Talk:Strategy for Information Markets/Archives:July 2010

Related books here
There are a number of books already here at Wikibooks, mostly works in progress, which will overlap with our goals. I did a search on "information economics" and came up with these books (or chapters or sections): Other searches might turn up other useful material. TDang (talk) 22:15, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Communication Theory/Network Society
 * The Information Age
 * Economics of Free & Open-Source Software
 * E-Commerce and E-Business
 * Business Strategy/Contents/Information and technology driven strategy
 * Legal and Regulatory Issues in the Information Economy
 * Web 2.0 and Emerging Learning Technologies/Digital Divide
 * Communication Theory/Diffusion of Innovations

Problem sets and Textbookishness
As part of having this book be a textbook, it seems worthwhile to have problems (and solutions) for each chapter. TDang (talk) 18:41, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

In addition to the problems and solutions, discussion questions may also be useful at the end of each chapter for group settings. These questions could possibly go along with chapter summaries. * Allegra12 (talk) 20:53, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

In addition it may be useful to show step by step methods in solving the problems from a student or teacher perspective. (contrary to a search engine-derrived solution)* Jrshepherdiii (talk)

Communication Theory/Network Society book
In the first section titled "Communication Theory/Network Society" I feel that there should be less on and from Castells. To me, the passage seems like a piece on him or one that is kind of lopsided with only information from him. Maybe try and find more sources that prove the same points. *NoPasaNada (talk) 01:30, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * NoPasaNada-Those links above are just there to provide references and/or inspiration. I think you're right that we don't want to pull in a huge amount from/about Castells. TDang (talk) 08:27, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The concept of a "killer" application is important to mention in regards to an information economy. It can dictate which systems a users buys to run the application. It is important in creating a network affect.Econ17 (talk)

Task / topic selection (tentative)
Please enter here an initial description of the topic you would like to work on for the book project. You may choose any topic from Information Rules, anything we have discussed in class, or anything currently listed on the book outline. You also may suggest anything else which seems important to you, whether from another book, news, or personal interest.

Please also identify the group you intend to work with (by Wikibooks username, not real name).

This is a first, tentative list. We will repeat with a more solid list next week. TDang (talk) 12:37, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Another thought: If an abstract concept doesn't grab you, you could start with a "case study"-an interesting event, company, product, or whatever. describing what's interesting about that could lead to selecting a topic. (As an example, Google books is getting a lot of press lately.) TDang (talk) 17:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking something like, from the perspective of retail business what are the needs and uses of informationajax8001 (talk) 19:13, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

For a topic in the book, there should be various graphs with Q and Qhat on the axes depicting the stable and unstable equilibriums of a network as well as emphasizing the importance of minimal critical mass in that chapter."Afuller1 | Talk"

AAnderson7, Allegra12, and I would like to focus on one or some of the aspects of e-commerce. We could also be potentially interested in intellectual property. (posted by Tthomas2 (talk))

I have not had the opportunity to talk and form a group with anyone but I am interested in e-commerce. I think it would be interesting to look into the business strategies/models involved with online auctions and other B2C (Business-to-Consumer) related businesses. If anyone would like to work on these topic send me a message. --KingKing (talk) 06:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it is imperative that we discuss the importance of Ebay, a shopping website where individuals in households and store owners can sell goods via internet auction. It will be interesting to discuss how a company can attract consumers of all types who can bu anything with the click of a button. Jrshepherdiii (talk)

I agree with jrshepherdiii. Ebay is the most important method in modern internet/economic. Both consumer and company can do transaction without facing each other and by doing the click the button.--Thesung41 (talk) 04:08, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

It also might be worthwhile to include a chapter on the regulatory and legal environment - a chapter into which the concept of "net neutrality" might be combined. Such a chapter could also include basic information on the FCC and its role, the various pieces of legislation passed in the 1990s relating to online commerce and information economics, and a general list of 'things to watch out for'. --Evan M. Lisull (talk) 14:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Some of the topics listed previously, such as the regulatory and legal environment as well as e-commerce should definitely be added as vital topics. Intellectual property rights and an "open" business strategies have been and will remain contentious issues. With the spread of the internet, downloading music internationally has the potential to expand potential markets across borders but also bypass many of the nation-level legal landmines. I think expanding those issues and relating them and how they turn out will shape the future of the internet and the dissemination of information since they also go hand-in-hand with various attempts to regulate the flow of information, both favorable and unfavorable. --Spacedmonkeey(talk)

I think that from a business and economic perspective of the issues regarding intellectual property rights and regulation of e-commerce, it is a good idea to propose possible changes in e-commerce and information sharing due to the evolution of laws and regulations. We could speculate what would happen to, for example, the infrastructure of the music information industry if regulations perhaps changed and/or expanded to cover international downloading. It would be interesting to theorize different possibilities of the evolution of both e-commerce and intellectual property rights and how they are related. --JJF (talk) 17:52, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * JJF-This sounds interesting, but I'm afraid it's not appropriate for a textbook. On Wikipedia, what you describe above sounds like "original research". There should be a way to approach it, however. There is a lot of debate about the best rules for intellectual property. Finding prominent contributors to that debate could allow you to frame it as presenting the arguments of others, rather than your own speculation. TDang (talk) 18:31, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Task / topic selection (for real)
''Now the real thing. Please enter here your group (by Wikibooks username, not real names), and your topic. There can still be some wiggle around the topic you select, but write enough that I can tell you can start moving.'' Enter by the night of Sunday, September 13, so that I can look it over on Monday. TDang (talk) 17:18, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I know that two groups today spoke to me about doing e-Commerce. If you all decide that's still the area you're working on, then when we break out an e-Commerce chapter, I'll ask you to hash out division of labor on the discussion page there. (Feel free to start here, though, if you want.) TDang (talk) 17:37, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Group D: My group consists of myself, AAnderson7, tthomas2, Thesung41 and Jrshepherdiii. We are one of the groups that still wants to cover e-Commerce. I would like to cover the online sector that is used for stock transactions and trade. Others in my group wanted to cover online auction sites, but I am not quite sure what else. *Allegra12 (talk) 00:34, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That is enough for a contribution to the book. You should begin detailing as quickly as possible. Also, remember that you'll be responsible for your contribution as a group. So, for instance, everyone's grade will depend on what's written about online stock-trading. TDang (talk) 12:10, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Group C: ???, Afuller1, NoPasaNada, and KingKing. Network effects, nonspecific. TDang (talk) 15:50, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Group R: Spacedmonkeey, Evan M. Lisull, Cjordan18, and JJF are working as a group covering regulation and legislation for the internet. We'll be covering current national and international situations and ongoing events with regard to regulation and lawsuits over information on the internet such as the ongoing censorship battles in Asia, patent enforcement for intellectual property rights and touching briefly on related business strategies and how they might be affected by a shifting legal landscape regarding information on the internet. Spacedmonkeey (talk)--JJF (talk) 17:07, 15 September 2009 (UTC) We should cover the varied positions and views on intellectual property rights. We should talk about the proposed approaches to regulating intellectual property rights, and the current legal standards for information goods.--JJF (talk) 06:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Group A: jfe09, Econ17, ttc07(forget exact login). we are doing a part of e commerce. We will be doing topics such as Google Adsense and other business models.

For Group A, an interesting topic could be the concept of micro-payments and methods of revenue for websites. We could compare and contrast micro-payment structures vs. click stream advertising. We could look at current models and create a gauge of what the necessary number of hits a website needs in order to stay profitable. Overall, what is the most successful way to make money offer your website.--Econ17 (talk) 04:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

'No Group:Hi im ajax8001 and i have recently talked to tdang about the fact that im not in a group and we decided in wasnt a great idea, i was wondering if anyone would mind me joining one of your groups and i would be happy to make up for lost time..ajax8001 (talk) 14:33, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Since no one else has tackled the subject, I would like work on Lock-in. That is, the economic situation the arises from high consumer switching costs. Hopefully I can form a group and work with you, ajax8001, because I d not seem to have a group. As far as Lock-in goes, I would like to look for more modern examples than the antiquated examples in the text book, such as the classic Bell/AT&T system architecture Lock-in. Some more modern examples of Lock-in include cellphone plans and computer hardware bundles. Also, when costs are expanded to include temporal rather than simply monetary costs, the Home operating system market can present considerable learning Lock-in for consumers. Beyond providing modern examples and analysis of Lock-in, I would like to apply Buyer and Seller Lock-in strategies to the models of Lock-in in contemporary markets.

Assignment page
Please see the new assignment page. --TDang (talk) 15:03, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Some references
I'm going to put some suggested references here as I come up with them. You won't need to use these, but I think they're worth checking out. You should feel free to suggest references here as well. TDang (talk) 17:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

refs for newspapers/micropayments

 * This essay on pricing format versus content is interesting. TDang (talk) 17:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The above essay is linked with a variety of other stuff at this Slashdot post. TDang (talk) 17:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This article is about some new features for PayPal. TDang (talk) 14:54, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

refs for loyalty programs and data collection
These are some starters, not things I've looked over very carefully.


 * http://www.allbusiness.com/management/contract-management/671878-1.html
 * http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/21/magazines/fortune/boyle_datamining.fortune/index.htm?section=magazines_fortune
 * http://www.theledger.com/article/20090106/NEWS/901060335?Title=Kroger-Really-Knows-About-Its-Customers-Buying-Habits
 * http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=245
 * a couple Google Scholar searches
 * http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=loyalty+card+information&btnG=Search
 * http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=loyalty+card+data+mining&hl=en
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=QTnOcZJzlUoC&lpg=PR5&ots=3flBbkQiSe&dq=loyalty%20card%20data%20mining&lr=&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q=loyalty%20card&f=false

refs for network structure

 * It doesn't have anywhere near complete context, because it's the slides for a presentation without the speech, but this gives a fast run-down on some social network theory:: http://www.slideshare.net/guest59479b/social-networks-sony-guy. I recommend skimming pages 1-56, particularly 51-56 which talks about selling to "hubs", and then pages 76-94. Conclusions (p. 101) contain useful stuff, but the presentation is all towards running games, so it has to be read with that in mind.
 * Via that talk and other places, I have heard the book "Linked : the new science of networks" recommended a number of times, but haven't read it myself. It's available at the UA library: http://universityofarizona.worldcat.org.ezproxy1.library.arizona.edu/oclc/49827465&referer=brief_results
 * I did a Google search on "network structure marketing", and eliminated references to "multi-level marketing" and got a lot of results-looking through those results might turn stuff up for you, or varying the search terms: search
 * http://www.cs.bme.hu/~zskatona/pdf/diff.pdf This paper seems to get very much at the point of interest, and is discussed with other stuff in this article: http://www2.haas.berkeley.edu/News/Research%20News/Katona.aspx
 * Here's a bibliography: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet?Filename=/published/emeraldfulltextarticle/pdf/2200080206_ref.html
 * churn of cell phone users: http://www.sonamine.com/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13%3Awhitepaper-1&catid=17%3Awhitepapers-category&Itemid=29

I have only given any of this very brief skims, so my recommendation isn't particularly well informed. Regardless, I'd probably start with the Katona, Zubcsek and Sarvary paper and the book Linked. TDang (talk) 07:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

ref for two-sided platforms

 * "Two-Sided Markets with Pecuniary and Participation Externalities"

general interest
Some other news articles which I'm not sure where they might end up, but have some interesting information:
 * http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574459864068290026.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
 * WSJ "Why Email No Longer Rules…"
 * Fast Company "Why Twitter and Facebook Will Never Kill E-mail"
 * Email Service Guide "The End of Email Predicted, Wrong as Usual"
 * http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=508683
 * http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574445502831219412.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

These two articles are online subscription only, but If a paper version can be located, they contain some useful reference notes: Spacedmonkeey (talk) 19:39, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703790404574469171457382930.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond
 * http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574459864068290026.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

online stock trading

 * Here's a paper on differentiation in online brokers. TDang (talk) 07:47, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Review #1
The goal of your review is not to criticize or praise the work so far-it's supposed to be a rough start. Instead, it's to highlight some things which are working or not working to help with the project's development. Make sure you not only say something "needs work" or is "great", but say what about it should stay the same or be corrected or expanded.

