Sunday 8 July 2012

Social network EQUAL social problem?



Social network like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube are getting popular nowadays. As Malaysian, we are most familiar with Facebook. As we all know, social networking sites provide us a plate form to get to know more friends, reconnect with friend with cheaper way, exchange opinion, sharing and etc. Some said that social network equal to social problem but some denied.


Social network = Social problem?? (O.o)??
People claimed that as social networking site provide a plate form for each other to interact, we are hardly to recognize whether the person is in good intention or not, so it lead to social problem. Moreover, everything can be spread online very fast and people has no time to judge whether it is true or false and make conclusion, if it is sensitive news, it will lead to social problem as well. Besides, gossiping, rumor can be conduct in internet basis as well. People get hurt even they didn't meet up. Some might said since it provides interaction easier, people are becoming not familiar with face ti face interaction.


It seems like make sense that social network equal to social problem. But is it TRUE? Let's discuss it in dept. Will people with evil mind suddenly become angel mind merely because of the vanish of networking site? Will we be able to differentiate one is good or bad even if we interact with them face to face? Will the sensitive news become never happen merely because no one is spreading? Lastly, will people stop gossiping or sharing rumors among each other if they quit social networking site?


Definitely, NO!
   People behavior will change, but their nature never change. A bad guy still a bad guy who conduct crime in real life. A news still a fact even if people are not spreading it. Gossiping still happen even though we remove social networking site. From these question, we can clearly seen that Social Networking is not equal to Social Problem. 
   We cannot conclude that Malaysia is becoming worse in safety merely because we saw post on Facebook everyday. The crime rate might just same as previous, but because of the help of social network, people are easier to get information or updated news. Thing are share very fast, so everyone think the matter become more serious. But it might be wrong. Human nature is, bad thing will spread and good thing will keep. Therefore, most of the time, we can see lots of bad news posted on Facebook. You know what? Not because of nothing good that happen, merely because human's nature. 
   When we look it from the other angle, we can said that social networking actually raise the awareness of users towards all problems and issues. Of course there is some people spreading news in bad intention, back to the point, the problem in on people behavior, perception and intention, but not Social network.


Hence, Social Network is NOT = to Social Problem.!!!!


Stop social Problem my changing our intention, perception and behavior is a better way than claiming social network's fault.

Saturday 7 July 2012

Engaging in Social Network site: Necessity or Lifestyle?

People nowadays are engaging in social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked in and much more.
What actually it is? Social networking site is where people which have similar interests, views gather together and form a group of community. It is an Internet online platform which connects people with others, to share their views, interests and ideas.
Are social networking site a necessity or lifestyle for you?




More and more people are using social networking site to communicate with each other. Some use it to keep in touch with their friends, old friends, classmates, relatives which they meet by face-to-face or in other countries and to know the news update about their friends. They can communicate to others by using chat systems or conversation systems. Some people use it for entertainment purposes and business purposes. As people nowadays are busier than before, many companies and groups conduct their meeting online by using social network site. This can save their time and some of them may be hard to schedule time for meeting. It is easier using virtual network than real face-to-face meeting. Professions and students can use this platform to discuss their ideas, assignments and even collaborate with others for projects.


As social network site becomes more and more famous, people choose to set up their businesses through social network sites. Through this, businesses or people can create their own page to sell, provide services and promote their products. It is cost free. Some businesses promote their products and services by paying fees to advertised on the social network site to get attention of users. People will notice the advertisements and spread it to their friends, more people will know about the companies. It is much more efficient and effective. 

Social network site starts to become a necessity to people. It helps us to communicate with others, share our stories, update our news and information, to discuss ideas or conduct meetings. Businessmen have found a new and effective way to advertise their products and services.

In a nutshell, social network site is no longer a lifestyle for people, it is a necessity which people relies on it for many purposes.

