $350 millions, Sun acquire MySQL for $1 billion, Citrix bought XenSource for %500 millions. You can see that are a lot of money involed in open source technology.
Get Hired - If you work as open source developer, your chance of getting hired is very high as you has proven yourself.
Training - Provide necessary training on how to use or develop open source technology. Some people rather pay for training than use expensive technology and pay for training too. ;-)
There and many more ways you can make money from open source technology. However, I don't think proprietary technology will fade away, there are still a lot of people prefer to use proprietary technology because of the completeness of support, documentation, and ease to use, mainly due to open source is updated more often and this also means that are more version to support. Both of them will coexist for a long time and have their own supporters.
I am sure there more ways to make money from open source, please leave your comment.
We have phone going wireless - which is mobile phone nowadays. We have internet service going wireless - and becomes WIFI, 3G, WiMax now. We have speaker going wireless - Wireless Headphone. We have game console going wireless - Wii. We have scanner going wireless - RFID. We have memory card going wireless - Eye-Fi. We even have BOOKS going wireless !! - Amazon Kindle.
Now can we have power going wireless? Imagine if we can have power without wire.
Your computer table doesn't need to have clutter of wire.
You no need to install extension power plug anywhere in your house.
You no need to plug in your mobile phone to recharge battery, you can put anywhere and it can be recharged once enter the wireless power zone.
Your laptop is not going to run out of power since it can recharge when enter the wireless power zone.
Isn't it perfect? I believe it will not be long before we can have wireless power. Look at the following diagram. The power is transfered wirelessly and go through a wall to the other side to light up a bulb. Explanation as below.
Resonant copper coil attached to frequency converter and plugged into outlet
Wall outlet
Obstacle
Resonant copper coil attached to light bulb
Scientist is experimenting with magnetic resonance coupling to power a 60-watt light bulb. When the frequency is tuned to the same frequency, two 60-centimeter copper coils can transmit electricity over a distance of two meters, through the air and around an obstacle. Though the efficiency is only around 50% now, but they are looking to boost the efficiency up to 70% ~ 80%.
Wireless power zone:
Some applications available - wireless desktop charger:
I wonder why? Because friendster is one of the earliest social networking site. However, in most of the countries, it's not as popular as the other like facebook and myspace.
I've found this during the search for the answer, it is taken from Crunch base.
Founded in 2002, Friendster is one of the web’s older social networking services. Adults, 18 and up can join and connect with friends, family, school, groups, activities and interests. The site currently has over 50 million users.
It’s rumored that Google offered $30M to buy Friendster in 2003 (when the company looked very promising), but was turned down. Things have somewhat changed since then though. Friendster failed to become what MySpace and Facebook are today largely because of its inability to scale with the growing demand. Since 2004, Friendster has gone through five different CEOs.
Friendster was the 2007 recipient of the Webware 100 Award for best community site. The company has also been granted a number of social networking focused patents.
Inability to scale with the growing demand (means that their server or architecture can't afford to serve their growing user) is the main reason according to CrunchBase.
Lesson that I've learn: First mover advantages is not always there, technology have to keep on updating and they need to listen to market trends. New comer can overcome the first player easily by taking advantages of their inability.
Twitter is also having the same problem right now (a lot of down time due to scalability), will Twitter able to overcome this and not become the second friendster?
So, I did search for myself. I search for tzewei on Google, and found myself ranked no 1. Yeah!! Thanks to MyBlogLog, it's the my profile page on MyBlogLog.
Here is the screen shots of the search result - "tzewei"
So how about Yahoo? I performed the same search and get this. It's ranked #3 on the first page, but under my blogger's profile. Not bad though.
It's just something fun to check your popularity on the web/internet. Hopefully one day I would have got my own wikipedia profile written like one of the blogger, politician in Malaysia - Jeff Ooi and many more.
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Image via WikipediaIn older days, if you ask the people what is marketing? and they will tell you about how about advertisement, branding, voucher, attracting visitor using mass media, and in conclusion: "Let people know about your offer and how good is your product and services" and the keyword here is "how good is your product". 
It's ranked #3 on the first page, but under my blogger's profile. Not bad though.
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