Week 4 - Kick-off & Business Models

It is already week 4 and some of the work is starting to pile up. I am finally able to start my first post for the week and it is already Tuesday night, oh well. My goal for this week is to get a better understanding of how these websites and great new ideas on the web make money more than just have a lot of traffic and hopefully either sell a bunch of advertisements or sell the website. In addition to the required reading and video (see my thoughts below), I plan on viewing/reading the following for this week:

-Video - Will Twitter ever make money?

-Reading - The economics of giving it away

-Video - Disrupters: eCommerce

-Reading - Copying and Copywrite

-Reading - 5 Business models for social media startups

There are two other readings that are available for this week, but I am not sure if I will get to them. I will be on the road much of this weekend, which might be good to get more reading in, but could also be a hinderance. We will have to see how it goes.

Business Models on the Web - Article & Professor discussion

Wow, there are a lot of different business models out there, or are there? I read the article that had 9 main business model categories with 4 to 5 sub-models under each category. It seems excessive, but I knew of an example of almost all the sub-models. I think the internet is still relatively new. Sites are changing so rapidly and it is driving changes in the physical world. Who knows when or if the growth will ever slow down, but I would have to imagine the types and numbers of business models out on the net will increase more and more as the internet becomes more useful to all each day. The Infomediary model and the Advertiser model seemed like they could be combined to make for a more diverse site/company. A company could sell the ads and the tracking information that would go along with it to provide not only good ads on the web, but valuable data for the ads' originators.

The unitized purchases from iTunes are just fascinating. That is the best model for the net as it has no physical presence other than the developers to make and update the site/program and the servers to hold all the media. There is more to it than that, but still what a perfect model for the internet. I think that will be the model to strive for in the future. How do you digitize everything else we physically have or at least lessen the need for its physicality? I am not saying the other models won't or don't work, but a model like iTunes really sets the bar (and profit margins) high.

-A side note: This is an interesting survey conducted and people's responses to web advertisements. I found this searching for pictures for my blog http://thenewmediology.com/wp-content/banner-ad.gif