Friday 6 July 2012

Business Social Network: Opportunities and threats


  Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups such as small rural communities. Nowadays, social networking is not only possible in person but also for business, high school and etc. The most common social networking is Twitter and Facebook. As for business social network, it is a socio economy activity by a groups of businessman act or behave upon business opportunities.


  The opportunity for business social network would be social networking can really help the company grow their business and interact well with existing customers. Besides that, many business people agree that business networking is a more cost effective method than through advertising or public relation as business networking is a low-cost activity that involves more personal commitment than company money.



  However, there are some threats for business social network. The first is perhaps the effect on productivity in the form of addictive games on Facebook such as Farmville and Texas Holdem Poker. Next, the malicious links that are being spread on sites and these scams work by luring people to click on links posted on social networking sites with those scandalous comments. By clicking on those links, people are potentially downloading and infecting their computer with malware which could harm their IT network. To make things even worse, they will potentially be spreading the problem around the business via their business social network.

  In conclusion, the company should fully utilise their company’s opportunity efficiently and effectively while tackle their threats carefully as it may harm the company’s reputation.
Related link:

http://www.smallbizpod.co.uk/blog/2009/08/17/social-media-and-small-business-opportunity-and-threat/

Thursday 5 July 2012

How Social Media is changing E-commerce and the world


Facebook, Friendster, Twitter are the examples of social media. But, what is social media? Social media is a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online. It is very useful and easy for everyone to share their own ideas, photos, videos, likes, dislikes throughout the world. Everybody can find friends, business contacts and become part of a community or a brunch of different communities.

How social media generate revenue? Social media assisted revenue per share to generate the revenue. For example, someone tweets a product and then places an order, then Twitter will generated $ 26.12 from that order.

Now, let’s look at the topic talking about “how social media is changing e-commerce?
First of all, social media cans exposure to new products. New products are being released everyday and it is hard to keep up with. By digging into our profile, social media website can recommend products to us every time we shop in their shop. Undoubtedly many of these suggestions will involve products we have not heard about or we had previously never considered purchasing until then.

Next, social media bring users to social incentives for purchasing. Wanting new and better things others already have is a powerful factor in purchasing behaviour. Many of us want the latest and greatest; and this desire increase when the people we know having it. So, many customers are purchasing due to social incentives.

Then, how is social media changing the world?
Social media will make information universal. Anyone in the world now has access to the totality of human knowledge. If this sound hyperbolic, just imagine how likely it was for a kid in a third world country to read classic literature a decade ago. Besides, education nowadays is becoming a global right for all people and social media makes it easier for both children and adults to communicate with each other and learn about the world at large.


Lastly, social media has changed the way we communicate. It becomes easier for us to communicate with each others as compared to last time. Businesses used social media to communicate directly with their customers. They can obtain feedback and ideas, monitor conversations about their businesses and let their customers know that they are genuinely interested in them. If utilized and kept current, social media can greatly aide how businesses access their customers, market their products and allow businesses to establish essential customer relationships. As a business tool, social media have great potential, changing the way many businesses opera.


http://socialmediatoday.com/david-amerland/344152/how-social-media-changing-world

Saturday 30 June 2012

Mobile Payments: Are Malaysians ready for it?



Do you know what mobile payment is? Is it a money transaction through the mobile phone? Yes, exactly! Mobile payment refers to a payment service that operated under financial regulation and performed via a mobile device. Consumers can pay for different types of services or products through mobile payment instead of paying cash, credit cards, or cheque.


There are four models in mobile payments:


1.      Carrier Dominance Model


2.      Bank Dominance Model


3.      Collaboration Model


4.      Peer-to-Peer Model







Are Malaysians ready for mobile payments? In my opinion, I think they are! Because, today’s world is a network world as well as Malaysia is also considered as a developing country. Through mobile payment, Malaysian can just make the payments through their mobile phone, but not paying cash to the services or products they want to purchase. This is a much easier way for them.


