I agree with this statement for different reasons.

Bill mentioned the reason the content is free because the payment will slowdown the surfing experience. it is not necessary true for subscription model.

Although content is free also not necessary means better online experience. The commercials are interrupting the user experience in the free content model today anyway.

Kindle as a platform to consume online content is a good idea. Although i am not sure if it is going to be dominate platform even as a business model. This model is not something new, in the past we saw PodCast allow people to consume content offline. Will people start paying for their content for better content and quality?

Bill also mentioned scarcity might be the reason that cause online content will not be free. Hmm… i am not sure. Computer is blending into people life. Video camera, camera, cell phone all have video ability. it is just easy for people to generate and produce video content and share them on the internet.

Scarcity might never happen.

Bill mentioned, short content is the best for none profit business content. I agree with him in this view. The online media, social media created this environment and platform for everyone has a business opportunities to raise their voice and business.

it is good to see none profit business, home business are able to leverage this to develop their business.

I still agree, shorter content should be free. Consumers just will not pay for the content that is free and will be free. It is the business owner to make pay the bill just like commercial and trailers.

hulu in Chinese is a kind of fruit symbolize mystery, magic and wonders.

after living in hulu.com for a week, i can say that it is a wonderland.

Layout

The layout of hulu explains itself very well: it is about TV and movie on the internet. Watch your favorites anytime for free.

The layout design is very easy to navigate, and user friendly.

Content

Movies & TV are the main content on the hulu. There are also some tutorial videos if you search for it.

The media database is very well designed. Query for your favorite content is just easy with search or a few click through. 

The quality of the content is fine for the personal and family enjoy with condition of free.

Commercials – Single Thread Commercial on TV v.s. interactive multi thread commercials on internet

Current commercials on hulu is all single thread style as they are on TV. The commercials break the content playing for 30 seconds every 15 mins or so.
Most of the commercials are the same ones. It is getting annoying after you watch it for over 3 times in a movie experience.

Remember we are on the internet and computer which is more intelligence than TV.

There are many different way of integrate commercials on internet without annoying audiences and still allow ads reach to massive customers on the internet.

This spring we’ll be launching a pilot program to offer turnkey advertising with the Silverlight Streaming video service. At MIX’08 we announced this pilot program to test the turnkey integration of the Silverlight Streaming service with the Microsoft AdCenter platform. This pilot program will allow a control group of Silverlight Streaming account holders to take Silverlight videos and automatically insert contextual advertisements into the end-user video playback experience.

Microsoft Encoder
allow produce Turnkey advertising as easy as one single click

Is it all if it’s Free? Pay is also an option for people’s needs

I did a quick survey with coworkers and friends around. 50% people don’t have TV, cable setup at home. Computer is their central entertainment space.

Internet music, internet TV, internet Movie, it is all about free.

20% of them subscribe netflix.com, or go to movie cinema few times every week for the joy of visual art, theater sound system and social environment.

Would you pay subscription to get rid of the annoying commercials or get better quality content to bring back the ultimate visual experience at home?

The answer is yes if it is for a serious movie, TV watchers watch their favorite content.

Yes if hulu is the main entertainment source.

May not be subscription as it is a kind of commitment, but people don’t mind to have an option to be able to purchase their favorite content instead of going to the netflix.com or cinema.

Attractive more audience, make them finding the comfort zone that they can find on cable TV, netflix.com and cinema means giving them more options and chances to stay in hulu.

Hulu  v.s. TuDou

Tudou.com is a Chinese version between hulu.com and youtube.com.

The differences between Tudou and hulu is the content resource.

The resources on tudou are from user. Users share their movie, their video. So the quality various. You can search one movie, result with different resolution and qualities.

“Everyone is a director. Everyone is a producer. “ – Tudou

Tudou is Free and low maintenance or self maintain by their users: the directors and producers.

Tudou’s business model is from inline commercial on the web site and the upload, download user experiences. The watching experience is ads free. Just to be generous to their directors and producers

Well, where does Hulu go? Richer and $$ experiences or free self maintenance experiences?

For the communication cross different languages, text become the useless languages.

And the power of the picture as a universal languages then has the ability to push the ideas, tell the stories regardless the barrier of languages.

for example:

Я тебя люблю vs

- Education method before the text, Visual language for Blind

the first step of education before text is from images. To many people, the life long education still stopped at images as they might never had chance to learn read text.

Visual language for blind is a perfect example here.

- Saved the 1000 words

online shopping with description words only compare one picture. The level of messages delivered is beyond words’ ability. The object’s color, quality, status, size, can be communicated better through one picture than all these words you are now reading……

Check this out if you consider to buy a new car online

- Efficient to capture memory

Self portrait v.s. biography

one picture v.s. one book

It is a lot more productive to capture memories with pictures

Today in Oct. 2009,  i am half way through the program.

I learned a lot in the program: research methodology, digital media marketing, predict media trend, story telling strategy and so on.

In each class, i achieved a lot to contribute back to my professional career. We did many Blogs towards today’s social media society, we did personal and group projects deep dive into today’s social media platform; we did thorough research of  the history of digital media and predict the future, we also finished so many paper, videos, slides, podcasting projects and so on.

With this huge accomplishments, explain to people what i am studying in this program  is always a challenge.

Explain what it is the key of this program, what it is i learned that’s beneficial to professional career, is very difficult in short period of time.

Why not use what we learned the class to start building up my personal Digital Portfolio to present who i am today and tomorrow after studying in this program.

Digital Personal/Professional Portfolio has not being seen as a popular method.

People still using traditional paper resume to look for a job when they need.