Here's some things to keep in mind:
 * How clear is the goal of the writing? Can you tell what the purpose of the section is?
 * Given that, how clearly does it approach that goal?
 * Are there false starts-things which seem like they should be going somewhere, but don't?
 * Are there areas which seem especially interesting to you, and you'd like to see developed further?
 * Is there anything which seems to be missing overall? Is there an addition which would add a lot? (case study, theory, pictures, ...)

Group A
Material: e-Commerce on the main page: Online auctions and Information Goods and Revenue Strategies on second page

Reviewers: NoPasaNada, Allegra12, JJF

Review 1 on Online Auctions: The brief introduction on eBay is informative and gives a good background on the company. The section could use some expansion on other online auction sites (although eBay is widely used), and perhaps a little information on specific rules or guidelines that these sites demand. Are there any restrictions to online auction sites? Also, keep proofreading in mind as you go, there are several minor spelling errors. Allegra12 (talk) 01:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Allegra12. This writing really needs some expansion. All it really gives us is an short summary of what Ebay is and how it works. Maybe you could do more on the history of online auctions, upsides and downsides, or even a side tangent on how consumers are gravitating somewhat towards online shopping. All-in-all, good start. It just needs more to it.--NoPasaNada (talk) 08:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I also agree with Allegra12 and NoPasaNada. About the ebay part, also I am myself as ebay user. I do sell and buy things through ebay. I want products that with cheaper cost than retailer. However, downside of ebay is that it takes time such as auction ending time and transaction time include shipping. Also, it takes some efforts to be patient until last minutes and focus on the auction. I was addicted ebay first time I was buying it because I would get nervous and excited about it. Moreover, there is transaction fees which cost me quite a few.--Thesung41 (talk) 15:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Due to the U.S Law, we cannot buy or sell stocks/bonds through ebay.

Review 1 on Information Goods and Revenue Strategies: This page appears to have a strong start on where the chapter is going. The outline along with each section is clear and covers good material. However, although the overview is intended to be brief, it could use a little more depth about what the chapter covers (maybe 2 or 3 more sentences). Also, the cost of information goods section would benefit from a little expansion, maybe with a graph or an example of specific costs when entering the market. Allegra12 (talk) 01:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the page is great! But who wrote it? All the critiques I really have for it are that I feel the overall focus of the entire page does not have to be completely based on Google Adsense and Micropayments. I'm not completely familiar with the topic so I cannot really give more examples for you to talk about, but I believe it is a strong start! Just wish I knew who wrote it!--NoPasaNada (talk) 08:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Review 1 Online Auctions. I think this is a good basic start. I think it’s a simple and clear enough example of an online auction. Perhaps add more details about different online auctions and the different methods they use and advantages for buyers or sellers with these different methods. For example, eBay and Google adsense are good strong examples, but what else is out there and how do they work? What are the specific benefits of this type of e-commerce for both the buyer and seller, and transaction methods?--JJF (talk) 08:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC) Review 1 Information Goods and Revenue Strategies. This section is put together pretty well so far. You could add in the “Cost of Information Good” section that the initial costs of information goods are typically pretty high and are often sunk costs, which may give first-mover advantages, but may also discourage entry into the market. Perhaps also in this section, explain that reproduction costs of information goods are typically very cheap. IN the part about Google adsense I think the explanation is clear and strong, just take out the part that repeats itself word for word in this section. Are there any other techniques similar to Google’s adsense? Do other search engines do this exact same thing or perhaps a similar idea? The section on micropayments and microcurrency is put together well, it is very explanative. I think the structure of having an introduction, information, then a list of general strengths and weaknesses is working really well, it looks organized and reads well in both sections. Perhaps just expand on the strengths and weaknesses with a little more info.--JJF (talk) 08:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Group B
Material: Gathering Market Information on main page

Reviewers: Afuller1, Jrshepherdiii, Cjordan18

Review1 on Gathering Market Information: The introduction seems fairly solid. It provides the reader with a good intro on what to expect in the chapter by posing questions. In this sense it is covered qualitatively. Maybe translate the statement you have in parenthesis into a transitional statement that grocery stores will be used as an example and why this example.

The section regarding collecting data seems sporadic. Points in the beginning seem to tie to points at the end while points in the middle should maybe be in a different point. Perhaps some reorganization of the section to make it flow and read easier.

Also, after the intro paragraph the following sections jump right into the example. I think it would be helpful to describe that section in general first, i.e. why collecting data can help a broad range of firms, then transition into the supermarket example.

Finally, I think an additional section regarding the costs of gathering information would be valuable. Also what about consumer research companies that sell information for firms to use.--Afuller1 (talk) 22:55, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Review by Cjordan18

This piece has an excellent premise and uses examples effectively to illustrate the central argument. There are, however, several grammatical errors and some of the examples could be tied in more closely to the main point. The section of how to physically collect data provides a great example of consumer behavior, but could be expanded further. Some of the main ideas and examples could be clarified. For example, the frozen vegetable example is not explained in an entirely clear-cut fashion. It isn’t obvious how exactly that example ties into the section or the argument as whole, although I see where the writer is going with this example. The introduction is excellent and provides a good indication of what direction this chapter will be heading in. The section on why we collect data could look at the general reasons why firms collect data on its consumers before diving into analysis of specific events or giving examples. Amazon.com would be a good addition to this section as well, as they collect a variety of consumer data which assists them in targeting specific items to certain consumers. This chapter is heading in the right direction and will tie in the central theme of the book nicely.

Group C
Material: Network Effects section on main page and also on second page, Positive & Negative Feedback on second page, Two Bandwagons experiments on second page, Demand Structure on second page, Two-sided platforms on second page

Reviewers: Ttc1, tthomas2, Urconway

Review by Urconway

Network Effects section on main page and also on second page

This introduction to the topic Network Effects does a decent job of illustrating Network effects in current Information Economies. However, It would probably be useful to introduce Network effects as "demand economies of scale". Also, it would help to outline the relationship between demand, consumer utility, and network effects. Finally, in the second page where you discuss Two-Sided platforms, it would probably be helpful to tie in Network effects and the impact they have on 2SP's.

Review by tthomas2

Network Effects section on main page and also on second page

After reading through the various sections of Network Effects, I would concur with much of what urconway suggests. I think the introduction can carry more weight than it currently does by emphasizing the scope of network effects through some potent examples. I like the demand structure with network effects page with graphics and explanations. Any chance some concept, especially one that is potentially abstract, can be illustrated with graphs and/or graphics, go for it. In terms of writing a book, a little creativity and visual relief is always welcome. Overall good start, I'm sure this will be a solid contribution to the book.

Review by Ttc1

"Network Effects section on main page and also on second page"

While reading your information on Network Effects, I came across several well written points involving information goods and network effects. The demand structure page and the two sided platform page both had very useful graphics as well. The two bandwagon experiment page could use some graphics to help visualize its points like the two above. There were a few grammatical errors as well but overall this was a very good addition to the wikibook and I believe that your group will exceed all expectations.

Group D
Material: Some e-commerce on the main page: Online business methods and Online stock trading sites

Reviewers: Econ17, KingKing, Spacedmonkeey, ajax8001

I like the use of a credible source to give a good piece of information going forward from here you might benefit from not only analyzing what is stated in the quote but take it a step further and discuss ramifications as well as what decisions might be deduced from that information.. that is regarding online business methods, as for online stock trading sites you do a good job evaluating one example and im sure you plan on doing the same for a few others but it might be a good idea to generalize this topic for people who don't quite think they fall in one specific category so they can see what is beneficial for each type of venue and what different things you may need to consider for the differences in structure and network


 * The information found under Online business methods is very useful. It ties well into my groups section, group A.  These articles give a good overview of market strategies, such as creating a portal, and outlining the basic revenue strategies.  If this section could lead before ours it can tie the book together some.  The weakness are that nothing is formatted or put into your own words.  Both remarks comment that you won't place the excerpts on the wiki book, but you already have. The concept and ideas are there just formatting will help.--Econ17 (talk) 01:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The second section under stock and trade sites could follow as an example of a revenue strategy. This can help with the flow of the information.  If more detail on the pricing and method could be provided it can help further your idea.--Econ17 (talk) 01:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * With regard to the section of Online Business methods, I'm not sure what we're supposed to review. I think the information present is useful in some analyses but, all information written under this heading is noted as "not going to be used in this wikibook." If the articles and information presented isn't going to be used, then I can't see anything in the section which is reviewable. The information included is useful but needs some explanations and definitions for lay readers who may not be familiar with some of the web jargon. I found most of the information recorded in those excerpts to be fairly technical, requiring at least a certain level of familiarity with the subject matter in order to be of any use. Translating the information into readily understandable terms is a critical step. On a side note, I don't know if what is posted was directly quoted, but reviewing it line by line does show several grammatical mistakes and other minor quality issues. My opinion on "Online Business Methods" is that the section requires significant work to bring it more in line as a textbook to educate those who are not familiar. Breaking up the extended paragraphs into easily navigable segments would do wonders as well as taking a look at some of the other topics being covered in and around the section, allowing for in-book referencing to sections which can cover those topics more in-depth. As a final mention, it has been noted several times that on the actual book, personal notes and signatures should not be used. Overall, this section needs more attention and lot more effort. -- Spacedmonkeey (talk) 02:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Online Stock Trading does seem to be a growing field for stay-at-home and other small-time investors. I think expanding some of the introduction to include some description of what has made these virtual traders so popular would make it more useful as a textbook entry regarding ongoing changes to the flow of information via the internet. Another mention is that potential investors should "take time in deciding which site works best." This begets many follow-up questions. How long do average virtual traders take to profit? What are some of the differences between the many sites and services listed that should be noted? What makes each of them useful or viable in this sort of highly competitive field. There isn't much information posted under this section, so I can't really review it well, but I think there is plenty more to work in. Tying the section into some of the other e-commerce posts, transaction costs, network effects, micro-currency, online auctions and dynamic competition all have relevance to Online Stock Trading Sites. This section has a start, but definitely needs a lot more content. -- Spacedmonkeey (talk) 02:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I think your group has a very good start to online business methods. I like how you found sources that talk a lot about some of the really important aspects of the topics of online business methods. For example how it explains what a portal is and how it links users to information. I think this idea is very important because it is often a key way of attracting people to information. I also like how the idea of B2B (business-2-business) and B2C (business-2-consumer) transactions occur. I think that it may be possible to develop these ideas a little bit more and talk about how companies benefit from different types of business transactions. Maybe compare the revenue of company how successful it is when it is just a strictly B2B company to the same come is with B2C added. I think it also might be helpful to break up the section a little bit more so that the topics are more clearly defined. I get a little lost reading the information because it runs together a little bit too much. The topics start to get developed but then it jumps to talking about something else. If there were sections it would make the writing a little bit more clear. Otherwise good start.


