comentarios...

Recibimos comentarios muy útiles de nuestro post. Lo que nos ayudó lo más fue lo de Jaime Lanfranco. Él dijo:

"Tambien podria haber un ranking de los regalos mas populares,o que las mujeres podrian votar por lo regalos que les gustaria recibir. O que directamente una mujer publique a la "comunidad regalos que les gustaria recibir para el cumpleaños" onda lista de novios falabella pero aplicado a un tema mas amplio. A veces se da el tema de que uno recibe cosas que no usa nunca.
El tema de los rankings seria bueno porque a veces uno no tiene ni la menor idea de los prodcutos que se estan ofreciendo para el sexo opuesto, o cual sera mejor que el otro, un terreno totalmente desconocido, jajjaja.
suerte con la idea"

La idea de rankings ayudó a la idea de REGALOS.COM se desarolló en una idea más completa.

prosumerism in the cola industry

Ok, so it is very late, and I can't think in Spanish right now, so I'm going to right another entry in English, if that's alright. If it isn't, just let me know and I'll translate it to Spanish. 

Reading about the prosumer made me think about experiences I have had with prosumerism. One that really came to mind was the Dewmocracy revolution. I have had two different internships with Pepsi Cola in the United States, and I dealt a lot with the Dewmocracy plan.

Dewmocracy is a revolution to the Mountain Dew brand in the US. I know it's not happening down here in Chile. Actually, does Mountain Dew even exist down here in Chile? If not, I'll explain really quickly. Mountain is a citrus flavored carbonated soft drink that is very high in caffeine and is very successful in the United States. Anyways, because of its popularity, there have been many attempts to make different "flavors" of Mountain Dew to expand and capitalize on that brand. Almost all of those attempts have failed. So starting last year a huge new iniative called Dewmocracy was put into place. It was a forum where the consumers got to help decide new flavors. Basically it started as a website where fans of MD suggested different flavors, the names for the flavors, and the designs of the bottles. The MD brand team narrowed the suggestions down to a few finalists and then everybody got to vote on the final three. Once those final three were decided, they were introduced into the market as LTOs (or limited time offers). The 3 flavors, MD Supernova, MD Voltage, and MD Revolution are currently for sale all over America for people to try, but only one is going to become a permanent expansion of the MD brand--the other two will go away. After the three month trial period, there is going to be a vote (it is actually happening in 19 days--there's a countdown on the website). This way the consumers will once again get to decide which new MD flavor stays. Talk about prosumerism in action!

This is all so interesting to me, because not only does this ensure the success of the product--since the one that stays is the flavor that is most popular--but it also gets MD consumers a lot more involved in the product. It has been really exciting being on the company side of this project because the response it has garnered has been phenomenal! Customers are getting more excited about all things Mountain Dew! It's a win-win situation! It's amazing what can be accomplished when the end-users have a say in their products! YaY for prosumerism! :D

trabajo

Para aclarar, mi grupo del trabajo es con Francisca Barcia y Sanaa Abouayoub. Nuestro abstracto está en el blog de Francisca.

¡O no!

¡Acabo de darme cuenta que escribí mi entrada en inglés! ¡Discúlpame! Si quieres, lo escribiré de nuevo, pero en español. Solo cuéntame. Gracias!

Wikipedia as a reliable source

The readings we had from the book Wikinomics were incredibly interesting. Of course I was aware of the collaborative nature that new and existing projects and companies were starting to employ in a huge scale, but I had never thought that much about it until I read this book. It is so amazing how connected everybody is from all around the world, and the amount of work that can be accomplished by this "collective genius" is astounding. It personally makes me feel that I have the ability to make a much larger impact on the world, in whatever way I choose, than I had before. 

One of the topics that was discussed that is closest to home for me was the issue of Wikipedia being a reliable source for information. For my entire college career, Wikipedia has always been such a huge help when researching different subject matters for class projects or papers, or heck, most of the time if I am interested in something and I want to find out more information about it, Wikipedia is always the first place I look. It has always been such a pain because my professors have always been adamant about us students not being allowed to cite Wikipedia as a source in any research we do for class. This is oftentimes the biggest pain ever because you'll find the most perfect quote from Wikipedia and would love to incorporate it into your paper, but you know you'll get an F on the paper if you include it. This whole issue is caused by the fact that anybody can edit a Wikipedia article, thus making the professors think that crazy idiots regularly spew inaccurate information all over the articles. 

But the publication of a study's findings in the journal Nature should have all my teachers starting to rethink their stance on using Wikipedia as a source. This article helps further explain the study, but in short, it was found that a Wikipedia article only has on average 3.86 mistakes per article, whereas Britannica, the "golden standard" of sources, has on average 2.96 mistakes per article!!! Oh my goodness! If this doesn't make my strategy teacher rethink his policy on letting us use Wikipedia articles as sources, I don't know what will!

A Black Swan

La idea del "Cisne Negro" es muy fascinante a mí. La idea, cuando aplicado al ejemplo del millionario, en realidad es muy contradictoria al concepto de "El Sueño Estadounidense". Esto difunde el pensamiento que todos en los Estados Unidos pueden lograr cualquier que los quieran si trabajen muy duro. Pero el concepto del "Cisne Negro" dice que hay más elementos que diciden el futuro - principalmente los eventos y factores aleatorios.

En el sigiente clip, Taleb describe el "Cisne Negro" brevemente. 

Él da ejemplos varios de cisnes negros. Mi favorito es Harry Potter. Me encanta los libros de Harry Potter, y a pesar de los elementos obvios que contribuyeron a su éxito, como la habilidad del autor, había otros factores que lo ayudaron aumentar su público, como azar y su coordinación. Y, solo por diversión, abajo es un clip FANTASTICO y muy chistoso sobre Harry Potter! ¡Disfrútalo!

(Warning: This WILL get stuck in your head!)

"market of multitudes"

El tópico del libro "The Long Tail" por Chris Anderson es muy interesante. Me dejó pensando de como muchos "hits" de hoy (en muchas industrias diferentes) deben su éxito al apoyo de "The Long Tail". Usando la industria de música como ejemplo, muchos actuales músicos populares comenzaron como artistas desconocidos. Sus canciones no estuvieron puesto en el radio o en MTV, sino por el internet. Y por sus popularidades en el internet, el mundo "mainstream" los comenzó a fijar. Un ejemplo es la artista Meiko. Ella tiene un gran talento como un singer/songwriter, pero ella no tuvo acceso a los grandes medios de communicación. En cambio, ella las puso sus canciones en myspace y youtube y ella comenzo a recibir atención de bloggers influentes. Por eso, más gente se dieron cuenta de Meiko y empezó el "snowball effect". Hasta ahora, las canciones de Meiko han sido usado en programas de televisión de éxito como "Grey's Anatomy", ella ha vendido muchas copias de su CD en iTunes, y la mayoría de sus conciertos son agotados. Ella empezó como un "blip" en el lado muy lejos a la derecha en "The Long Tail", pero ahora, ella tiene una presencia mucha más fuerte que si no exista el ambiente del mercado de hoy. Un ejemplo de una de las canciones de Meiko está abajo:

También, encontré un clip muy chistoso de la explicación de "The Long Tail". En el clip que sigue, el autor, Chris Anderson, da un "elevator pitch" por "The Long Tail". En Second Life. No sé nada sobre Second Life, excepto que es muy popular. Lo pensé muy chistoso. ¡Disfrútalo!

ciao ciao! 

(¡soy italiana!)