Why not start building digital portfolio create your own brand, and let the opportunities come to my way?, 

Idea:

• Build up digital personal portfolio

Benefits:

1. New personal image in job market – compare traditional job application (paper based resume)
2. Build up image for MCDM program – each student success career after the program is fruit of MCDM program
3. Voice for MCDM  program – instead of what MCDM program is doing today try to build up centralized hub for the program, each student’s portfolio will be a strong voice for the program to speak to the rest of the world

Outline:

1. Research today’s portfolio
2. Predict future portfolio
3. Differences of professional profile and portfolio
4. Benefit of personal digital portfolio

Ten years later today, in the same scenario, I have my laptop with me and internet access everywhere, a piece of paper seems a little more troublesome. But I still get a piece of paper and read through or scan the WSJ homepage, but very rarely clicked the video site. Why, because the video site just does not serve what I need.

The layout

In general the layout of Wall Street Journal video serves what I need. Clean layout with mutual color, a highlight video on the left side of screen and description on the right side. A few small video icons in the bottom of the page to display the different category of videos that WSJ wants to catch my attention. The page fits into one page on my laptop, so no trouble to scroll up and down, left and right.

The Character missing in the video experience

Video is powerful in terms of presenting. It provides 3D rich experiences. I enjoy watching videos online. For example watching a new car demo video online is a great experience, I am able to see the car from every angle. But consider regular and instance information resource, video is liner, slower than text message. Also, the highlight introduction, there is no close caption. That means if I want to watch the video without disturb my audience, I have to have an ear phone. Travel around the best thing is lightweight, the less I bring or care the better it is. So a pair of headset is just not on my list to bring. If there is close caption, the video scenario might be ok. Right now I have to forget the video experience or watching it mute. I would suggest close caption for the video Embedded flash video is what’s available on the video page right now on WSJ. There is a small RSS icon on the page to offer subscription experience. Most of my time, when I watch video is on the go or waiting. When there is no time to watch through the entire video online. I do a quick scan through, if it is interesting, I would choose download to my cell phone to watch later maybe on the airplane. Video download option put to the top priority on the page would be great. Cell phone WSJ offers zero Cell phone Video experience current is zero. Often I am at a place with only my cell phone. That time I would like to browse through all the interesting videos. Minimum WSJ video experience would be a nice touch to currently already rich video experience.

It is a good book that analyzes the differences between 20^th century and 21th century’s concept for Free.

I am from China, living and working in USA for 9 years now. Before that, I lived in China. Every year, I go back home once or twice to experience and absorb the country’s developing, changing, including the concept for “Free”.

 Here I would like to share my view of how Chinese make profit from “Free” Software – the infamous Software Piracy. 

-          Software must be free in China

China is a developing country with big population but average low income.

In early 21th century, lots of software companies localized their software to Simplified Chinese to catch this potential and huge market.

Software piracy issue became the biggest headache for software companies to face in China.

If one person has a copy of software, everyone in the country will have a free copy.  

The price of one license of consumer software usually is a regular family one month to one year living cost.

If people can make a free copy why they would pay for it especially they can’t afford it?

The same situation happened in music, movie industry.

While the oversea software companies were fighting the piracy, local Chinese software companies gave up the pricing idea because though they charge 1$ on one license, there are still people will piracy it.

They admit the customers’ needs software should be free.

After fighting the software piracy for all these years, today we see free software model is becoming a global phenomenon.

-          How did free software make profit in China?

It is through embody ads, communities, online communities, branding commercials as well as selling the products from the movies, etc.

For example, we have a local software company called Jin Shan, literally means Gold Mountain. Jinshan’s main product line is English-Chinese software dictionary. It was priced very low initially; soon it became free to align up with piracy’s huge volume. It is now the biggest selling local software company in China.

Their business model is embody ads. It is a feature with build in commercials. The build in commercials will play in the bottom of the software user interface property with enough room while not disturb user’s main focus too much.

Every time the computer connects online, it will automatically update the ads just like every time you turn on the TV, you will see different ads.  

With this build-in ads model, the company can charge different price based on the sales number. Piracy is not an enemy anymore, because the more piracy, the more copies are sold. Piracy is a free marketing and sales for the software company. Piracy also offers free software for the customers. Piracy raises awareness for the commercial companies. All of sudden, piracy becomes our best friends!! Welcome software piracy!

In summary, the software is designed for FREE with build in commercial as main business model. This model proved to customers that software should be free. This model brings many ads company platform to walk into people’s life. This model brings software piracy become free marketing and sales.

Side business models are: online communities, co branding, subscription and so on.

Jinshan website is also an active online community for English- Chinese language related topics.

Many other online communities are created for discussing the company and their products.

JinShan also has an online translation website offer free online translation which is similar as babelfish.yahoo.com.  

This online dictionary attracted so much traffic.

Jinshan also offers free English-Chinese dictionary for cell phone to serve the big cell phone market offer mobility.

Study aboard is a hot topic for Chinese people who speaks English and use English-Chinese dictionary.  Jinshan website also created community for these people to chat and share their experiences of success or fail story of studying aboard. 

Commercials are all over these hot popular online communities.

Free subscription and premium subscription is another side business for Jinshan.

Co Branding is another side business strategy that jinshan is leveraging.

Jinshan is cobranded with many other companies includes Google to enhance their brand and raise awareness.

So in summary, software is always considered “Free” in China, because of that software is designed free. It is using build in commercial business model to reach big Chinese market very successful. 

Next time we will talk about Chinese movie industry. Movie industry has unique history and today it is rising from near death to top profitable industry by pass Chemistry and other major industry.

-  How did the movie industry rise up from the hit of piracy instead become the top industry in China today?

This is my 4/9 class of Communication program. I want to use this chance to find a strategy publish the videos i made to web.