 * With regards to the Online stock trading sites information I think you also have a good start by explaining what a trading site is. It would be nice to see you develop the idea a little bit more so that it goes into detail about how the sites actually operate in terms of business plans. I would see if I could find out how and what rules and regulation they have to follow compared with stock brokers that have to go thru actual markets like the NYSE. I would also be nice to see you talk about how the companies generate revenue by operating the sites. Personally I think some of the ways are by taking a cut of winnings/losses or by charging a transaction fee for that trade, or both. I think if you talked and compared these issues to a real broker it might let the reader make judgments about what avenue of investment is best in terms of saving money with small investments. --KingKing (talk) 13:56, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Group E
Material: Dynamic competition

Reviewers: Thesung41, Evan M. Lisull

Thesung41 - About the Lock-In, the writing is very clear and easy to understand. It would have been better if he/she mentioned about the background of Lock-In at the beginning. Time Investment, Limited resale value, Contracts, Two-Part Tariff pricing, Brand Loyalty Programs, and Gift Cards have ultimate examples and very specific. This section is well organized and good work. Keep it up.--Thesung41 (talk) 05:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Group R
Material: Net Neutrality on second page, Intellectual Property on second page, Collaborative Filtering on second page, Censorship in SE Asia

Reviewers: Jfe09, Alexc152, AAnderson7

Reviews by Jfe09-

Net Neutrality- A more technical write up of net neutrality could be included. The examples provided are well done. Provides the pro and con of network neutrality.

Intellectual Property- Very minor grammatical errors, well written and good clear explanations of copyright, patents, etc.

Collaborative Filtering- Perhaps provide an example of collaborative filtering. A little bit more in depth explanation of collaborative filtering.

Censorship in SE Asia- Well written.

Network Neutrality – The path given at the beginning of the topic is clear and provides a good goal. The examples provided (AT&T/Skype/iPhone) help the reader gain a clear idea of just exactly what network neutrality is. Going forward, I think the group should stick to the roadmap and make sure that one thing leads into another so that the reader will not have to jump around the topic to gain the information, but rather the reader should flow through the topic as it progresses. The pro and con examples are clear and set up a good roadmap which should help the group progress into the later topics.

Information Markets/Intellectual Property – An introduction to the topic is needed, but there is a lot of good information to provide a solid foundation. While there is a good foundation, be sure to expand on the material already provided (copyrights/patents) before moving on to new material.

Strategy/Collaborate Filtering – Be sure to talk about ALL strategies before going into detail for collaborative filtering. The information given on collaborative filtering are beneficial and very informative. Be sure to expand on how the information is processed when a user visits a site or makes a transaction. Great start, be sure to provide an introduction on what the reader is going to be learning from the topic before jumping into the sections.

SE Asian Censorship – Well written, provide examples of the censorship (maybe touch on the internet history of China and SE Asian countries) early and often. Great example with the Amnesty International example. Discuss the cause of the censorship as well as the effects the censorship has caused along with what could possibly happen in the future with the censorship and its effects. --(AAnderson7|talk]) 04:52, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Intellectual Property Review #1

This excerpt provides a clear and concise purpose statement/goal stating the main use of property rights and what property rights actually are. The excerpt provides personal opinions on property rights/definition, as well as formal defintions of what property rights are and how they are used in an organization. While examples were provided of the multiple types of property rights, it couldnt hurt to add more specific examples/situations of how property rights have been effectively utilized. Finally, I felt everthing was properly wrapped up in a somewhat of a conclusion paragraph. With that being said the excerpt contained a clear intro/goal, supporting ideas/examples, and a conclusion. --Alexc152 (talk) 22:53, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

TDang Review-Group A
Material: e-Commerce on the main page: Online auctions and Information Goods and Revenue Strategies on second page

Introduction to EBay is very cursory. Is the goal to discuss auctions in general or EBay specifically? Each of those should go a somewhat different direction in terms of focus. EBay specific Online auctions generally
 * 1) Rules: Description of its various rules, for auctions, for reputation feedback system, and anything else. Particularly interesting for these would be looking at how the rules changed over time and why.
 * 2) Competition: What competition does EBay have, both really direct (Yahoo auctions?) and less direct (Craigslist?). How does it compete? Has 1st-mover advantage been decisive for EBay or have there been other features or competitive strategies which have helped it remain dominant?
 * 3) Market structure: In terms of course material on costs, network effects, 2-sided platforms, etc. Is the online auction market one where it's inevitable for there to be a single dominant firm?
 * 1) Certainly some of the material will be the same, particularly point #3 above.
 * 2) But this would be a good place to concentrate on different auction rules and their implications. There's a lot of material on auction rules, and how they work both in theory and in experiments.
 * 3) However, due to the U.S Law, We cannot sell or buy stocks/bonds through EBay. --Thesung41 (talk)

Information Goods & Revenue Strategies section

Cost of Information Good: this section is brief enough that it throws me off. If you're going to spend time on costs, I think you need to expand, but I'm not sure you want to spend time on costs? If you're concentrating on revenue, then simply concentrate on revenue. Possibly a note (in a section on revenue) that you're assuming operating costs are low, and so your strategies don't consider the revenue/cost balance that you'd have to in many other businesses?

'Google AdSense: "Google Adsense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from your website..." This raises a general style point which we haven't talked about. I think we should avoid the second-person "you" form in the book except in cases where it's really addressed to "you, the reader" (You didn't do anything wrong here, just made me notice something which I'll being up as a general style guideline.)
 * This section is a little vague on targeting. Is it more aimed at a business who might like to advertise using AdSense, or a student who wants to understand the strategies behind AdSense?
 * Vickrey Auction: Again, I'm not sure how much you'd like to go into different possible kinds of auctions. If you want to explain Google's strategy, then you need to explain why they thought Vickrey was the right auction format.
 * Economic Impact: In describing importance, it's vital to disentangle Google's AdSense revenues from it's other advertising revenues (advertising on Google's own pages versus ads placed on others' pages?).
 * Strength/Weakness: This summary is a great idea if the material is targeted to people who might want to use AdSense. Will probably want to revisit the exact listings of strengths/weaknesses as the material develops. If it's otherwise targeted, these summaries are over-specific.

Micropayments:
 * "The idea is to keep these transactions cost minimal, to persuade the consumer to make multiple transactions." transactions costs is a term which means more specific things for economists, and so is misleading here. Usually we think of a transactions cost as a cost (likely non-monetary) of conducting a transaction which doesn't get paid to either party in the transaction. It's just friction. The bit, "...to persuade..." is interesting because it's very much a behavioral economics idea. I would find further development interesting, but it's up to you if that would get you off track.
 * Network effects: Network effects are mentioned several times, but it's not clear they're relevant. Or rather, they will be relevant for some and not for others, and it''s not clear how that connects to micropayments. For instance, the Wall Street Journal doesn't have clear network effects-I don't benefit (much) when others read the same articles I do. You can leave network effects out altogether, or make the connection. It would be very interesting if you could identify how micropayments and network effects interact (if they do).

Microcurrency: I find this topic very interesting. I'm not saying you should develop it more, as in giving an assignment, but there are a lot of interesting questions about microcurrency: Can it be used off-site? Does it need to have a fixed "exchange-rate" with a real currency (and which one)? Does it create the possibility of money laundering? Can changes to the site (prices of goods) be done without violating implicit promises to those who purchased microcurrency? I'm sure many others.

Generally, the writing in this section is pretty good. There's a few glaring errors (repeated text in a few places), and plenty of smaller errors, but my recommendation at this point would be developing more new material before worrying too much about writing cleanup.

TDang Review-Group B
Material: Gathering Market Information on main page

This section reads currently as a good statement of intent, but the current material reads as pretty ad-hoc. This is an important and interesting topic. It needs to be handed with well-researched information to be really informative.

Here's some suggestions on how to develop it:
 * 1) Specifics will be important, although probably difficult to acquire:  finding examples of how real companies acquired and used specific data.
 * 2) Making it most relevant to this course, while it doesn't need to be internet related, it should be information-technology related. There are lots of ways this could go, but it should be about something which would have been impossible or much harder in 1970. It could have to do with data-mining techniques, for instance, or controlled marketing experiments analyzed with modern statistical technology.
 * 3) I know little about this area, myself, so I'm sure there are other ways to develop it which don't occur to me but you can find as you do research. For instance, do firms bin customers into a few intuitive types, "moms" versus "bachelors" versus "party-throwers", or do they classify customers according to more abstract but also more empirical rules, "number of frozen meals purchased per month"? TDang (talk) 18:28, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

TDang Review-Group C
Material: Network Effects section on main page and also on second page, Positive & Negative Feedback on second page, Two Bandwagons experiments on second page, Demand Structure on second page, Two-sided platforms on second page

Virtual and Real Networks I suggest leaving this as is for now, and possibly removing it for the final version. It's not bad, but I don't know that it's worth getting into it unless this distinction is applied elsewhere.

Network Structure This hits on a lot of points we've discussed in class, but doesn't clearly get at the issue of network structure (which we've discussed only briefly in class). Mostly when we talk about network effects, we make the network structure abstract so that we only care about the number of people in the network. But in most cases, the users of the product care about connecting with specific other users. I want to be able to call my grandfather and a local delivery pizza parlor, so those add value to the network for me, while two random U.S. phone numbers probably don't add value. The "structure" in this case is something the phone company mostly can't control, but is the social network which exists outside of the phone network. Some businesses can ignore this structure, like we usually do in our analysis, but others could benefit by planning around particular network structures.

Strategy for Information Markets/Network Effects I'm guessing this material on two-sided platforms is obsolete now that there's another more developed page specifically on 2SP?

Strategy for Information Markets/Positive & Negative Feedback This is overall a good section, and the concrete examples help. If you could supply some numbers (or graphs of actual market share), that would strengthen the examples. While the text is mostly very good, there seems at some points to be a misunderstanding of "positive feedback", so that has to be fixed. Positive feedback essentially means that anything gets stronger. That means that a large market share gets larger, but it also means a small market share gets smaller. You have that in part, such as, "Recall the notion of positive feedback in the sense that it makes the strong stronger, and the weak weaker." But there are also bits like, "Positive feedback can also hurt the competition of the rival company to the one receiving it. Here the product can be seen as failing or inferior to the one receiving the positive feedback and can lead its slow end." which gives the wrong impression. Including the picture is good.

