Note: This summary will not cover the question on social networking Web sites since the nature of marketing for this medium is speculative at best. It would be interesting to consider, however, if email applications might not be a better way to achieve the same marketing results as suggested in the reading.

Q1a. Commercial platforms such as corporate Web sites that promote a single brand.
The important keyword to note here is brand marketing, which should not be confused with product marketing. In today’s world where consumers can be considered as money rich and time poor, it is important to create a strong attitude towards your brand within their minds, and this is especially so for low-involvement products*. There are two reasons for this. First, positive attitudes once instilled are very difficult to change. Second, because consumer turnover for low-involvement products is high (i.e., for bottled water you might always just go for the cheapest), it helps to create brand loyalty, and to always have the brand within the consumers’ evoked set**. The way to do this is to have the consumer associate themselves frequently with your brand. In this case, the Internet provides the perfect medium for the use of interactivity to hold the consumers’ attention. Here, it is important to point out that the Internet is not the one-stop solution to the marketing mix. Television ads still have the ability to reach out to the largest number of audiences, and if you recall from the lecture, companies still spend millions to place an ad during the Super Bowl. The Internet only comes in after awareness is created. Think about the Nike case here, where an online context introduces the element of online interactivity into the sport of running, and where their Web site becomes a portal for users relatively independent of geography. In this situation, one might say that the concepts of Web 2.0 (i.e., user interactivity) have been ported over to ensure that brand loyalty remains high towards a single brand. On a separate note, the Web also allows the consumer to customize the products that they buy using the company’s Web site.

Since the brand is probably an established one, it is more beneficial to consider the use of the Long Tail for marketing purposes rather than to push for a sale (as it would be for amazon.com for example). One might think of viral or buzz marketing, where a video is launched onto YouTube, which later circulates through blogs and RSS feeds. Further down the road, and provided the initial advertisement was quirky enough to draw attention to itself, parodies from the “cult of the amateur” may show up to further increase awareness towards the brand. Once again, if we think about low-involvement products, such user-generated content (UGC) is important because you would be more likely to believe something your friend pushed to you, than what might be perceived as a hard-sell by the company itself. Naturally, some companies might feel that such UGC is an infringement of copyright and through legal injunctions, may try to wrest control back from users. I would consider this, however, as an example of the locked-in phenomena in trying to stay with a copyright-oriented model even with the advent of Web 2.0. Unless the UGC is particularly derogatory, why would a company not want to take advantage of free marketing by users? Furthermore, isn’t generating prolonged user engagement with a brand the ultimate aim of brand marketing?

*Low-involvement products are those that do not require much thought from the consumer before they follow through with a purchase. High-involvement products, on the other hand, usually cause the consumer to engage in more thought and fact finding before the purchasing behavior takes place. While what might be considered as low or high involvement products will vary between consumers, the former are usually low-cost items (e.g., bottled water, tissue paper), while the latter are high-cost items (e.g., car, a house etc.).

** The evoked set is the range of brands that comes to a consumers mind when they are thinking of making a purchase. Since low-involvement item are usually bought on the spur of the moment, keeping your brand within their evoked set is especially important.

Q1b. Commercial platforms such as corporate Web sites that promote a single brand.
This case belongs very closely to the realm that we have been discussing through the previous weeks. It is actually a moot point to discuss whether Web 2.0 exists for commercial Web sites such as amazon.com since their entire existence subsists on the availability of the “cult of the amateur” and UGC. Commercial Web sites are the portal to the niche end of the Long Tail, and it is through user purchases and comment postings that other consumers are pointed to more obscure products that they might like. In this case, networked effects are important, since the larger number of users you have, the more data you can work with to direct other users to even more products.

Q2. Non-commercial platforms such as blogs or photo sharing Web sites such as Flickr.
Non-commercial platforms are synonymous with free Web applications. Usually, the business model that goes with such a medium is akin to that which you have heard in the Google presentation. Namely, free software is used to aggregate a large number of users so that advertisements can be targeted at them. For blogs, marketing can be done through paid sponsorship of bloggers to test out a company’s products. As mentioned previously, a trusted blogger might have a greater influence on consumer perceptions for low-involvement products. Nonetheless, it might be that user skepticism will increase (as it is with television commercials) as blogs become more commercialized.

Since the passage of information through blogs can be seen as a form of buzz marketing (i.e., the Discovery of a product or brand that Damien mentioned in his lecture), the use of UGC and the “cult” becomes inevitable. And since viral marketing online usually starts off as a niche video etc., information of its existence would probably also be transmitted through the same devices that make accessibility to the niche end of the tail possible.

