Music Pirate Assault

Ahoy Maties!

Ready to sail, pillage, plunder, rifle and loot? There is a crime we are all guilty of: Music Piracy. It has been around for decades and for me, this is an unstoppable problem.  So far, all attempts to cease piracy in the world seem to be refrained by technology advances, which facilitate the exchange of copyrighted material by free means.

Downloading music from the internet, sharing any copyrighted file with your friends or making a digital back-up of your albums are serious crimes. As some old commercials tried to teach us…it is as severe as stealing a CD from the music store and…you can walk the plank for that!

The most affected companies have taken actions to reduce their losses due to piracy. Virgin Media is planning to use the software Cview, which allows it to analyze the activity of customers in the Internet, to search for illegal sharing of files using peer-to-peer sites. In the other hand, Apple is using DRM software (Digital Rights Management - Savvy?) to control the number of times you can copy a music file in different computers, limiting this to five times per file.

Are these actions against our legal rights to privacy arrrgh?! Sure they are...but they are the fastest solutions. The ideal scenario is to create a social aversion towards piracy, the same we have against robbery, murder, fraud and other serious crimes. We are not ready to weigh anchor though. For now, more severe restrictions are necessary to maintain the global music industry, along with a real and continuous education campaign.

What's the Deal?

Since its start in 2008, Groupon has enjoyed a colossus growth in popularity and revenue. According to Forbes Magazine, this deal-of-the-day website is the “Fastest Growing Company Ever”, being valued at $1.35 billion this year.

How does it work? As other deal-of-day websites, Group on offers daily a discount on products, services or events, with limited time and limited quantities. Buying the coupon is not enough. It is necessary to meet a certain quota of customers, which varies from deal to deal depending on the nature of the product offered. If the required amount of people buys the deal, you get your discount.

Sounds good. Personally, the only thing I can argue is why only one deal per day? My possible explanation: that is the best way to keep you checking the site continuously. I joined Groupon on August and every time I enter the website I discover I lost an opportunity I could really use…or maybe I wouldn’t use, but it sounded tempting. And that might be the real deal for Groupon, opening the door for you to all those things you don’t need or like…but God, they are cheap!

Another reason might be that they have to ensure the sale of the coupon. More than one deal per day would deviate the attention of customers in different directions, and any transaction would be sealed.

The company has also grown in importance. In its short trajectory, Groupon has made partnerships with important brands as Gap and received a very juicy offer of $6 billion from Google (not a good deal for Groupon). The company will continue developing independent for now, its only combustible…our consumption impulse.  

Digital Neighborhood: Best place to open your store!

The rapid growth of the Social Networks phenomenon has allowed people and businesses to get connected and interact with each other every day. According to the statistics, the time users spend in Social Networks increased by 82% from 2008 to the beginning of 2010. But there is a lot going on around us in our virtual neighborhood. Thousands of businesses are promoting their products using Facebook’s Ads, Pages and Groups. Others prefer to open a Twitter account to post news and release important information. Likewise, there are a lot of dedicated sites for business networking. Linkedin, PartnerUp and Sales Spider are only three examples of the millions of options available.

For me this is not a possibility, it is a reality. I started using Social Media in my last job position, to promote the company services and trainings. Using this tool, we doubled our sales in five months and all the information was available to the 330 fans and their friends. This is huge for a small business. I decided to use this great tool to promote personal projects after these good experiences. Even my mother has her brand, XM designs, in Social Networks. Using Facebook Pages, she can promote and sell her work in the Internet.

Do you want more evidence? It’s alright. Some people still think that social networking is only to keep in touch with friends, gossips and play silly video games. But most of those applications come from third-party companies, which make their money from us, users. Playfish for example, is the leader of social game developers worldwide, with more than 200 million installed and played in all countries. The equation is simple: addictive games + attractive characters + easy gameplay = a lot of users. How do they make their profit? The basic functionality of all games is free to use, but all special and really desirable items have a cost…and yes, people pay for them…many people.

What I see here is a fabulous tool for promotion, sales and customer support, at very low cost and with immediate results. Here are only some of the advantages:

1.       Low cost (no cost if you are your own boss, marketer, designer and coffee guy).

2.       Easy to use (to the children of the 20^th century)

3.       Unlimited reach (you may be at six degrees of separation from China)

4.       Advertising by word-of-mouth (or keyword)  

It is very difficult for me to think about any real disadvantages, but let’s mention the most popular among critics of Social Networking:

1.       Time consuming (as everything in life)

2.       Customer may demand a lot of attention (you can create a schedule for customer support or open sessions for questions and answers)

3.       The user can post negative comments on your page (you can establish privacy settings and limits for user’s interaction)

4.       Confidential or sensitive information could be disclosed in the web (you manage the data that is posted in your page and any comment can be removed)

Do you have your own business? What are you waiting for? Create your own Social Site now.  The evidence is there and (if you manage your information wisely) you can obtain a lot more than what you invest.

The map to your desires

With the emergence of neuroeconomics and neuromarketing, there is no place to hide your preferences inside your brain. The main objective of these emerging fields is to understand your reactions toward different stimuli, to discover what triggers your consumption impulses and to decipher what you really want.

Although it sounds like a science fiction movie, Dr. David Lewis from the research consultancy Mindlab International has dedicated thirty years of his life to study psychological and physiological reaction in humans. No wonder why he is considered the ‘father of neuromarketing’.

Source: IntraMed.net

Our preferences are determined by a great mixture of factors, including personality, cultural background, religion, gender, education and even age. Neuromarketing tests are a tool to pass over your mental recipe and analyze your reactions. The results are stunning, even in those cases where we can’t conscientiously perceive the different between two similar stimuli.

However, who is controlling these studies? And who is in charge of defining the limits of neuromarketing? Everything sounds pretty amazing but without clear boundaries we could fall into the deep hole of ethics: is it right to peek inside people’s mind to sell them the right pair of shoes? For some, the issue will get really disturbing and can jeopardize our legal right to privacy.

For now, I prefer to spend hours in a store until I make up my mind whether I should buy the blue product than being mentally scanned for the right choice. I already accepted that most of the time I’ll be back to return the articles I didn’t like.