Strategy for Information Markets/Two Bandwagons This needs a bit more clarification. I'm not sure how much you consider this page within your scope, so you can choose to leave it as is and concentrate on other things. I might work on the page more myself, if you don't choose to develop it (please let me know). The goals for the discussion of the experiment are:
 * Similar phenomena can appear for very different reasons, so one should think carefully about whether a market is showing an information cascade, network effects, or both when it seems to have a bandwagon dynamic.
 * Information cascades can lead to one kind of inefficiency, where essentially everyone makes the wrong decision.
 * Network externalities in this experiment had fairly strong network effects, fairly weak taste for variety, and strong (actually complete) individual lock-in. Those features can be used to talk about other important features of real-world markets.

Strategy for Information Markets/Demand Structure with Network Effects This is mostly very good. There's certainly some polish which could be added, but I think it would be more valuable to extend than polish until later. Some of the norms which I used in class and on the plots (Qhat vs. Q for instance) might not be ideal, and we can discuss if you think it's worth changing them. Overall, this is good. The best extensions I can think of are tying this theory into real-world cases (probably described in detail in a different section, with only brief mention here), and developing the expectations management ideas (again, probably in a different section).
 * fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is part of expectations management-in discussing expectations management, we've concentrated mostly on upside expectations of one's own network. FUD is about diminishing the expectations for a competing network.
 * "This is because the network is now saturated and for some users the value of the product has declined due to the amount of people in the network." This is more about diminishing marginal returns than negative network effects. Essentially, it's saturation-the people who are truly interested in the product/network have already joined, and the remaining people just aren't very interested and even some benefit from the large network size isn't enough to draw them in.
 * "The part of the curve where marginal utility = 0, the slope that is" marginal utility isn't equal to the slope-I'd just take out the reference to marginal utility.

Strategy for Information Markets/Two-Sided Platform ...
 * "and other consumer driven markets ..." This last bit of the paragraph is unclear.
 * Media Resources: This one is tricky, because there are potentially 3 sides (consumers, content producers, advertisers), and you need to be clear about how you are analyzing it. Some media companies produce all of their own content (such as most newspapers and magazines), so you can't include "content producers" as a side. Some media operations are fee-based without advertising. Also, while advertisers certainly benefit from more media consumers, it's not clear consumers benefit from more advertisers. Anyway, tricky, so handle with care.
 * Other: This is unclear, are these really 2-sided or one-sided networks?
 * "However, these are other ways to increase network effects and positive externalities. One way to increase network effects is to enact subsidizing." I'd rephrase this. Just as lowering price can increase quantity demanded but not increase demand, I'd say that these strategies can increase the network size and possibly the benefits from network effects without increasing the network effects.
 * "The ultimate goal for a platform or market is to maximize the benefits and externalities." Usually (we're concentrating on for-profit organizations) the goal is to maximize profit. Often increasing benefits from network externalities can help do that, but not always.
 * Overall, this is a really good start, but seems rushed. I would recommend going through carefully, editing both content (taking care to be precise with things like those I mentioned) and writing (watch capitalization, commas, clarity).
 * Additions which would help this are specific examples if you can fill in meaningful details: interesting bits about a particular game system, matters of the browser war relating to two-sided platform competition, and the like.

TDang Review-Group D
Material: Some e-commerce on the main page: Online business methods and Online stock trading sites

Strategy_for_Information_Markets I'm not quite clear on how this section will develop.
 * First, while I'm clear that there's a large quote from Mahadevan, I'm not sure about the paragraphs starting, "Based on a qualitative analysis of the Internet based models..." and "We argue that a business model..." Are those quotes from Mahadevan also, or from someone else or original material?
 * The quote(s) don't stand alone, and seem to need a lot of support to make sense. You will either need to de-jargonize expressions like "value stream", "revenue stream", etc, or provide enough explanation that using the terms makes things clear instead of confusing.
 * Do you intend to list Timmers' eleven business models and discuss them? Can you fit Mahadevan, Timmers, Schlachter and Parkinson all into one framework which will make sense?
 * I think your main goal for this section should be to describe your goals, then use those resources or any others to satisfy those goals.

Strategy_for_Information_Markets So far this is a well-phrased introductory paragraph (or two), but it still isn't clear where the section will be going. You may find another angle which works, but for the purposes of this class the most obvious approach is to discuss online auctions sites as competitors of traditional trading, and competitors with each other. Then consider what a few of the top sites bring to the competition. Do network effects matter? Is there a first-mover advantage? Are there economies of scale? How much is it possible to differentiate from your competitors? Do different sites use different trading rules, and how can that impact trading?

TDang Review-Group E
Material: Dynamic competition

Strategy_for_Information_Markets
 * Good, precise description of lock-in, and good pointing out search costs.
 * "Consumers in information economies are especially vulnerable to Lock-in..." This paragraph is unconvincing. Many information goods are quite durable-they don't wear out, and that raises the switching costs, since if something wears out I'll have to switch in any case. So, the switching cost of milk brands is low, while the switching cost of AC systems is high. Individual lock-in for information goods can come from their durability (word processing software and game software are technologically just as durable but the word processor is likely to be used for much longer) or from other aspects, such as investment in learning to use a particular product.
 * As an aside Steam is interesting in its own right, and was recently discussed as being anti-competitive.
 * Hypothetical Example and Programs intended to create Lock-in - these are good sections. A possible extension of this kind of idea would be to develop more on natural vs. artificial lock-in.

Strategy_for_Information_Markets
 * Your overall description of systemic lock-in isn't wrong, but it is unclear. If only a single vendor is available, then there is a kind of lock-in, but it's almost irrelevant since another choice is not just difficult but impossible. In the water utility example, it might well cost more to build a second, competing water utility than that competition would provide in benefit.
 * Information Rules discusses these switching costs as "collective switching costs" (as on page 184).
 * Systemic lock-in is about difficulty coordinating in a coordination game. It would only be worth switching if many others (or everyone else) switched, so individuals aren't willing to switch even though they'd all be better off.
 * Example of TI-82, 83 or 83+ calculators: I'm not familiar with these calculators or how they are used in classes. However, the effect you describe, "they would have to learn to use an entirely different operating system" sounds more like individual lock-in. That is, a student must decide whether it's worth the trouble to learn to use a different kind of calculator, and that learning time and effort is a cost borne by that individual student. This would be different if classes were organized around those specific calculators with instructors and/or textbooks teaching specifically to those calculators.

Strategy_for_Information_Markets
 * This is a very good start of the section. It needs some polish, and ideas are discussed which need to be fleshed out, but it's a good start as it stands.

I think you could go either of two ways now. You could polish what you have, or you could work to develop more. I've pointed out some things which definitely need fixing. Your writing is good enough as is that it could stand until a later revision. Some further development on dynamic competition could include:
 * If you feel able to do so, material actually using game trees would be appropriate.
 * Discussing competitive strategies which have come up already: managing expectations, penetration pricing, limit pricing, reputation building, pre-emption...

TDang Review-Group R
Material: Net Neutrality on second page, Intellectual Property on second page, Collaborative Filtering on second page, Censorship in SE Asia

Strategy for Information Markets/Network Neutrality This is a good start but rough. I'm pretty sure the essence of the important ideas is there, but the writing needs work to be clear. Make sure to work in complete sentences. Since this is a matter of current debate, the two sides of the debate each needs a bit more space, probably after the essentials of what net neutrality is have been laid out, a paragraph for each side should do it? Then a bit describing (as you imply you plan to do) a way for a firm not yet in the argument to decide what would be best for them, and strategies for different kind of firms if faced with a future world with and without net neutrality.

Strategy for Information Markets/Intellectual Property You have a good introduction to IP here.
 * There's a tough balance to strike in being appropriately international. This wikibook shouldn't be just for the U.S. But at the same time specificity is nice. I'd recommend cutting down on U.S. specificity and describing copyrights and patents in a more general way that covers most of how they're handled internationally. But it's reasonable to disagree with me on this, if you want to keep the specificity.
 * I would downplay trademarks unless you can find a good way to fit them into a strategy discussion. Trademarks are usually taken as a given, just being about properly identifying each company, and so not a matter of competitive importance. I believe there are cases where firms might deliberately confuse the issues of trademarks and copyrights (Mickey Mouse, for instance) in order to try to get stronger protection, but if you wanted to cover that, you'd need a much better resource than my, "I believe..."
 * What else do you want to cover here? Information Rules chapter 4 is on "rights management", which is less about the legalities of IP and more about how to best manage the IP you have. That strategic element would fit well with this class.
 * An alternative way you could go is highlighting controversy about the appropriate place of IP protection. A strong movement has argued that patent protection shouldn't apply to software. There are a number of more radical commentators who feel that copyright law does more harm than good (one place you can look for comment on this is here (scroll to the bottom to see links to individual essays)). John Perry Barlow and Lawrence Lessig have written repeatedly on copyright. Again, there have been heated arguments about patent protection of drugs, particularly AIDS/HIV drugs, with some countries deliberately flouting international patent law.
 * "Unlike copyrights, patents are only recognized in the United States." I don't know all the laws in this regard, but there is certainly international patent protection. Almost all the arguments about pharmaceutical patents deal with this-with one nation ignoring drug patents from another nation to copy drugs. You might find some material on international patents:
 * http://www.wipo.int/classifications/en/
 * http://www.uspto.gov/ip/global/ip_organizations.jsp
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty
 * I think you need to simplify the writing a bit. Currently some of your phrasing is over-sophisticated.

Strategy for Information Markets/Collaborative Filtering I don't know if you intend to continue to develop this. "Collaborative filtering" implies by its name a cooperative arrangement among users, and some of its clearest applications are in that voluntary, cooperative mode. The current highest-profile clearest case is NetFlix, where the user enters information about their tastes voluntarily in the hopes that--since others did the same--the system will be able to use all that information to make good movie recommendations. There is a wide range of what can be considered "collaborative filtering", though, and some of it is more as you describe as targeting advertising. So, technically what identifies as collaborative filtering is that something presented to me (a suggestion or an advertisement) is determined by analysis of what other users liked (or purchased, or clicked on...). There is some measure of this in how Google ranks search results, and how Amazon recommends books to searchers.
 * So, covering privacy concerns is only one aspect.
 * NetFlix could be interesting to cover now because they have recently finished a contest (and are starting another) to have outside people (mostly academics) improve their recommendation algorithm. Writings about this could provide interesting details on how collabortive filtering is done.
 * Fitting collaborative filtering into a business strategy would be a useful thing for this book.

Strategy_for_Information_Markets Most important: China isn't generally considered part of Southeast Asia. Otherwise, this is a good beginning introduction. However, I'm still not sure where it's going and how it fits with this course. It would be good if you can clarify that further. Here's some thoughts:
 * Technical aspects There is a famous quote from John Gilmore, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." How does the censorship work at a tech level to solve this (from the censor's point of view) problem? How do users circumvent the censorship technology?
 * Ethics and strategy How to make a decision as a firm about participating in these places? Google got a lot of grief for how and why they decided to work with China.

Adding Citations
Here's some material on adding citations. First, at the bottom of the page, there should be a "References" section. I've added this section to the main page. You should add a similar section to extra pages you create. See Template:Reflist for a little information on it.

One that's added, you can put references in the text of a page like footnotes.

I've formatted a reference on the main page in the Online business methods section. I used the Template:Cite_journal template to do so. You can see exactly what I entered by looking at the diff of the change I made. This template is aimed at academic journal articles, and would be useful for any magazine.