For Web sites such as Flickr, issues of copyright come into the picture. Interactivity means that the old ways of doing things, where a company insists that all its creations are proprietary, has to be abandoned. The reason for this is because the situation is different from Q1a., where the aim is to make consumers stay with a certain brand. As mentioned, since non-commercial platforms depend on targeted advertising, the important aim is to achieve a critical mass in the number of users. So, by adopting a more open format instead, mash-ups of different Web applications can occur (such as the whole bunch of Google Earth mashups I believe are out there); the greater the versatility of a software, the more users you can attract, and the more money you can make from advertising to them. In terms of the “cult,” well, this entire business model is designed to attract the creators of UGC, so it obviously doesn’t make sense to alienate them.

In closing, I would just like to point out how my ideas are supportive of UGC and interactivity. You may choose to disagree of course, in which case the question becomes whether it makes sense to do so since Web 2.0 exists; if everyone else is using mashups and embedding user interactivity, then how would a Web site that refuses to do so survive? There are definitely more heads and more ideas out there outside the corporate world than within after all, and it doesn’t make sense to tap into this resource when it comes at such a low cost. And while UGC has it problems with accuracy, it is silly to think that any kind of portal can be completely objective in its reporting. Here is a link to the example I mentioned which actually happened in October last year (sorry about the misinformation there). Unfortunately, I can’t locate any news on the response from the other side, but you are free to do your own sleuthing: http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Story/A1Story20071011-29532.html. Instead, statistically, it makes more sense for an erroneous fact or carefully concealed news item to be singled out when you have users on a global scale nitpicking at something.

Note: I won’t go through the facts of the 3 types of content protection (or lack thereof) since these are readily available in your readings. I have also chosen to discuss the issues with a more ideological slant, since the pragmatic aspects were already covered in class. By the way, thinking through the issues presented in the lectures and tutorials, rather than the regurgitation of facts, will be necessary for acquiring a good grade in the final exam.

Copyright Protection
In trying to understand the positions for or against copyright, it is helpful to first situate yourself chronologically as well as in terms of role; the former refers to before and after the advent of Web 2.0, while the latter refers to (a) a major distributor, and (b) a Poor Struggling Content Creator (PSCC). Let’s first consider the time before Web 2.0. In this situation, the PSCC has created something, but has no means to get the piece of work out to a larger audience. This person thus has to surrender any and all rights apart from attribution, depending on the agreement, probably in exchange of royalties. The only problem would be if the major distribution channel thinks that this piece of work is not worth the effort, and thus refuses to acquire the copyright. As long as this doesn’t occur, this can possibly be considered to be a win-win situation, with the PSCC less concerned about copyright because infringement issues are the distributor’s problem. Alternatively, one might also consider the PSCC as being subjected to the whims of the distributor, i.e., there is a loss of power for the individual, such as editorial censorship. Today, with Web 2.0, the PSCC no longer has to depend on the distributor (Web 2.0 is important because if you recall, niche products fall into the Long Tail model). In this situation, copyright becomes an issue for the PSCC as well, and can truly be envisioned, as many of you mentioned in class, as a piece of protection for the individual. The thing to remember here is the importance of interactivity and Web 2.0 in making this happen! Whatever the case, however, advocates of copyleft would argue that the aims of copyright are mercenary in nature, and therefore protect the individual’s right to make money rather than the greater good that might befall humankind from the free distribution of the user-generated content.

Copyleft
In order to understand the position of copyleft advocates, you must situate yourself in the mindset where pure commercialism is bad, and where adherence to the 4 freedoms of copyleft must reign supreme. So while you may actually sell your creation (in this case software), you cannot stop the buyer from copying it for their neighbor(s). This makes commercialism a moot point really, since with P2P networks, you are definitely going to have less buyers than distributors. Returning specifically to Stallman’s argument that it is not wrong to make a copy since you are not taking it away, one can also argue against his interpretation of the scope of theft - while the law might have referred to theft in relation to material property in the past, it is silly to think that it should not be updated in the digital age to encompass copying. In addition, I would also like you to consider whether Stallman’s aim to achieve freedom for all can really be achieved. For example, Stallman himself quit MIT to pursue his ideals, which suggests that his aims while not necessarily supporting capitalism, may in turn reinforce a new digital divide. My point here is whether the issue can really be looked at in terms of black and white – can a capitalist not also be a philanthropist?