In addition, Citibank Malaysia has launched this mobile payments system to Malaysian. Thus, Malaysian for sure will be ready for this system since it is convenience for them. Citibank states with the slogan that “Paying bills whenever you can and whenever you are”; this slogan will attracts Malaysians who are living in a busy lifestyle of today’s modern society. Citibank allows Malaysian pay their household bills instantly with just a simple SMS from their mobile phone anywhere and anytime just through this mobile payments system. Malaysians will be no more hassles searching for the internet connection as well as saving their time.


http://www.telecomcircle.com/2009/03/mobile-payments-business-models/

Transaction privacy and security: How does e-commerce affect my privacy


E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web (www). When we, as a consumer buy or sell thing online which involve registration, IP address, we are actually involve in e-commerce or in other word, we are part of e-market.

How does transaction privacy and security affect our privacy? 
As we involve in e-commerce, when we access to some website for free, we usually click on agree to all during our registration or signing up session. Yet, in the term and conditions, there is a condition where we agree to receive targeted ads. With this, the company or that particular website can track your online activities and determine which ads to show you.
This is actually using SPYWARE.


So, what is Spyware?
Spyware is Internet jargon for Advertising Supported software (Adware). This usually involves the tracking and sending of data and statistics via a server installed on the user's PC and the use of your Internet connection in the background. It is a way for shareware authors to make money from a product, other than by selling it to the users. There are several large media companies that offer them to place banner ads in their products in exchange for a portion of the revenue from banner sales. Adware is the product of spyware but it is not all.
There are also products that do display advertising but do not install any tracking mechanism on your system. These products are not indexed in our database. Some users who didn't notice the term and condition might think the advertisement is annoying, however, it is not an illegal software. Due to privacy concern, users might object to it and prefer not to be tracked. 




Cookies?
Cookies on internet is not like what we always eat during tea-break. It is not as nice as that.



Another affect on consumer is due to cookies. Cookies are inherently harmless. They are simple text files that help coordinate the remote website servers and your browser to display the full range of features offered by most contemporary websites. These features include all your activities on internet. As cookie technology evolves along with website publishing and advertisement technology, privacy issues are sure to arise time and again. Third party (people who supply the cookies) will be able to access to users’ personal information and figure out their behavior. 

As a conclusion, cookies and spyware do have bad consequences to users as people usually don't like being tracked. Even though there is no harm, people like to have privacy and didn't want other to monitor what they are browsing. However, they have some benefit towards users as well. It makes us to use computer more convenience as it helps us to stored our ID and password on computer in cookies. Besides, if I am the owner of webpage, I can easily approach to my potential client using cookies.


Not feeling comfortable with cookies and spyware? Get rid from it. There are few websites suggest how to remove or prevent it. As shown in below.

Related links:
1) http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/spyware-remove.aspx
2)http://www.pcworld.com/article/129094/how_to_remove_spyware_from_your_pc.html
3) http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cookies

Friday 29 June 2012

Cyber Crimes in Malaysia


    Cyber crime is a criminal activity done by using computers and the internet. Although Internet is a great place for working together and building a better world, it also has its dark side. Every year billions of dollars are made in a number of different cyber crimes and the victims are usually people like you and me.


    Based on the articles found, the most cyber crimes in Malaysia are love scams and fraudulent online purchases among those 403 cases that reported within the first three months of the year. The statistics shows that in year 2011, the frequency of cyber crime has increased by 348 cases and incurred in losses by RM16 million as compared to year 2010. For the love scams, it usually falls under women especially single-mothers, unmarried woman and women with marital problems as African nationals love affairs with local women.




