Pirates of the net.

Its always handy (and free) these days to simply find and download your favorite songs at a click, But what seems free and easy to us may cost someone a loss of million dollars or their jobs. Ghana alone has lost $3.7 million jobs due to piracy and britain has lost 219 million GBP with 7.7 million people illegally downloading
the music.
This has awakened the government and every country has started battling out with this infestation of pirates.
The British government has come to a point where they will monitor closely and after two warnings will discontinue the internet service of illegal file downloaders. Music sold on internet now comes with DRM(digital rights management)which places restrictions on what customers can do with the music bought online. A copy of a DRM-protected song posted on the Internet, doesnt play on a downloader's computer or portable music device. Google is taking measures now to curb this piracy, the search giant will implement four changes, including the removal of words that are associated with piracy from appearing in its autocomplete feature although this isnt helping much but the music industry considers this as a good initiative.
Today a number of new music services have come up with an idea of offering legitimate options to listen or buy downloads like streaming online, buying downloads and subscription where limited songs are offered for some fee.
Of course its a long way to go and some what impossible to completely curb the piracy, but atleast it should be lessened so that it wont play on the rights of people who are not involved in it.


Sources:- BBC, BBC, BBC

"Phishing" Knots

Online privacy is a growing concern and a key issue in US. Today e-commerce is a driving force behind US and subsequently the world's economy,still many consumers are hesitant to make online transactions fearing that the information they will input will be misused.They probably have every right to be apprehensive as cases have been recorded of people having suffered from identity theft, credit card misuse and some of them had their careers at stake. Costumer fears regarding security issues are complex and are also confused with the definations of privacy.
Considering this reluctance and to stop the possible drain of revenue, Privacy partnership, a group of leading developers and supervised by TRUSTe have designed a campaigne to promote the guidelines regarding online security. The campaign already has gained support from giants like Microsoft, AOL, Excite Inc., Lycos, Netscape. Officials from Microsoft terms it as a "grass-roots campaign" to increase consumer awareness about the strategic importance of online privacy, and have urged others to join the community as well.
In 2001 Microsoft was accused of engaging into unfair and deceiving practices by dozens of customer privacy groups and asked the FTC to ban the release of the than new windows XP because it used .Net technology which was incorporated in the unique feature of XP's Passport authentication system, which allowed user to log in once and stores their id and password in its database. This facilited users to avoid repeatedly enter their ids and passwords also it had the hailstorm and electronic wallets services, which collected crucial information like credit card details which was released at the users discretion.
In answer to this microsoft made some changes in the technology and made it more secure by creating logs for consumers and included affirmative consent of users and explicit opt-in to release any private and crucial information which made the system more stronger.
The US (FTC) believes that the absence of mandatory privacy regulations has barred e-commerce from using its potential. couple of surveys have suggested that privacy concerns led to losses in sales of US$ 2.9 billion in 1999, and up to US$ 18 billion in 2002. The FTC has constantly been trying to know whether online privacy issues can best be left with companies to self-monitor, or whether the federal government should intervene.
 
Reference- BBC, Microsoft,

Word of mouth

Few years back social bloggers like Orkut, Facebook, youtube and Twitter revolutionized the trend of friendship. People were hooked to their systems even at their work places, Thanks to the 3G mobile phones which made the sites accessable on their mobile phones too. In its early days these sites were just a mean of making friendship, sharing experiences and most importantly finding old and new friends, slowly this craze diminished and people started using these sites as a new platform to put forth their grievances.
Canadian folk singer Dave Carroll was travelling through united airlines and got his $3500 guitar damaged by the cargo handlers, Not only the airline refused the compensation but was rude to him. So he made a music video telling his experience and posted it on youtube. Three days later it was watched 500000 times and by mid august the figure reached to 5 millions. United airline was having its public relations at stake, because with this thousands of customers were coming ahead to vent their dissatisfaction. Gone are the days when companies were rude to their customers, today if a company does so, not only people will withdraw their custom but will also badmouth the company on these social media sites, But this does not stop companies from using social media sites as a part of their marketing plan.
Today hardly anyone using internet is not having any social network's account. With such a major chunk of potential customers available at one single place, Its impossible for the companies to keep themselves refrained from using these sites as a marketing tool. Almost 90% of companies use these sites to show their presence, provide information, generate sales leads and give exposure to the company. As most of the companies have realized that social media is vital for them to be successful, very few have an idea of how to analyze it. Its more than just measuring how often people have clicked their ads. Finally entrepreneurs should understand that social media are not toys to be handled by inexperienced people, they are professional and effective communication channels that needs the understanding of the technical know how to reach to a community.


Source: http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.fiu.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/

Neuromarketing: A tool or a weapon

A survey states that 85% of the decisions are taken at a subconscious level and only 15% decisions are taken cognitively. But today researchers are developing strategies to study the subconscious mind of a person so that they can invoke the feelings or atleast stir the human emotions by advertising the products in such a way that an average human will be inclined to buy it.

Marketing majorly deals with human emotions, One example would be the retail marketing where the customers are exposed to so many products, such that after a certain limit people tend to buy products which they may never need in their life. Marketeers have started studying the techniques of capturing human emotions and their sub conscious reactions to stimuli and using them to promote products which somehow become a visceral compulsion. As said by Retail expert Paco Underhill in his interview, giant retailars like walmart and best buy uses the idea of offering consumers lot many options so much so that the buyer gets lost in the world of products which are available in every price range, attractive packagings and more or less the same use, using customer wait time or window shopping.It's a proven fact that these techniques affect the consumers at a level where they end up buying things even if they dont intend to use it.

Here the question is should we allow someone to peek inside our mind, read our thoughts and develop a scheme to sell their product? Traditionally surveys were taken of a particular population and then a marketing strategy was developed to appeal  the masses but with the advent of neuromarketing critics fear that buyers will not only become more vulnerable but also intensify the marketing related diseases like anorexia or bulimia. Critics also believe that neuromarketing can trigger negative values and create an altogather different generation than it would have been, may be in a negative connotation.
Neuromarketing, If used as a tool can definately help a marketer to smoothly enter the market and then only the product quality will help to establish a significant share of market. One thing we should understand is that neuromarketing is certainly not a hypnotism where people are put under a spell forever and are made to buy things continously whether they like it or not. Its an urge created by the marketers so that their advertising becomes more effective and people somewhere can relate themselves with the advertisement to use the products.
I always thought that marketing is a science which had the art of convincing others to buy a product. Neuromarketing certainly is an advanced science but lacks creativity. Its like appearing for an exam whose questions are previously known.

Sources: Businessweek, BBC