The part formats the text into a fairly standard bibliographic format. The at the beginning and end tell the wiki software to create a reference which will be put into the "reflist" at the end of the article. By putting in "name=Mahadevan2000", this allows the reference to be re-used without re-entering the whole thing. Putting in just in another place in the document will replicate the reference link.

Other templates can be found at Category:Citation_templates.

As another example, here's a reference to Information Rules using the Template:Cite book template.

And again

Style guide
I'm going to add material here as it occurs to me. These will be style guidelines we should follow uniformly throughout the book. If there is a style guideline you think would be helpful, please propose it here also. TDang (talk) 18:17, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * 1) You Only use the second-person form of address you if it's strictly referring to the reader/student. In other cases, we should use one could rather than you could or specify an actor the business could rather than you could, since we don't want to assume the reader is in the place of a customer, business, analyst, or whatever. TDang (talk) 18:17, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
 * 2) internet Don't capitalize "internet". This is an evolving standard, different sources use different standards. If you're quoting another source and they capitalize it, leave their capitalization in place. Otherwise, for us the "internet" is lowercase. TDang (talk) 18:17, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
 * 3) Emphasizing keywords This standard might change as we see how it works out. To emphasize a key word or phrase (something which you might call a "vocabulary word" for the given section), we should bold that word/phrase the first time it appears only. Otherwise, the word/phrase should receive standard treatment like any other words, not being capitalized or otherwise emphasized. TDang (talk) 17:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Copying material
''This is repeated from an introduction page I wrote. You may email me to ask for help in importing material, or follow the instructions linked here to request the import yourself.''

The rules for contributing to a Wikibook here will be somewhat different than those for a typical school paper. Plagiarism must still be kept in mind, but the application is different.


 * 1) The most important thing to keep in mind is respecting copyright. Don't copy verbatim--or copy with simple re-wording--copyrighted material from most sources, except for small amounts of material.
 * 2) When you do copy small amounts of material, provide a reference to the source. (References to facts and ideas drawn from other works are also very helpful.)

There are however, exceptions which are particularly relevant here. The above rules would hold if you were considering including material from Information Rules. However, if you were to draw information from a Wikipedia article (such as information economics), you are allowed, if you like, to copy large amounts of material, provided you do so in the right way. If you felt that that page was particularly valuable, you could copy the whole thing into a chapter of the book as a starting point. This wouldn't be violating the copyright because the page is available under a copyleft license (specifically the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license), which gives you the right to do so.

The material from Wikipedia is still copyrighted as well as copylefted, so there's a special way to put it into a wikibook. Instead of just copying the text, you request the page to be imported. This gets a little complicated. If you decide you want to do this, communicate with me and we'll figure it out together.

Regardless of the source of your material, this is a class project, and for the sake of academic honesty, I will want it to be clear when you include external material. If you think it's helpful to creating the book, by all means, copy material which you can legitimately copy. I ask that you make a note of when you do so, however. You can do that by putting a comment in the article's talk page noting where the material originated. Alternatively, you can link to the original source in the edit summary. TDang (talk) 15:12, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Review #2
As with review #1, the goal of your review is not to criticize or praise the work so far. Instead, it's to highlight some things which are working or not working to help with the project's development. The work should be more developed than at review #1, so your review should reflect that-you can be more picky, but you should also assume there won't be huge changes in direction between now and the final version.

For your own group: Please check that I have linked all the relevant sections for your group's work. If there's something which is part of your project, but not linked, please add that link for your group. TDang (talk) 13:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Group A
Material: e-Commerce on the main page: Online auctions and Information Goods and Revenue Strategies on second page

Reviewers: User:Afuller1, User:tthomas2, User:KingKing

afuller1: For revenue strategies, if the introduction were longer or provided more of what was to come rather then just immediately jumping into google adsense. Also there is a section of sentences repeated in the google adsense section. Related to that as well, some sentences seem to repeat more of what was already stated without really developing the idea/concept further. Perhaps developing why the strengths are related to google adsense. It isn't real clear how the bullet points relate. All in all, i think the content is good, but just needs some cleaning up and expanding.

For the e-commerce and online auctions on the main page, the only real suggestion I have is to do some format/organization work on it so it is more reader friendly.

Your group’s contributions to the book are looking great. I went back and looked at what you originally had before this second review and it appears that you refined you writings some. I can see that you clarified many of the ideas and even added more useful information to your topics. I still think that you can make everything a little more crisp by cleaning it up just a little more. Some of the information seems like it can be organized better and expanded on a little bit. I like how the information goods and revenue strategies is broken up. I t makes everything clear and easy to follow. Good work everybody.

Group B
Material: Gathering Market Information on main page

Reviewers: User:Econ17, User:Urconway, User:AAnderson7

Group C
Material: Network Effects section on main page and also on second page, Positive & Negative Feedback on second page, Two Bandwagons experiments on second page, Demand Structure on second page, Two-sided platforms on second page

Reviewers: User:Jrshepherdiii, User:Jfe09, User:Evan M. Lisull

Jfe09- The network effects section has good examples of successful network effects. Could go into detail into how money is made off advertising with these examples. The two sided platform could use an example of a successful two sided platform and an unsuccessful two side platform and why each happened to be successful/unsuccessful. Good explanation of what positive and negative feedback are. The differences between positive and negative feedback are well defined. Good example of the ipods and napster. Each show how feedback works. The tipsiness’ part of the review is well done; however the part about Blu Ray and HD DVD could be a little bit more in depth. The two bandwagon example shows ties to together class and the project. Perhaps there is another example that could be used. A more in depth relationship between the herding and network effects could be done. Demand structure very good. Very in depth. Two sided platforms does a good job of explaining the concept.

Group D
Material: Some e-commerce on the main page: Online business methods on main page and Online stock trading sites on second page

Reviewers: User:NoPasaNada, User:JJF, User:Alexc152

For online business methods this section is very strong and informative, but perhaps could be whittled down a bit and more generally brief but still as informative. I think this whole section reads pretty well, i would recommend though to make sure it reads as if it is addressed to a text book reader. The introductions and explanations of the different streams and aspects of online business are great, maybe just throw an example in the mix here and there to further illustrate what you are explaining. I like the part about the Norwegian economists, this kind of material is interesting and can help demonstrate examples of what your explaining or they can help show some interesting notes about what your explaining. The online stock trading sites page is great, i really like the organization and clarity. Good use of examples and illustration of points. maybe talk about other possible strategies these online sites can implement (specifically in cost structure) in order to gain higher market share.--JJF (talk) 07:01, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

For the Online Business Methods section, I understand that the majority of the information you have posted is just a block quote from the literature you intend to do a further analysis. I believe this section can be broken down and explained more and more, clear-cut examples should be given to help the reader understand this subject you are trying to convey. This section seems like it holds a great amount of information that you can use well, but I really think you should start actually writing your section before it is under review. The Online Stocks and Trading Page was very well put together. The explanations were almost all very clear-cut and you good examples to go along with the subject matter you were trying to explain. The only real criticism I have is where did you get all of you information? Are you going to site anything in this section? Great job for whoever did this page! NoPasaNada (talk) 22:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Group E
Material: Dynamic competition

Reviewers: User:Spacedmonkeey, User:ajax8001, User:Cjordan18

AJAX8001- I think what is down is solid but seems to not be enough to really delve into the topic. Maybe talk about how to achieve lock in in certain industries in which it might be competitive to do so. Also you can talk about the link between network effects and lock in, specifically about achieving critical mass. That would seem to tie in to this book well. The first mover advantage is a good topic to talk about but id like to know how to keep this advantage after the other players enter the industry, how can we sustain this advantage. you might also want to consider cleaning up the parts talking about the specific advantages to being the first mover as it is a little unclear. bullet points might help

- Fairly well put together for ease of understanding. The topic does seem a bit light and shallow, but there is plenty of room to flesh it out. Definitely though, double check for spelling and grammar. Numerous mistakes spread throughout. Is it possible to give an example of "first mover" advantage actually being "last mover," since that seems to be contrary to the definition. On that note, check your definitions! Free rider problem is something completely different than first-mover. I've never heard of bleeding edge... how widely is it known?? Try to avoid some of the folksy sayings, they may get the point across using layman terms, but they're for a highly selective group, as in they won't make sense to people in any other culture. Some of the examples are good but, do you want to have subsections that are only a few lines when a new paragraph might work just as well? Overall fairly good, a bit shallow and doesn't show much in the way of editing... Needs more work. Spacedmonkeey(talk)

Group R
Material: Net Neutrality on second page, Intellectual Property on second page, Collaborative Filtering on second page, Censorship in SE Asia

Reviewers: User:Thesung41, User:Ttc1, User:Allegra12

The second page for net neutrality proposes a good outline of questions for the topic. Although it may need some more depth in the responses, I think it is headed in a good direction. I think an interesting question to cover is how net neutrality affects information markets. When did the concept of net neutrality begin and why? These few questions could add more interesting thoughts to this page. The second page for intellectual property looks well developed and written. Maybe a few more examples of intellectual property issues or any popular examples from the past could expand the page a bit if you feel it’s necessary. The collaborative filtering page needs some expansion, perhaps more clarity in where the topic is going. I am interested in reading more about each of the types of collaborative filtering, especially some examples. The beginning of censorship in SE Asia has a good start and is an interesting topic. Besides more depth, this is a good section and I am looking forward to reading about the regulations in China and India. Overall, these pages are making great progress and cover some appealing concepts. The focus from this review should revolve around more expansion and some added examples to explain each topic a bit better. Allegra12 (talk) 03:55, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Thesung41 - I am not trying to be nitpicky in regards to this paragraph. There is some truth to this. However, there are some factual discrepancies. For instance, the definition of censorship in Southeast Asia is wrong because of the geographical technicality of China. China is located in East Asia and India in South Asia; these two countries are not part of Southeast Asia. If you want to talk about censorship in Southeast Asia, you should mention the countries Burma (Myanmar) and Laos. Burma and Laos are the exclusively communist and naturally has censorship. That would make it valid. However if you want to talk about China and India, I would suggest changing the title to “Censorship in Asia” or “Censorship in China.” Another problem in talking about censorship, especially digital, electronic censorship, is the fact that the countries of Burma and Laos have a low computer user to overall population ratio; that is, there aren’t a lot of computer users to be had in those countries anyway. Those were the only major discrepancies I picked up. I would like to say, however, that overall the paragraph flowed together and that it was well written in trying to get the point across. The factual evidence of China’s economic growth and its firewall project are some truthful points.

TDang 2nd review-Group A
Material: e-Commerce on the main page: Online auctions and Information Goods and Revenue Strategies on second page

It looks like everything for your group is now at this page. Is that correct?