     As for fraudulent online purchases, the reported cases are commonly reported by those who bought goods and services through common websites such as alibaba.com, e-lelong.com and mudah.my.  People leave a lot of personal information online and such information can leave the people vulnerable to let others stalked. Apart from that, another cyber crime was online financial fraud whereby customers were asked for their bank account number.  The simple concept for those identity thefts is, get access into people account and use their personal information for their own benefit. So, never connect to your bank account on a public computer, or using Wi-Fi access point that are not trusted.
                In conclusion, computers and the Internet do made our lives easier in many ways yet it is unfortunate that people use these technologies to take advantage of others. Hence, it is smart to protect yourself by using antivirus and must be careful whenever enter any personal information.


Related Article:

Thursday 28 June 2012

Electronic currency

Electronic currency also known as e-currency, e-money, e-cash, digital money, digital cash, digital currency, cyber currency. It is the money represents a system of debits or credits used to exchange electronically, to exchange value with another system. It involves the use of computer networks, Internet and digital stored value systems.


We have 3 kinds of electronic money systems:


1. Centralised electronic money systems - Quite a number of parties use centralized system, such as PayPal, WebMoney, cashU and others. They use this systems to sell their electronic currency directly to the end users, but other systems sell through third party by using digital currency exchangers. Some community currencies work with electronic transactions, such as local exchange trading systems and Community Exchange System.


Example is the Hong Kong Octopus card. The electronic money deposits work similar as regular bank deposits. When users of Octopus card deposit money, the money is deposited into the bank. It is similar to debit-card-issuing banks.


2. Decentralized electronic money systems - It includes the Ripple monetary system, which is a monetary system based on trust network. Bitcoin is also one of the decentralized systems that is a peer-to-peer electronic monetary system based on cryptography. The last one is loom, a commodity exchange system that is digitally encrypted.


3. Offline 'anonymous' systems - when using offline electronic money, before accepting the money from users, merchants do not need to interact with the bank. Merchants can collect money that users spent and deposit the money later. This could be done offline,which the merchant can go to the bank with his storage media to exchange e-money for cash. E-cash is usually refers to anonymouse e-cash in cryptography. The first offline e-cash system was proposed by Chaum and Naor.


Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_money

Sunday 24 June 2012

Green E-commerce: How can you contribute?



In today’s world, online shopping is every useful and common for every consumers. Consumers using e-commerce to reach everything they needs or wants. But, did e-commerce go green? And, how can users contribute to it? Before answering the two questions, we would like to explain “what is green e-commerce” actually meant? Green e-commerce means that people buy and sells products through some effective ways which is not polluting the environment.


First of all, we can contribute e-commerce go green by moving towards the paperless society. While not completely eliminating the paper trail, online retail presents significant opportunities to reduce the amount of paper consumed within the retail process by using email communications and paperless invoicing. It's your choice whether you print it out or not. Besides that, we can also provide consumers to look for the catalogue though online but not paper catalogue anymore. Since paper catalogue is polluting the trees and it is wasting the cost for us.


In addition, we can contribute e-commerce go green by reducing wastage. Once a batch of product has been put onto the shop floor of an off-line retailer, a predictable proportion of that batch will be dropped, damaged, broken or simply shop-soiled. Either way it's "dead stock" that will probably end up being thrown out by the store owner - simple wastage. Online retail does not suffer the problems of in-store wastage, or the need to have stock relegated to the usually unsellable category of "display stock". Supporting online retailers is supporting the move towards the more efficient usage of the planet's raw materials by reducing unnecessary wastage.




Last but not least, we can contribute e-commerce go green by the effective way of product packaging. Off-line retail is a marketing environment where product presentation is critically important. Products are dressed up for display in a variety of packaging materials that involve the use of unsustainable or non-renewable materials like plastics and acetates, or cardboard and paper products covered with chemical inks and dyes purely intended to attract the attention of the consumer at store level. With on-line retail the presentation is done on the website using only an image of the product itself, allowing online retailers the flexibility to move to more minimalist and materials-efficient packaging, and to make greater use of boring white, beige and brown recycled cardboard boxes that wouldn't stand a chance at the front-line of offline retail. Online retail is significantly more environmentally sustainable when it comes to point of sale packaging.


