Questions and Answers of Information Systems

Network effects are often associated with technology, but tech isn't a prerequisite for the existence of network effects. Name a product, service, or phenomenon that is not related to information
Think about the kinds of technology projects you own. What sorts of switching costs are inherent in each of these? Are these strong switching costs or weak switching costs? What would it take for you
Identify examples of two-sided markets where both sides pay for a product or service. Identify examples where only one side pays. What factors determine who should pay? Does paying have implications
Are network effects good or bad for innovation? Explain.
Is it ever advantageous for firms to give up control of a network and share it with others? Why or why not? Give examples to back up your point.
Which other terms are sometimes used to describe the phenomenon of switching costs?
The Apple iOS Developer Program provides developers access to the App Store, where they can distribute their free or commercial applications to millions of iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch customers.
What is the relationship between network effects and the bargaining power of participants in a network effects "ecosystem"?
Think about the kinds of technology products that you own that are subject to network effects. What sorts of complementary benefits are available for these products? Are complementary benefits strong
Cite examples where the best technology did not dominate a network effects-driven market.
How did Sony seed the market for Blu-ray players?
Identify firms that you believe have built a strong platform. Can you think of firms that have tried to develop a platform, but have been less successful? Why do you suppose they have struggled?
What does backward compatibility mean and why is this important? What happens if a firm is not backward compatible?
What tactic did Apple use to increase the acceptability of the Mac platform to a broader population of potential users?
How has Apple kept clones at bay?
What are preannouncements? What is the danger in announcing a product too early? What is the term for negative impacts from premature product announcements?
How did PayPal subsidize adoption?
Why is viral adoption especially important to PayPal and Uber?
Name two companies that leveraged viral promotion to compete.
Name a product that is the result of the convergence of media players, cameras, and phones.
How does thredUP leverage its seller payout policy to balance sell-side supply with buy-side demand?
What tactic might an established firm employ to make it impossible, or at least difficult, for a competitor to gain access to, or become compatible with, their product or service?
How do Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook encourage the development of complementary products?
What is the "congestion effect"? Give an example.
Do network effects apply in nontech areas? Give examples.
Search online to find out which blogs are currently the most popular. Why do you suppose the leaders are so popular?
Visit the major social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest). What distinguishes one from the other? Are you a member of any of these services? Why or why not?
If you don't already have one, set up a Twitter account and "follow" several others. To get more from Twitter, consider installing the free TweetDeck or using the Twitter smartphone app. Follow a
What makes for a "wise" crowd? When might a crowd not be so wise?
What is crowdsourcing? Give examples of organizations that are taking advantage of crowdsourcing and be prepared to describe these efforts.
The chapter provides several examples of how customers and employees can embarrass a firm. Find other examples of customer-and-employee social media incidents that reflected negatively on an
What distinguishes social media and peer production sites from the prior generation of Internet sites? How have you seen social media sites impact businesses, large and small?
How are popular blogs discovered? How is their popularity reinforced?
How are organizations like Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, and IBM using social networks? What advantages do they gain from these systems?
Visit Twitter and record which hashtags are most active at this time. Are there other "trending topics" that aren't associated with hashtags? What do you think of the activity in these areas? Is
Find a prediction market online and participate in the effort. Be prepared to share your experience with your class, including any statistics of predictive accuracy, participant incentives, business
What ethical issues should firms be aware of when considering crowdsourcing? Are there other concerns firms may have when leveraging this technique?
Hunt for examples of social media excellence. List an example of an organization that got it right. What happened, and what benefits were received?
Make a list of some noteworthy dominant as well as up-and- coming social media sites and apps. Would you invest in them? Why or why not? Are there cautionary tales of efforts that may not have lived
Are blog comment fields useful? If so, to whom or how? What is the risk associated with allowing users to comment on blog posts? How should a blogger deal with comments that they don't agree with?