 * 1) "The difficulties for providers come when trying to implement a payment system for the information. For the information goods consumer, the internet allows a coordination game to be played. Consumers want to meet a equilibrium network and price. For most information goods such as news, this price is zero." I think you've squeezed a lot into these few sentences. You may well want to expand-what's the nature of the coordination game? Is it a game where it's hard to coordinate on a good outcome? (In some coordination games it's pretty easy to get the good outcome.) The last sentence, "For most information goods..." seems to be talking about something different, about revenue for online goods rather than about selecting the payment method. It should probably be separate.
 * 2) Mircropayments micropayments may or may not wind up being important for online commerce. It's not clear that there's any necessary connection between micropayments and network effects. You should make clear the connection you have in mind, or (I suggest) talk about micropayments without getting into network effects. Your examples (Public transport, Gift-card, University meal plans, ITunes, ESPN, Online multiplayer games) are still useful without trying to tie them into the networks idea.
 * 3) That said, one of the issues for micropayments is whether different sites should each manage their own microcurrency, or whether there should be one or more microcurrencies usable across many sites. This is a matter for network effects, specifically for a micropayment system as a two-sided platform, like a credit card, and that ties into the coordination issue.
 * 4) Here's a question I don't have the answer to, just thinking: Some newspapers (Tucson Weekly, for instance) are distributed for free and entirely ad-supported. Others (and this seems to apply to the "serious" newspapers both national and local) charge a low fee for the paper, but make most of their money on advertising. Why have these latter newspapers NOT traditionally given away the newspaper and made all of their money on advertising? Could their reasons illuminate the online pricing models at all?
 * 5) Business Models I'm going to (temporarily) cut this stuff out. You can go back using the history link for the page to recover it. I'm going to cut it out because I think it's too verbatim to be used safely right now. If you're going to use these, credit Van Alstyne with the ideas, but re-describe them yourself (and expand).

Overall, I'm afraid you need a lot more. Here's a couple suggestions:
 * 1) Sometimes your wording is confusing. It might be that going back through and cleaning up the wording (which will sometimes mean expanding) will also help make it clear what should be further developed. This is a place to use the fact that you're working in a group. Often when I write something, my wording is excellently clear, until someone else reads it and they have no idea what I'm trying to say. Make sure that the different group members understand what's being said.
 * 2) It looks like you're having trouble deciding how to develop the section. The link to discussion on micropayments might be a great place to work from. It shouldn't be your sole source, but if you go through and pick out some of the main points of each commenter, then those points can frame what you should write.
 * 3) If you're trying to identify successful and unsuccessful business models, look for successful and failed businesses. Find some businesses which are interesting to you, and have succeeded or failed online, and discuss their specific business models.

TDang 2nd review-Group B
Material: Gathering Market Information on main page

I broke your material up into Wiki-recognized sections (see this diff). Please verify that the sections are the way you intended?

This is good, and pretty complete, as an outline for the section. What it still needs is referenced material, real-world examples, and more detail.
 * 1) Referenced material: This still reads as mostly well-thought-out but also off-the-cuff analysis. It needs useful material referenced to other scholars, or news articles, business or IT magazines, or something to give it weight.
 * 2) Real-world examples: Generalities are good because they can apply broadly, but specific examples provide more context to really understand the generalities. These specifics might be hard to find, but hopefully some will appear in references.
 * 3) Detail: What kind of data is collected and how is it used? How is the data analyzed? A mass of data is still just a mass of data before analysis, and you haven't yet described what could be done with it to make it meaningful.

I'd also consider how to avoid erroneous analysis, and the possibility of doing actual experiments. David Reiley presented material in class on experiments he ran at Yahoo, combining online and retail data. He also described how some data analysis can be very misleading if done wrong. This kind of thing would be helpful. (A description of his project is here.)

TDang 2nd review-Group C
Material: Network Effects section on main page and also on second page, Positive & Negative Feedback on second page, Two Bandwagons experiments on second page, Demand Structure on second page, Two-sided platforms on second page

Network Effects section on main page
 * 1) "In any organization which focuses on information distribution..." This paragraph seems to be talking about network in two different senses.
 * 2) The first sense ("capable of processing, exchanging, and distributing the information") appears to be talking about the network internal to the business, as important for logistics. That certainly can be important, but it's quite different than what we mean when we talk about network effects. I recommend dropping it. (If it's really something you're interested in, and would like to develop, then it's possible it could be developed in a different section.)
 * 3) The second sense ("will provide better performance in comparison to a competing network") matches more closely what we normally mean talking about network effects. From here on the paragraph is a very condensed version of insights from Information Rules. Those insights are good ones, and should be in the material on network effects somehow. I don't think this is the right format. It possibly should just be expanded as a sub-section, or possibly the different points should be distributed to elsewhere in the material, where they make the most sense. I'd probably take this paragraph, expand it a bit, and put it near the end of the network effects material as an "applied strategy" bit.
 * 4) The paragraph is about strategy for network goods, but not really about network structure.
 * 5) "When considering an abstract network structure..." This second paragraph starts to get at network structure, but doesn't really get there. You could go two ways with this, I think. You could expand the paragraph just a little, trying to make it clearer, but not get into details. Then it's a fine brief note on how you might want to think about network structure. Or you could try to develop it in more detail, in which case it does need a lot more detail. What kinds of network structure are common? What are some examples? How much control does a business have over the network structure-do they have to take it as a given? How do they respond strategically to a highly-connected or sparesley-connected or whatever network?

Network effects on second page - Hasn't been developed

Positive & Negative Feedback
 * 1) I thought the images were working? What happened?
 * 2) Digital Music Players I find this section interesting, but unconvincing. For instance, although the iPod and iTunes came to be the icons of digital music, the MP3 format has (I believe?) always dominated Apple's proprietary format (and the iPod has always played MP3's). So, where's the positive feedback? Is it just in the overall expansion of the digital music "market" (whether market includes pirated music or not), or is it in competition between different players and formats?
 * 3) Negative Feedback And High Definition Television This sounds like positive feedback?
 * 4) My suggestion for developing this section would be to clean up the general material on positive feedback a bit-it's pretty good as is. Mostly you don't need to worry about negative feedback. Describing negative feedback for this purpose is only a way to help make positive feedback more clear. Then work on discussing HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray more.
 * 5) Were there points at which it looked like HD-DVD might win?
 * 6) How did the different standards approach the competition? How much were they open vs. closed, what alliances were formed, were products subsidized, etc?

Two Bandwagons experiments on second page - Hasn't been developed

Demand Structure
 * 1) "However I want to focus it on more specifically saturation, once the network got so large, outings could occur because of the overload" There's still some confusin here between saturation and negative network effects. Saturation can occur with or without network effects. If I'm selling ice cream, and I offer tasty flavors at great prices, I'll rapidly grow my market share, but I still won't ever sell to everyone in the neighborhood because some people will be on diets, or won't like ice cream, or whatever. That's saturation, it's when you've expanded to sell to everyone who's reasonably interested in what you're offering (of course the saturation point will change some with changes in price...). Negative network externalities is overload or congestion-if there's a new road built and it fills up with traffic so that eventually people find it's better to take the longer route to avoid the traffic jams, that's a negative network externalitiy. If the telephone network can no longer handle the number of people making calls, that's a negative network externality. If the telephone network could handle a lot more calls, but more people aren't calling because they don't like talking on the phone, that's saturation.
 * 2) Either or both of these ideas-saturation and/or negative network effects-could be useful additions, although they aren't primary ares of concern for the course. I would break them out into separate sections if you want to develop them more. Discussing BitTorrent, for instance, as a technology for avoiding congestion, would be interesting broken out into a separate section.
 * 3) Generally, this section is good. You should implement the notes you've included about where you'd like to develop, if you can. The references to the images are a bit awkward currently. Off-setting that material into its own section on the page might make it cleaner. You do this a little already, but discussing expectations management in the same terms used for the graphs (critical mass) can make the technical sections on the strategy sections helpful to each other.

Two-sided platforms
 * 1) Media Resources still tricky. For instance, the media resource (say, a television network) benefits from more advertisers, but that's not an externalitiy, it's a standard economic exchange between the two parties. There are probably clean examples-say a cable company provides a platform for TV stations to reach viewers. That's pretty clear-cut as a platform, but the clear-cutness also makes it les interesting.
 * 2) software/browsers - these need to be clarified. What is the platform (for software, will often be OS), what are the sides (the software developers, web site publishers, software users, web site readers).
 * 3)  Other - this is pretty good. It might be a good place to show a difference between one-sided network and two-sided platform, and how something can provide both. A mall benefits the one-sided network (a place for social gathering where more people is mostly better) and the two-sided platform (benefits consumers and stores, as you say).
 * 4) Pricing & subsidies - combine your doubled-up text. Pictures would be really good here.

TDang 2nd review-Group D
Material: Some e-commerce on the main page: Online business methods on main page and Online stock trading sites on second page

Online business methods: The new material is a large leap in the right direction. I think that the existing material is enough to be the core of the section. What remains is to expand on and clarify what's there, and to integrate overlapping ideas. Here's some specific thoughts on that:
 * 1) My previous comments still apply to the pre-existing material. It's not entirely clear what's original, and what's quotes or paraphrasing. The impression given is that it's almost entirely quotes and paraphrasing, in which case it shouldn't stay in the book. Take the valuable ideas from this material and integrate them in your own words (but referenced) into the newer material.
 * 2) E-Commerce Streams - This remains tricky for me. I imagine to someone in another field, the "stream" idea might be intuitive, but to me as an economist, it isn't, and I don't think we can assume it's intuitive to the readers of the wikibook. A little more clarification of the ideas is probably enough. Just as an example of my confusion, when I think "stream" I think of something flowing from A to B to C, etc. This doesn't seem to match (particularly) the "revenue stream" which I might instead call a "revenue source" or maybe even "business model" (advertising versus subscription, for instance, although these would really only be a part of a business model, they'd be a large part). For the particular streams given, the difference between the "value stream" and the "logistical stream" aren't clear. For instance, is shipping part of the value stream (it winds up bringing value to the customer) or part of the logistical stream (it moves stuff around)? Another point I'm confused about-does a business concern themselves with the "stream" beyond their own control? For instance, if I retail kitchen supplies, do I concern myself with the part of the "stream" which provides energy to silverware manufacturers?
 * 3) Supply vs. Demand / Cost vs. Revenue - This is the traditional way an economist divides up their thinking, and staying close to that model would be good if it doesn't mutilate the points you're trying to make. For instance, the "logistical stream" is clearly a cost/supply concern, and "revenue stream" is pretty clearly a demand/revenue concern. "Value stream" I don't understand well enough to say, or it's possible it doesn't fall neatly into the Supply/Demand model.
 * 4) Disintermediation - (see Wikipedia entry) This has been a major part of the discussion for e-Commerce, so this would be a great area for expansion.
 * 5) Strategic relationships / strategic resources - This isn't really clear. I'm not sure whether the connection of this to other material should be made more clear, or it stands alone and needs expansion, or it's only a partial thought and should be removed.
 * 6) "Using the Internet to take advantage of increased economies of scale can help companies determine more cost effective make vs. buy decisions." - There's a lot in that sentence, and it deserves more attention. How does the internet allow a firm to take advantage of economies of scale? How does that relate to make vs. buy decisions?
 * 7) Value Creation - I'd prefer not to use the term "value" here, as I understand it. Essentially, you're describing profitability. When we talk about "value", we want that to be concentrated on the final consumer-how much do they value what they're consuming? Again, using the Supply vs. Demand / Revenue vs. Cost approach can be useful here - complementarities can matter on either supply or demand side, but you're describing the demand side. Your efficiency is cost/supply side. Customer retention doesn't fall easily into the supply/demand framework, although it might be worthwhile to connect it to lock-in. (Also, please provide a more complete reference for the Christensen and Methlie bit-I don't understand how a business which increases revenue and decreases cost can avoid increasing profit.)
 * 8) EBay - This is a start, but it needs a lot more. There is little here that hasn't come up in general discussion during class. You need to get more in depth somehow. Some suggestions:
 * Read what others have written about EBay and find the major points to include here.
 * Examine why EBay has been so much more successful than competitors (like Yahoo auctions)
 * Consider the specific design (and redesign) of EBay's rules-why are the auctions designed the way they are, what changes have been made, how does the reputation system work?
 * How does EBay fit into the larger internet economy? When might a company decide to use EBay for online sales instead of (or in addition to) having their own web site? Is EBay more suitable for selling some kinds of things than others? How does it relate to disintermediation?