Throughout the three ways above, we have full of confidences to bring the e-commerce go green.


http://www.ecommerce-marketing.com/index.php/green-ecommerce/

Saturday 23 June 2012

Who governs the Internet?

No one governs the Internet, but they have bodies which are maintaining the Internet.


Internet Society (ISOC) - It is a voluntary organization which promotes global information exchange through Internet.


Internet Corporation for Assigning Numbers and Names (ICANN) - It is an International self-governing bodies not a government agency. It was being established to represent a wider range of countries and interests. It begins to address emerging public policy issues in the E-Commerce I period.


The bodies that are maintaining the Internet:
  1. Internet Architecture Board (IAB) - a group of volunteers invited by ISOC to come out with standards and allocate resources, such as addresses. It is divided into 2 groups, which are Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). IETF develops and maintains the Internet communication protocols. It addresses the problems and coordinates new services. Working groups are appointed to define the standards and coordinates all the activities. IRTF research on the long-term research problems which will be critical in 5 or 10 years.
  2. Internet Network Information Center (InterNic) - It is a project sponsored by NSF and is conducted by AT&T and Network Solutions. Various registry services needed for the Internet to operate effectively is provided by InterNic.
  3. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - The laboratory for Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology manage the W3C. It is a joint initiative between MIT, CERN and INRIA. It is forms to develop standards for the evolution of the web.
Refence:
http://www.mkatoh.net/who-governs-the-internet

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a modern technology model for enabling convenient network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications and etc that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort.



         One of the benefits of cloud computing is that it does not require a user to be in a specific place to gain access to it and thus, it is convenient to be used in any places. As for companies, set up cost is almost zero because all the expenses that the company would have incurred do not exist. 



For examples, cloud computing allows them to reduce the cost of information management since they are not required to own their own servers and can use capacity leased from third parties. There will be no hardware purchases for servers and spending on labour man. Besides that, since such cloud computing applications can be accessed from anywhere and at any time, it would be easier to collaborate with employees who are not in the same country and makes it easier to manage a global workforce.


          However, there are some drawbacks which arise in accordance the cloud computing technology. Although it is true that there is no upfront cost to many cloud computing applications, there are other ‘soft’ cost that cannot be ignored and the server do have an ongoing monthly subscription to pay. Moreover, the limitations for mobile cloud computing with wireless carriers are not totally reliable while offices and homes are fine so it is quite unstable for those who use cloud applications through mobile. 


Meanwhile, the loss of data and the risk of unauthorized access have cause cloud computing lack in security as the data is important to any business and organization. For examples, as cloud computing is about keep data on a web based, when it comes to security of data in a country, the country won’t be able to risk even a little of the confidential data within a country such as citizenship and monetary banking records to be exposed to computer crimes likes hacking.

          As a summary, there are no exact ways to measure whether cloud computing bring more harm than good or vice versa.

Related link:

Friday 22 June 2012

Phishing : How can me PROTECT ourselves



                                                             Fishing = Phishing???   (o.O)??




PHISHING is pronounce like FISHING, however, it is not some relax, good like fishing.
Phishing is a broadly launched social engineering attack in which an electronic identity is misrepresented in an attempt to trick individuals into revealing credentials. In other word, phishing is THEFT.




                    




         PHISHING   =








Phishing is a technique used to gain others' personal information for purpose of identity theft using fraudulent phone call, website and e-mail message that sent by a legitimate firm. 

How does a phishing email looks like?
 As shown in the picture, a phishing email can be identified by looking in few ways. First, there is always some grammar error, secondly, there must be a threat contain in email and usually they will said that they are from some popular company like bank, government or some other well known website.

How can we as a internet user protect ourselves from phishing?
There are few suggested ways for us to learn.