If anyone can edit a wiki, why aren't more sites crippled by vandalism or by inaccurate or inappropriate content? Are there technical reasons not to be concerned? Are there "social" reasons that can
What factors might cause an individual, employee, or firm to be cautious in their use of social networks?
Search Twitter for topics, firms, brand names, and issues of interest to you. What do you think of the quality of the information you've uncovered on Twitter? Who might find this to be useful? You
Brainstorm on the kinds of organizations that might deploy prediction markets. Why might you think the efforts you suggest and advocate would be successful?
Assume the role of a manager or consultant. Recommend a firm and a task that would be appropriate for crowdsourcing. Justify your choice, citing factors such as cost, breadth of innovation, time,
Social media critics often lament a lack of ROI (return on investment) for these sorts of efforts. What kind of return should firms expect from social media? Does the return justify the investment?
In what ways do social, peer-produced efforts challenge the assumptions that Michael Porter made regarding strategy and the Internet?
Why would a corporation, an executive, a news outlet, or a college student want to blog? What are the benefits? What are the concerns?
Give examples of corporate wiki use, as well as examples where firms used wikis to engage their customers or partners. What is the potential payoff of these efforts? Are there risks associated with
How do you feel about the feed feature common in social networks like Facebook? What risks does a firm expose itself to if it leverages feeds? How might a firm mitigate these kinds of risks?
Search for examples of branded emoji campaigns (note that emojis associated with these campaigns may vanish after a period of time). What do you think of these campaigns? Have you or friends
In what ways are legal issues of concern to prediction market operators?
Visit Kaggle.com and examine the current contests that are on offer. Note that the site also has learning resources so that anyone can gain analytics skills. Do these resources seem useful to you?
What kinds of firms should aggressively pursue social media? Which ones might consider avoiding these practices? If a firm is concerned about online conversations, what might this also tell
Trends in computing platforms and Internet services change quickly. How have the firms profiled in the bullet points above fared? Has each increased in use, value, and impact, or shrunk? Are there
Identify firms and executives that are blogging online. Bring examples to class and be prepared to offer your critique of their efforts. Show what you feel are effective examples, as well as those
Do you feel that you can trust content in wikis? Do you feel this content is more or less reliable than content in print encyclopedias? Than the content in newspaper articles? Why?
Investigate Workplace by Facebook. Would you want to use this service? Would it concern you? Why or why not?
Why would a person or organization choose to use Twitter over Facebook's status update or other services? Which (if either) do you prefer and why?
Research the current state of blockchain-based prediction markets. How far have these efforts come in providing useful markets to organizations, and incentivized markets that attract participants?
List the skills that are needed by today's social media professionals. What topics should you study to prepare you for a career in this space?
How has social media changed the way you consume entertainment, play games, and learn about news? How important are these services to your generation versus the way your parents consume such
Investigate blogs that aren't corporate but that you still find useful. Share your list of favorites with your professor. Why do you like the blogs on your list? Are there blogs that are particularly
Have you ever run across an error in a wiki entry? Describe the situation.
What sorts of restrictions or guidelines should firms place on the use of social networks or the other Web 2.0 tools discussed in this chapter? Are these tools a threat to security? Can they tarnish
What do you think of Twitter's revenue prospects? Is the firm a viable independent service or simply a feature to be incorporated into other social media activity? Advocate where you think the
Find a product that will allow you to set up your own prediction market. Work with your class to identify a test and try to recruit a large and diverse group to make the prediction before the
Search online to find examples of corporate social media policies. Share your findings with your instructor. What points do these policies have in common? Are there aspects of any of these policies
Research the dark side of social media, including Internet addiction, social media's impact on mental health, and "fake news." Do you consider these to be significant problems? If not, why not? If
Investigate current US Federal Trade Commission laws (or the laws in your home country) that govern bloggers and other social media use. How do these restrictions impact how firms interact with
Is it ethical for a firm or individual to edit its own Wikipedia entry? Under what circumstances would editing a Wikipedia entry seem unethical to you? Why? What are the risks a firm or individual
How does Twitter Amplify appeal to content rightholders, to advertisers, and to Twitter? What advantages does this ad product offer to each?