Online stock trading: This is good material. I think it needs a bit more formally-referenced content, and you need to be careful how you discuss differentiation, but it shouldn't need a great deal more to be complete.


 * 1) Referenced content: You probably don't need a great deal of this, but it would help to reference some more of your large statements to show that you're describing something known rather than your impressions. Unfortunately, your one reference is to a blog, which isn't generally considered a very good source.
 * 2) Differentiation You need to be both more careful and more detailed in how you handle differentiation. "Differentiation: is sometimes used in business literature almost as if it means "being better", but that's not what it means in economics. Differentiation is about changing your offering in such a way that you don't have direct competition-by doing so you have given yourself market power, but in a smaller market. Making your product simply better is competing in quality and making it cheaper is competing in price. (A quality change can sometimes amount to differentiation if you simultaneously raise the price so that some consumers will choose not to buy from you, but making the market smaller is an essential part of differentiation.)
 * "Over the last 10 years, online brokerage houses have increased the services provided and driven down costs in order to yield differentiation." Differentiation is a demand-side concern, while costs need to be considered (it may be that differentiation is possible, but the cost of doing so is too high to profitably sell it to the customers) driving down costs isn't primarily an element of differentiation.
 * "For example, many potential users will look to see who has the lowest price per trade. Looking at the bigger picture, what consumers want is a cheaper deal." If business (say cell-phone plans) have complicated pricing schemes, then the details of those rules can be part of differentiation, because just as different consumers may choose different elements from a menu of two-part tariffs, different consumers might prefer different sellers who offer different price rules. However, if it's basically, "buy from the company which is cheapest", that's simple price competition, not differentiation.
 * Concrete examples of differentiation would help. Are there different features which different firms offer, and that appeal to different users?
 * Alternatively, perhaps the online trading business is simply a commodity business, and there's not much room for successful differentiation? Do these companies make much profit? Can any of them afford to raise their prices?

TDang 2nd review-Group E
Material: Dynamic competition This is an excellent section. For completion, you could go either of two routes: polish, or extend. Polishing would mean going through to carefully optimize the writing (particularly see the style guide on emphasizing keywords), extending would mean things like working on your "Soon to be..." note.

There are a couple things I see which could use revision:


 * 1) "First movers can expect to recoup sunk costs." -- I know what you mean (that they can expect to earn enough in the market to recover more than they spent in fixed costs), but I think the way you've phrased it could be misleading. The firm can't directly recover their sunk costs. Recall one of the things that a firm can do sometimes to ensure they have the first-mover advantage is to put themselves in a situation where they've got large sunk costs, so that a future entrant couldn't convince them to exit the market. This just needs some careful re-phrasing.


 * 1) Low economic Durability -- This is a lot clearer than what you had before, but I would still get rid of the "durability" expression and concentrate on the difficulty reselling.


 * 1) I'm a little torn on your example of the AT&T/Apple contract. On the one hand, it's interesting, but it's at a different scale then we normally think about lock-in. Mostly we're talking about lock-in at the consumer level rather than a firm-to-firm alliance lock-in. I'd suggest changing it, but how you change it could go a few ways. You could completely replace it with a consumer-oriented example. Or you could offset it with a bit of explanation of how lock-in can be important even at the firm-to-firm level. If you wanted to take this second approach, I'd recommend searching for some information on the hold-up problem (you can ask me for help finding references if you want).

TDang 2nd review-Group R
Material: Net Neutrality on second page, Intellectual Property on second page, Collaborative Filtering on second page, Censorship in SE Asia

Net Neutrality I think this needs a lot of polish, but maybe not a great deal more development. Here's stuff on polish:
 * 1) "An example of this being earlier this year, AT&T..." This bit, through the end of the paragraph is really confusing. Try rephrasing carefully.
 * 2) Style: decide whether "network neutrality" deserves to be uppercase or not. A likely way to deal with it is in the style guide on "emphasizing keywords"
 * 3) Timeliness - Because this is an issue of current politics, the status could be completely different 6 months or 2 years from now. The material is therefore potentially dated in any case, but that's OK. Try to deal with it by phrasing things so they won't actually be wrong in a year. For instance, "As of late 2009, the U.S. Congress is considering..."
 * 4) International - Some description of how this is playing out internationally would be helpful. What happens if the U.S. implements particular rules on net neutrality, but the EU acts differently? Is this even under discussion in other parts of the world?
 * 5) References - try to provide references for material. It would be good to have this for analysis. It's necessary for any description of any group's policy arguments.
 * 6) Just a bit more development on the issues of who gains and loses from net neutrality would be good.
 * 7) Thinking more about anti-trust, this might be good, but unless you're working from good sources who have written exactly about that, I think it might get too speculative. If you're determined to address anti-trust, that should probably go into a more general section of the book on policy.

Intellectual Property on second page
 * 1) "A good breakdown of this problem can be seen in the origins of copyright law in the late 18th century in Germany." OK, this got me all interested, and then nothing! It needs follow-through, or to be removed.
 * 2) "Extending these property rights into..." The final paragraph is extremely dense-there's a whole lot going on there, and it's not fully developed. Essentially, it's a chapter unto itself. I think it could be extended into 2-3 paragraphs and dealt with a little more carefully.
 * 3) Given the state of what you have written, I again would say that trademarks are a distraction. I would deal with them with a footnote or a single sentence in parentheses, rather than a paragraph.
 * 4) I'd recommend that in the first or second paragraph, you make a clear statement about the intent of copyright & patent laws. It's a little fuzzy now, and broken up into different places. (Also, the intent is not necessarily to allow maximum profit, but enough profit to encourage IP production in the first place.)
 * 5) If you wanted to, as a policy argument, this motivation for the laws could be contrasted with rent seeking.

Collaborative Filtering on second page Obviously, you have the intent to develop more here, but what you have currently is excellent. You've used references and specific examples well. So, mostly I'd say continue this style through some of the other material you intend to add. A few specific suggestions:
 * 1) "first-mover bias" -- you could connect this to information cascades, as we explored briefly with the classroom experiment.
 * 2) Astroturfing is a potentially major opportunity or problem for businesses, depending on whether they want to exploit collaborative filtering, or rely on accurate filtering. It's always been a major concern for Google, for example, in trying to prevent people from gaming the search engine rules to get their own sites ranked highly. Describing how firms combat astroturfing deserves at least a paragraph, and it could warrant a good deal more development, depending on how you want to balance the section.

Censorship in SE Asia No development since last review?

Areas not covered
Here are some ares which seem likely to be worth covering in some version of the wikibook, but aren't going to be in this iteration:

"Open" Business Strategies
This overlaps several areas, including standards and intellectual property. The clearest way to profit on information goods is with control. However, there are those who profit while relinquishing control. Cover those business strategies.

Software as Service

 * Wikipedia article

Online Games
This might be tangential to a general-purpose strategy book, but Virtual economics is an interest of mine, and games in one form or another, are significant parts of the internet.

Extension of Information Markets
Some markets for non-information goods still have a large amount of their value come from information and intellectual property: pharmaceuticals, for instance. New technologies, such as advances in computer-aided manufacturing could turn markets for non-information goods into information goods.

Transaction Costs
This material is covered somewhat in the material currently in the book-copied this here in case it's worth developing into its own section later.

What impact does e-commerce have on transaction costs? Certainly there is less transaction cost in distributing material over the internet versus physical products at stores. Are there extra transaction costs for information goods which aren't present for physical goods?

User-generated Content

 * Discussion of changes to Wikipedia's user-contributed content system.

Final review
I am asking for something different on this review. Rather than reviewing another group's material to help them, I'd like you to discuss your own group's material. Assume that your group is done developing the Wikibook, but someone else will pick it up to further develop it in the future. How would you advise them to build on what you've done?
 * Another way to think about this: imagine that you're done with this project for now, but you'll have to come back to it in two years after you've forgotten what you were doing. What advice would you give yourself to help you get back into the swing of developing the material?

Final review-Group A
Review Personal: I believe that this section does have a solid base. What I mean by that is that the chapter flows together and there is a sense of purpose reading it. The down fall of this section is that the topics are too minimal. The subjects are just bits and pieces of topics but there is no foundation topic to the chapter. Moving forward we might like to add lock-in in this chapter, and set it as the principle theme. This way we can tell the reader of a proven system to maintain customers. Understanding how to establish a lock-in and then principle payment methods would help complete the chapter. I believe that we could remove the section on auctions, bring this principle in might be difficult to tie together. --Econ17 (talk) 06:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Final review-Group B
The information covered in this chapter taps into such a small aspect of the field it discusses. It does a good job introducing topics but it would require a lot more in depth work to really uncover all the ways we benefit from collecting information. I hope someone can uncover all the different ways to turn data into information, and than how to utilize this information as a way to gain an advantage in some type of industry. There are many different statistics and makes it very useful to have a guideline on how to make the correct decisions from the information and not misunderstand findings in the data to come to a wrong conclusion. Some occurences have effects on other statistics regardless of orgiional predictions, it is hard to calculate the change in data that will occur, all these different angles on the topic barely broached in this chapter would be beneficial in so many ways.

Final review-Group C
For our group, network effects, I think that overall our group did a very good job developing the ideas surrounding network effects. I think the intro network effects on the main page did a good job at setting up a good basis and explanation of what would be talked about in our section and chapters.

One of the things that I feel our group could have done a little bit better would have been setting up the topic a little bit more. We began our portion of the project without giving a lot of background on the topics. I think this is because we expected our classmates to understand what we were talking about. I’m sure they did, however, someone looking at the project that does not have background knowledge of the subject may feel a little bit insecure with what it being talked about. I think only can be fixed by working together as a total class linking each groups sections together and not the sections within a group. This would help with a cohesive flow throughout the whole book and not just the sections.

As for our group I think we did a fairly good job on linking all of the different portions of the project together. We had good transitions and flow between the topics and did a very good job a mentioning the various topics throughout each of the sections in out groups. We also highlighted the main concept of network in EVERY one of the different sections in our group. I think this is one of points that makes our project very good.