1. Be skeptical
Internet is a place where everything can be virtual, whereby there is nothing real online. People pretend that they are not who they are in real life, doing everything that they are not going to do in real life via internet. Hence, as a internet user, we have to be skeptical. Never trust anything easily even the email or the private message is sent by some of your close friend because their account might be hacked. Besides, if the company send you an email with threat and you really worry about it, do call to the office of that particular company to double confirm the situation. Never think that we will never hurt in internet since it is virtual. Yes, Internet is virtual, yet people are real. Analyze everything clearly and carefully to prevent ourselves get trapped.
2. Using website to warn us 
Latest version of browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome is now come with built in phishing protection. We can protect ourselves by surfing internet via these browsers. These browsers will analyze web sites and compare them against known or suspected phishing sites and warn you if the site you are visiting may be malicious or illegitimate. 
3. Use the keypad, not the mouse
If you really afraid of the threats that stated in email, do type in the URL by ourselves instead of clicking it direct;y with the mouse. We cannot guarantee that the link provided in email is real one, so instead of taking risk by clicking with mouse, please use your keypad and type the URL of the particular company manually.
4.Look for the lock
Valid sites that use encryption to securely transfer sensitive information are characterized by a lock on the bottom right of your browser window, NOT your web page. They also have addresses that begin with https:// instead of the usual http://. Do observe carefully.
5. Different is the keyword here
Use DIFFERENT passwords for different sites; I know it’s tough task as most functions of the brain are being passed on to technology, but this is a good way to prevent phishers from getting at all your sensitive transactions, even if they’ve managed to compromise one.

The five ways mentioned can be a good ways for us to protect ourselves from phishing threat. Do remember, Do not trust what you see online. Do not trust what you think it is true. Pick up phone and make a call to confirm is always the best way.

Here are some others websites that provide opinion on how to protect ourselves from phishing.
1) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505144_162-57388953/5-ways-to-protect-yourself-from-phishing-attacks/
2) http://www.fraudwatchinternational.com/phishing-fraud/phishing-protection/
3) http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/phishing.htm

 


 

Saturday 16 June 2012

Identification & Comparison of revenue model for youtube, amazon.com and google

http://www.youtube.com/
YouTube is a well known e-commerce site where they are able to generate millions upon millions of video views per day. It is no problem for them to aggregate eyeballs from all around the world on it. There are millions of people upload and download videos everyday on face. With this competitive advantage (Enable to gather millions on people's eyesight everyday), YouTube is using Advertising, affiliate and subscription revenue model to sustain in the market.

https://www.google.com
Google's revenue model is just similar to YouTube, it depends most of its revenue generation on advertisement. Google generates up to 10 billions of total revenue and only 100-200 millions are from other sources like licensing.


https://www.amazon.com
While amazon.com initially is a online bookstore. It then diversified its products to electronic, toys, education, sports and so on. In addition, it is considered the pioneer in affiliate partnership marketing, where it uses affiliate revenue model as well. Besides, advertising and affiliate, it generate revenue using some other model which slightly different from YouTube and Google, that is transaction revenue.


We are going to discuss the revenue model implemented by these three e-commerce company in dept.



Advertising 
 
YouTube
Advertising is basically the most obvious and widely-accepted model to e-commerce sites. Video ads and text ads are two popular advertisement models. Even though other video sites choose to display both text ads and video ads, but until today, YouTube only opt for text advertisement as they are not willing to ruin users' experience on their site. Besides, YouTube can implement an email advertisement as they have the data and information of all registered user. Advertisement which is paid by other company to YouTube will then be sent out to users on daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Google
Google use Adwords to run its advertisement. Google Adwords offers par-per-click (PPC) advertising to owner where both text and banner can be advertised. It enable advertiser present it to people at instant those people are looking for information related to what advertisers are offering. Basically Google only allows short text advertisement in order to prevent users being annoying.
Amazon.com
With its well known and widely acceptance in US, it provides advertiser to make ads on its webpage and most of the time, their partners and alliances will make advertisement on its web site in order to catch consumer's eyes and increase revenue at the same time.