On a separate note, it is again important to consider the importance of Web 2.0 in aiding the rapid development and distribution of what we may consider as niche products until it enters the mainstream. Firefox might be a good example of this. Firefox is also an illustration of how the Internet in fact realizes the existence of copyleft. Consider, for example, if the only means of distributing a piece of software was by snail mail. A particularly entrepreneurial distributor with the means to package and ship this software might end up abusing the copyleft mandate by making money off PSCCs who had created them for free. However, the Web preempts this, and allows for greater altruism by freedom-supporting individuals since it supports economies of scale for free software, and which makes it senseless for anyone to attempt to commercialize it. Furthermore, it is important for something developed in such a way to have this kind of mass distribution in order for it to have networked effects rather than just what might potentially be a disorganized mass of software that can’t communicate with each other (e.g., HD-DVD and Blu-Ray).

Creative Commons (CC)
What you feel about CC actually depends on your position towards freedom and the capitalist enterprise. And I would suggest, as Sophia did in the lecture, that this position will change depending on whether or not you are the owner of copyrighted work that can actually make you rich. Whatever the case, CC is a middle ground that tries to preserve some moneymaking avenues for the PSCC, while also allowing this person to maintain an individually decided level of altruism. However, since CC more closely approximates copyright in that it allows for the PSCC to negotiate fees with others, its major detractors are not surprisingly copyleft advocates. And once again, in order to understand their position, you have to take a very extremist stand. For example, they would argue that any kind of copyright is bad because it encourages capitalists to create things that people don’t need so that they can make money. This is actually a very Marxist argument that scholars such as Guy Debord have made regarding the false “lack” that capitalists create in consumers so that they will always feel the need to buy and buy. Others might also argue that Web 2.0 is nothing but a tool that makes consumption more efficient, and therefore again benefits the capitalists and their copyrights. Regarding this point, you might want to consider if this position still makes sense today since the situation between producers and consumers is not as it once was after Web 2.0 and direct consumer-to-consumer transactions came along. For one, the accessibility of the Long Tail means that the “lack” is not necessarily top-down anymore. Second, the major distribution channels may be bypassed under such a bottom-up regime, which means that wealth has the potential to be equalized (provided you are in the “correct” half of the digital divide or course).

In sum, it is very hard to posit any kind of steadfast position on this topic unless you contextualize your arguments. In other words, you need to consider who you are arguing for, and whether this person’s views are still valid in the context of Web 2.0.

The long tail represents the “end of scarcity” as niche products (yellow portion) are able to find a market when previously only hits (orange portion) could reach the masses through the major distributors. Scarcity here refers to limited shelf space, need to consider one’s geographically bounded consumer base (buyer scarcity), marketing and packaging costs (economic scarcity) etc. Once defined, the question is whether these scarcities can be reduced and why. Indeed, the long tail has always existed. However, the scarcities prevented accessibility to the yellow portion for both distributors and end users. What has made it accessible to all now is the Internet, and in particular, Web 2.0. This is because the Internet allows for infinite shelf space, relative low cost in putting something up for sale, and the elimination of geographic boundaries etc. However, since niche content is found primarily through user referrals, access to the yellow portion would be seriously obstructed if (i) there were no hits to first attract and consolidate a user base (networked effects), and (ii) no means for users to generate things such as referrals, reviews etc. From the business perspective too, companies can increase accessibility by tracking users’ purchase behaviors.

In terms of how the Long Tail influences business possibilities, as mentioned, companies who take advantage of Web 2.0 will benefit greatly. Nonetheless, the yellow portion according to the literature has taken up ¼ to at most ½ of all sales, so the Long Tail model is indeed something to be looked as an adjunct, rather than as a totally new thing that replaces the old model; the Yellow portion is not so much an avenue of freedom for the end user perhaps, but a way for distributors to make more money when considered in this light. For the end users, this economic model allows them to have access to a market for the sale of goods because of the characteristics mentioned earlier (relatively low cost etc.). Since niche items are pegged to hits, however, whether absolute freedom can be afforded the end user is still in question. In terms of purchase intentions, the same characteristics allow end users the possibility of getting to resale markets etc. Costs might also be reduced provided distributors can escaped the locked-in phenomenon, where online items are prices according to real-world market requirements. In addition, since the model can provide for the judging of demand before actual production of the product, there is also a reduction of risk.

As was mentioned in the lecture, the model is not able to reduce all forms of scarcity. For example, there are technological-related scarcities that cannot be overcome, such as the digital divide. In fact, the Long Tail may possibly increase the divide. In addition, anyone who has seen the costs of shipping outside the U.S. will know that things often become less scarce the closer you are to the source of where the service is located, at least where physical delivery is necessary. There are also market-driven scarcities such as the production of limited edition collectibles; while their accessibility is mitigated by the Long Tail, they will forever remain a limited commodity as long as demand outstrips supply. Finally, there are user-variables such as time, money, and energy (attention) that cannot be solved unless we all become robots with infinite credit. J