I think another very positive aspect of our sections was the information and material we provided was not presented in a too complex way. Even in some of the more technical sections of the project. To make the concepts more understandable we used several different graphs that were well presented and explained. No other groups directly used graphs, so I think that our group’s graphs were a very helpful contribution to not only our section, but the overall project. --KingKing (talk) 03:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Final review-Group D
Final Review (self evaluation): The overall finished product of our section appears to have a good amount of detail and a strong message. However, there is definitely room for additional material in the future. For example, the online stock trading sites second page covers the several topics pretty well, but it would be a stronger page if a few more concepts were included, such as the cost structure for these trading sites, and maybe a section about economies of scale in that particular market. If someone were to pick up this section in the future, I would say that those 2 topics would be most important to add. Another possible change for the section as a whole would be to polish the layout of the chapter. I feel as though the smaller sections seem a bit scattered and the order could be fixed a bit. Another section that should be expanded in the future is eBay, which could benefit with more on competition, cost structure, and possibly how this site is able to differentiate from other online auction sites. For someone attacking this project in the future, I would suggest to create a second page for the eBay section and add those specific topics. For the online business methods and value creation sections, I think that both are well written and detailed. A suggestion for expansion of the value creation section would be to go more in depth on the different costs mentioned in the beginning. The final product of the online business methods section is clear and easily understandable with the 3 different models being broken up into each their own paragraph. The next step for this area would be expansion and examples.

E-commerce streams portion has a good amount of information, and not much would need to be added to this section. The same goes for the future of e-commerce, which appears to already have a great deal of the topic covered. The main focus of additions to this section in the future is basic expansion of what is already written, and perhaps adding the suggested topics mentioned above. There seems to be enough information present for a newcomer to read and review our section, and get a good idea of what is being covered. Overall, the final product seems to be heading in the right direction. The information is there, but expansion and polishing both details and the format of the chapter should be key in future revisions. I think that each different topic could definitely use more examples to make everything more understandable. Cleaning up the chapter by formatting in a different order and adding an introduction is another task that I wish I would have done in the past. Hopefully these suggestions and additions can be made in the future in order to give this book a more expanded version of our chapter. Allegra12 (talk) 00:44, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The evolution of the online business section has been interesting indeed. It has had its roots firmly grounded in the B. Mahadevan article since the beginning, but the latest version has made a welcome transition from being the article, to using the articles information as a guideline for expanding on online business models. There is room for more examples of businesses that fall into the three general categories. Also, it could be interesting to see the assumptions of online business, essentially the entirety of e-commerce, clarified in laymen’s terms to make the book more friendly for novice internet users.

The value creation section does a good job showing the differences and advantages of doing business online compared to traditional brick and mortar business. Many of the key ideas are well explained; however, some use further explanation and analysis to justify their role in value creation. Also, similar to online business models, this section could clarify some of the assumptions that are made in order to show a clearer thought path.

The future of e-commerce is interesting in that it talks about acknowledging the importance of social constructs in e-commerce. This section takes one perspective on a particular future evolution, namely online shopping, but could do well by providing analysis for other areas of future development in other sections of e-commerce. The future is very hard to predict and technology is changing rapidly. The status quo today has the potential to be obsolete in six months. Although this highly unlikely, it is a possibility.

E-commerce streams does an excellent job of providing a lot of good information and walking the reader through the processes and applications. The section discussing disintermediation is particularly relevant for the chapter as a whole and I think it was very appropriate to dedicate space for explaining the idea. This section excels at clarifying assumptions that could easily be left to be inferred. I think it could possibly benefit from including more examples on e-commerce value and revenue streams and how they function.

The Ebay section is entertaining in that it provides a good account of the company’s history. It could benefit from focusing more on how it has revolutionized online marketplaces. It would be interesting to have a competitive analysis throughout the existence of Ebay to show how it became a market leader and dictated the evolution of its own competition.

Online stock trading sites is a clear, well laid out account of the world of online stock trading. Beginning with the history and moving to the differentiation was a good transition. The differentiation and competitive analysis was the most complete of the section. I particularly enjoyed the ice cream shop analogy. I think it could be applied to many forms of online business, including online stock trading. From an economics perspective it was nice to read the section on the reasons for industry popularity and consumer demand. Clearly none of the e-commerce businesses would be possible without a visible and clear demand structure. This section is a breath of fresh air based on that perspective.

Overall, the various sections are quite a hodgepodge of e-commerce facets. In the future it would be nice to see a more streamlined and organized product, similar to what a few of the authors mentioned in their works. I believe this is a humble beginning for a complicated and evolving topic. --Tthomas2 (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Despite some redundant material, the information provided by Group D in the section of “e-commerce” appears very sound and informative. In addition to the material provided in each branch of e-commerce, the group did a good job providing structure to the section and made sure the topics flowed easily from one to the other.

Online business methods was a great starting point for the group as it set the basis for what was to be discussed later on. While much of the information was received from the B Mahadevan article, the member who contributed to that section made sure all material provided was necessary and understandable. By breaking the business methods down into three distinct categories (portals, market makers, business transactions), the reader is eased into the details of e-commerce and how an online business functions successfully. The details showing the relationship between the three categories along with their differences also helps to clear the air of any questions the reader may have.

Value creation is also a well put together section. Continuing off of business models, value creation does a good job of showing the work that is put into a company’s success. Furthermore, the topic also places more emphasis on the internet based value creation and how vital it is for e-commerce. By showing how companies utilize the internet for value creation, the reader is given a good idea of the potential of internet use as a business mechanism. One place for improvement could have been to dive further into the cost structures and foundation of value creation, but overall the topic is solid.

While I would have preferred to have “The Future of E-Commerce” section placed at the end of the group’s subject, the information provided draws a clear picture of what to expect from companies in terms of evolution through the internet. In addition to showing the potential of e-commerce, the group member who contributed to the section does a good job of laying out the work that needs to be done in order to achieve the goals of progress in e-commerce. The best example of this is the study done by Professor Schummer in terms of online shopping. While I would have liked to have seen other industries explored in this section, I feel “The Future of E-Commerce” was put together very well.

Like “The Future of E-Commerce”, “E-Commerce Streams” is a section I would have liked to have seen expanded. The contributor does a good job of laying out the three main value streams as well as provides examples that are clear to the reader. However, I feel that more time and more examples could have been used for the paragraph on disintermediation. This seems to be a very important aspect of value stream mapping and also ties directly to a company’s success. Although attempted, the contributor also could have gone into further explanation regarding the logistical stream and how it differs from the value stream to be a topic of its own. On a positive note, the contributor does a good job of not only providing examples for the material discussed, but provides clear descriptions of just how the processes work.

While I don’t feel the eBay section was truly necessary for the subject of e-commerce, the example is beneficial in the sense that it provides a real life example of how a business can succeed in the internet world. It uses the company a means to tie into other aspects of e-commerce (C2C Network, online community, etc) which provides a good summary for the wiki book in general. That said, I feel more attention could have been focused on the cost structure and how the website generates revenue. Online stock trading sites might be the most clear and well put together section in the e-commerce subject. The segmentation between “background”, “differentiation”, and “popularity” provides a terrific road map through the topic and gives the reader clear examples of what online trading has become. In my opinion, the online stock trading section is what the eBay section should have become (under the title “Online Auction Sites”). It provides a brief history, how sites differ from one another as well as the features that make it so popular. Additionally, the contributor does a good job explaining how online trading has affected traditional trading in the present day.

Overall, I feel the contributions made by Group D were both very informative and very understandable. While there can be some expansion on some categories/topics, the group succeeded in the aspect that it provides complex information in a nature that can be picked up and easily read by someone who wants to learn about E-Commerce. --AAnderson7 (talk) 00:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Online business has been becoming big part of 21st century's economics.

By finishing this project, I learned about e-commerce more and more. We talked about briefly online business methods such as online trading sites, ebay, value creation, and future of e-commerce. We did a good job introducing topics and illustrated about how it works. Our whole structure is clear and have a decent amount of details. Our group contributed their part at their best. At the end it came out with path to each section to each section smoothly.

Overall. each sections provide variety and diversity about e-commerce which could be a ultimate description for people who does not study internet economics.--Thesung41 (talk) 14:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Final review-Group E
Final Review and Suggestions for future editors.

Overall, I am reasonably happy with my final product here, and the work that I put into my section. I to pedantically follow the advice of my reviewers, and I think that their guidance helped to guide me away from erroneous or misleading explanation. Also very influential was a paper that I found online during the course of the semester. It was a graduate paper on job markets written by the professor. Although I did not glean information from the paper directly, it did allow me, tangentially, to become more comfortable with the concepts of Individual and Systemic Lock-in than I would have simply attending lectures.

I think that the biggest limiting factor for me was that I worked alone, rather than in a group. Usually I prefer working alone, as I don't have to carry anyone else's load, nor answer to group members. However, I think that I underestimated the work that this project required. That is not to say that the final product is or was necessarily expected to be considerably voluminous. Rather, the understanding needed to write intelligently about the assigned topics(Dynamic Competition: Individual Lock-in, Systemic Lock-in, and First-Mover Advantage), while avoiding the pitfalls of false conclusions, was much more intimate than I had expected. It would have certainly been much easier if I had had two teammates with which to divide the work, each of us focus on mastering an individual section.

Another Limiting factor for me was my the trouble that I ran into trying to publish graphs supporting my explanations. This is somewhat a product of not allowing myself enough time, i.e. procrastination. However, I still cannot figure out how to convert an Excel or Google Docs graph into a .gif file so that I can upload to Wikibooks via the Uploader. I think that a decision tree and a decision matrix would both be very strong supplements to the First-Mover advantage sections. I hope that any future editors will have better luck with this. Additionally, future editors will have a better opportunity to include internal links and documentary references to other sections of the wikibook. I think that in my section along with those of the the other groups, internal links and more cohesive formatting and referencing could really go a long way towards creating a more polished book.

Final review-Group R
Collaborative Filtering section was done very well. The transition of topics was clearly marked allowing the reader to easily navigate an overview before delving into the specifics of each section. Each of the other topics (Intellectual Property and Network Neutrality) could definitely be revamped with distinct separators to differentiate topics. This would also aide in the clarity of each section by assigning a specific heading to be covered thoroughly in the proceeding paragraphs. Increasing the distance between paragraphs to show changes in topics or alternating the size or characteristics of the font would also serve as an eye-catching break of the monotony of continuous text.

Intellectual Property Rights is an essential topic for any future discussion on information traffic and business in an increasingly virtual era. There are a few good examples of types of property rights, though singling out a few as being easier to enforce or protect would be more beneficial. Given rates of piracy, what are a few alternative methods besides legal action that can be taken to protect Intellectual Property?

There is a lot of good information in each of the topics, though navigating them is a tad cumbersome. Including any reference material and links to other sources is a good idea so that a reader of the material can backtrack through and gain a better understanding of the specific situations. Censorship in East Asia is definitely a good topic because of the rising importance of trade, both physical and virtual, with a strengthening East Asia block. Having some insight into the methodology as well as the mentality behind the various censorship endeavors helps an would-be investor or business manager in assessing the overall cost of entering a market with limited freedoms and restricted protections on sensitive information stored or transmitted online.

Keeping spaces open for breaking developments on global arrangements of property rights, privacy laws and other issues keeps in mind that, with a rapidly changing legal fight, the final strategies are too jumbled to be of much use. An assessment of currently existing laws, both national and international, would be beneficial for a reader attempting to navigate through some of the finer details relating to specific areas and trading blocks.

There is still a lot of necessary work to be done before this can be considered complete. Spacedmonkeey(talk) Bold text