Affiliate
 
YouTube  
While affiliate is another revenue model which is similar to advertising but its fee is different. Advertisement is a payment of a sum while affiliate is focused on CPA (cost-per-action). Meaning that, YouTube only get pay when user buys or pays for the service or product through the page displayed in YouTube.
Amazon.com
As mentioned above, Amazon.com is considered the pioneer in affiliate marketing. Up to now, it did run its affiliate program as everyone can be a part in its affiliate program as shown in this website ( https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ ). With this affiliate program, it actually enable Amazon.com turning consumer's click into cash which is going to be generated.

Transaction
   
Amazon.com 
The main source of revenue for Amazon.com is from its transaction as Amazon.com is a plate form for Sellers to promote their products and buyers to buy what they want and needs while Amazon.com act as a middle man to settle those customer service, packaging, delivering and so on. From this, there are lots of transaction with Amazon.com and the amount increase day by day as people nowadays are more rely on internet. Instead of going out, pick and choose, people are more convenience in click and get the products in short period of time. Amazon.com get revenue from every transaction and therefore it can generate huge amount of revenue through out the year. As shown in here ( http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-business-revenue-models/amazon-case-study/ )

Subscription

YouTube
YouTube can generate revenue using subscription model as it contains huge amount of videos. It requires user to pay up a small amount of monthly fee or yearly fee in order to access a certain part of video or a better quality's video. Besides, YouTube provide a ads free environment to users with subscription.

This is a graph showing the revenue generated from few technological company.
 It shown that Amazon.com is actually the leader among these e-commerce sites.

E-commerce Success

To run an e-commerce successfully is not an easy task and to maintaining a successful e-commerce site is a vital part of a thriving retail business model these days. However, Amazon was passing through those difficult problems and become a success e-commerce throughout the network world. Amazon is a multinational electronic commerce launched by Jeff Bezos at year 1995. It started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling MP3 downloads, software, CDs, DVDs, video games, electronics, furniture, toys, foods, and jewelry. Did you know? Amazon is also AmazonBasics that branded electronic products, AmazonFresh that sells and delivers groceries in Seattle, AmazonStudios that is online social movie studio, and Amazon WarehouseDeals that offers discount on refurbished products.

There are few strategies that Amazon applied to be success in their e-commerce business. First and foremost, internet imposes no limits on how much Amazon can sell. The digital enables limitless inventory, boots customer care and allows high margin, lowest prices. For limitless inventory, Amazon went from 1 category to 16 main categories. Amazon focuses on competition, product, search, buying power, brand and trust, and cost management. Besides that, Amazon also creates a digital driven supply chain by hiring the expert- Walmart. For boost customer care, Amazon first focuses on customer focus by following a bottom-up approach; every decision at Amazon is driven by customer’s needs. Secondly, Amazon focuses on frugality by continually looking for ways to do things cost-effectively. Lastly, Amazon focuses on innovation by always looking for simple solutions in order to provide lower prices to its customers.  Amazon had creates a trusted, loyal and informative relationship with its customers. For high margin and lowest prices, Amazon is significantly cheaper than its competitors assuming there is no sales tax and free shipping. As a pure-player, Amazon leverages its digital advantage to optimize its supply chain. Amazon leveraging its high positive cash flow, it is able to maximize margins and beat all other retailers when it comes to pricing.

Furthermore, Amazon’s control of customer accounts and loyalty. Amazon acquires its customers’ confidence and it benefits form a loyal customer base: 2/3 of the sales comes from returning customers. The 3 main approaches of Amazon’s control of customer accounts and loyalty are as below. First of all, recurring usage which is recurring usage captivates users’ attention. Then, seamless integration which is vertical integration that creates a consistent experience that is very appealing. At last, lock-in which occurs when circumstances prevent uses from leaving a platform.