Should firms monitor employee social media use? Should they block external social media sites at work? Why or why not? Why might the answer differ by industry?
If you have a smartphone, try more than one of the major messaging products. Be sure to explore one that is popular outside of your own country. Why do you suppose the products you've examined are
What advantage do blogs have over the MSM? What advantage does the MSM have over the most popular blogs?
Investigate social networks on your own. Look for examples of their use for fostering political and social movements; for their use in health care; and for their use among other professional groups
Perform some additional research on Twitter's ad model. How have Twitter's attempts to grow revenues fared recently? How has user growth been trending? Has the firm's estimated value increased or
Use the monitoring tools mentioned in the reading to search your own name. How would a prospective employer evaluate what they've found? How should you curate your online profiles and social media
Try Slack or another enterprise-oriented social productivity tool. Use it for group project work, a campus club, or in your own work environment. Share your experiences (good and/or bad) with your
Start a blog using Tumblr, Blogger.com, WordPress.com, or some other blogging service. Post a comment to another blog. Look for the trackback field when making a post-if it's available, be sure to
Investigate the Hangouts feature of Google+ and come to class prepared to discuss how it can be effectively used to improve your education experience. Consider inviting a guest speaker to have a
Assume the role of a manager for your firm. Advocate how the organization should leverage Twitter and other forms of social media. Provide examples of effective use, and cautionary tales, to back up
Investigate incidents where employees were fired for social media use. Prepare to discuss examples in class. Could the employer have avoided these incidents?
Gather examples of paid, earned, and owned media. Share with your class. Indicate whether you find this media effective or ineffective and if you've got suggestions for improvement, share them with
Visit Quora, Stack Exchange, or another popular question-and- answer site (considered a subset of social networks by some). Search the website. Did you find that a question you were interested in was
Some instructors have mandated Twitter for classroom use. Do you think this is productive? Would your professor advocate tweeting during lectures? What are the pros and cons of such use? Work with
Use the monitoring tools mentioned in the reading to search for a favorite firm or brand. What trends do you discover? Is the online dialogue fair? How might the firm use these findings?
Visit LinkedIn for Students. Use information on this page to create or enhance your own LinkedIn page. Share what you've learned with your class. Identify a "best practice" LinkedIn page and be
Consider the case of the Cisco Fatty. Who was wrong? Advise how a firm might best handle this kind of online commentary.
Visit SlideShare and browse on topics of interest. Do you find the site useful? Would you publish your own content here? Why or why not?
Firms often rely on young people to bring new social technologies into the firm. Keep pace with products: try an enterprise messaging tool like Slack, HipChat, or other social service (most have free
Who started Facebook? How old was he then? Now? How much control does the founding CEO have over his firm? Why?
What is the social graph? Why is Facebook's social graph considered to be stronger than the social graph created by the sites of its early competitors?
Why is mobile app development more challenging from a testing, experimentation, quality control, and maintenance perspective than browser-based services?
What is the content adjacency problem? Search for examples of firms that have experienced embarrassment due to content adjacency. Describe them, why they occurred, and if site operators could have
At Facebook, why is "done better than perfect," and why is it considered important to "move fast and break things"?
Why was Zuckerberg able to demand and receive control of Facebook, even as the firm went public? What strategic factors were at work in Facebook's rise that gave the founder such leverage?
Does Facebook have to worry about copycat firms from the United States? In overseas markets? Why or why not? If Facebook has a source (or sources) of competitive advantage, explain these. If it has
Were you contacted by Facebook stating that your data was compromised by Cambridge Analytica or another data breach? If so, how did this make you feel? What have you done as a result? Has your use of
What kinds of websites are most susceptible to content adjacency? Are news sites? Why or why not? What sorts of technical features might act as breeding grounds for content adjacency problems?

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