Moreover, Amazon is building an ecosystem to achieve digital supremacy. Now, Amazon has reached a critical mass, it is trying to create an ecosystem to increase its footprint towards users and authors to customer loyalty. The examples for towards users are great device, massive selection and low prices. The examples for toward authors are higher royalty share (35% or 75%). Then, for customer loyalty, kindle owners will buy 70% more books than prior to owing the device.

Based on the three effective strategies applied by Amazon, Amazon has been a successful e-commerce in today’s world.


http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-706351.html

E-commerce evolution in Malaysia

Do you know what is E-commerce?
Electronic commerce, also known as E-commerce (EC). EC is the process of buying, selling, transferring or exchanging products, services or information via computer networks. It conducts the financial transaction in electronic means through Internet and other computer networks.


Let us have a look on the history of EC:
  • 1960s - Businesses used computer networks to conduct electronic transactions. They used Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system which enables companies to send documents such as invoices, order forms and shipping confirmation to other companies by computer.
  • 1979 - American National Standards Institure launches ASC X12 standard, it is reliable in transferring large amounts of transactions. Michael Aldrich invented online shopping system which used videotex technology.
  • 1981 - Thomson Holidays, the first company who used B2B online shopping.
  • 1982 - France Telecom introduced Minitel and it was used for online ordering.
  • 1984 - The first B2C online shopping mall is Gateshead SIS/Tesco and Mrs Snowball is the first online home shopper. At the same year, CompuServe launched the first EC service, which is Electronic Mall in USA and Canada.
  • 1985 - Nissan UK sells cars and finance with credit checking to customers online.
  • 1987 - Swreg provides software and shareware to authors to sell the products online by using electronic Merchant account.
  • 1990 - Tim Berners-Lee used NeXT computer to write the first web browser, which is the World Wide Web, a hypertext-based web of information.
  • 1994 - Netscape releases Navigator browser under the code name Mozilla and Netscape 1.0 is introduced to made transactions secure by using a security protocol called Secure Socket Layer. The first online bank opens. Pizza Hut offers online ordering on its Web page.
  • 1995 - Jeff Bezos launches amazon.com. Dell and Cisco start using Internet for commercial transactions. eBay is founded as an AuctionWeb.
  • 1998 - People can purchase Electronic postal stamps.
  • 1999 - An eCompanies bought business.com. Napster, a peer-to-peer filesharing software launches.
  • 2000 - The dot-com bubble burst.
  • 2002 - eBay acquires PayPal. Niche retail companies founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains.
  • 2003 - amazon.com posted its first yearly profit.
  • 2007 - R.H.Donnelley acquired business.com.
  • 2009 - amazon.com acquired zappos.com.
  • 2010 - groupon.com rejects google's offer and paln to go ahead with an IPO.
  • 2011 - eBay acquired GCI Commerce, a company which is running an online shopping sites for brick and mortar businesses.
Web 2.0

It is a new Internet tools and technologies which takes a concept of using the network as a platform for information sharing, customizing designs and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in social media dialogue. Examples of Web 2.0 are social networking sites, wikis, blogs, video sharing sites, web applications and others.

Technologies used by Web 2.0:
  • Ajax programming uses JavaScript to upload and download new data from web server.
  • Asynchronous JavaScript - allows users to continue interact with the page, which data requests goin to the server and data coming back to the page are separated
  • XML, JSON, DOM - used to transmit structure data and allow interactive user experience. Example, Google Docs used this technique to create a Web-based word processor.
  • JavaScript frameworks
  • Adobe Flex
  • HTML
What Web 2.0 allows us to do:
  • It allows users to retrieve information.
  • It provides more user-interface, software and storage facilities through the browser.
  • Users can provide and control the data.
  • It encourages users to add value to the applications.
Refences:
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/120739
http://money.howstuffworks.com/history-e-commerce1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0#Characteristics