Monday 27 January 2014
Weekly Exercise Topic 8 (Online Auctions)
Q1: eBay is one of the only major Internet “pure plays” to consistently make a profit from its inception. What is eBay’s business model? Why has it been so successful?
eBay is a company that's in the business of connecting people, not selling them things. eBay has built an online person-to-person trading community on the Internet. It has been successfully because eBay is the world's online marketplace; a place for buyers and sellers to come together and trade almost anything.
Q2: Other major web sites, like Amazon.com and Yahoo!, have entered the auction marketplace with far less success than eBay. How has eBay been able to maintain its dominant position?
eBay has been able to maintain its dominant position because, EBay’s success is its ability to bring customers and businesses together at a relatively low cost without barriers such as geographical location, language, race getting in the way. It has allowed a lot of people to become entrepreneurs through the sale of goods and provision of services over the internet.
Q3: What method does eBay use to reduce the potential for fraud among traders on its site? What kinds of fraud, if any, are eBay users most susceptible?
eBay does some very clear things in terms of trying to help people overcome their inhibitions and enter into transactions with what would otherwise be strangers to them.
Q4: eBay makes every effort to conceptualize its users as a community (as opposed to, say “customers” or “clients”). What is the purpose of this conceptual twist and does eBay gain something by doing it?
eBay believes in the concept that they can become a community. Community is fundamental to the economic success of eBay. EBay’s communities are varied and encompass different interests of the wider community with many of the boards encouraging users to build the communities that are fundamental to eBay’s economic success. There are communities based on trading, buying, hobbies and fun and games to name just a few. There is a social community that does not allow any business talk and discussions include parenting, religion and politics amongst other topics. EBay communities play a unique role in the Internet networked communities as opposed to the pre-internet economy. Trust is based on member feedback encouraging a community of collaboration and communication amongst its users. Members are producers of knowledge and share this with the wider community and this knowledge base is an asset to eBay. Its community members have a sense of ownership as their volunteer labor benefits themselves as well as eBay.
Q5: eBay has long been a marketplace for used goods and collectibles. Today, it is increasingly a place where major businesses come to auction their wares. Why would a brand name vendor set-up shop on eBay?
In my opinion, its easy to brand name vendor to connect to over the world because it is very close. Then, the cost to the business is also very low. All transactions on eBay easy for the set. Popularity also an eBay account into focus the brand name vendor.
Q6. I have a few businesses, and I have used eBay for about 12 years on and off. Currently I have about 600 books listed on eBay (seller name ozrural). I stopped selling on eBay for a few years but they changed the rules this July and it is viable again (for me). What do you think changed?
I am not sure about that. What I know eBay change the picture quality requirements and change coupon policy.
References:
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~magnus/ief248a/eBay/history.html
http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/questions/about-ebay.html
http://www.ask.com/question/why-is-ebay-so-successful
http://teamcaffeine.wikidot.com/businessmodel-community
Friday 10 January 2014
Weekly Exercise Topic 7 (Automata)
1
1)like to create your own cybertwin as well. The more you ‘train’ your twin, the better the responses will be. Check this link to my ‘intelligent’ cybertwin which I also mentioned in the Powerpoint. You may While it is just a fun exercise, Think of the opportunities. Imagine if we had a cybertwin that could answer your questions about the course. Or perhaps a shopping assistant?
It's an interesting idea. I also would like to have your own cybertwin where I can be trained to serve as my twins to facilitate me. I became more excited after hearing the words of co-founder and CEO of MyCyberTwin, liesl Capper-Beilby. Here the yield of their statements -“A CyberTwin can chat to thousands of people at the same time, delivering instant 24/7 customer service. A customer doesn’t have to wait in a queue for an agent to become available. They click to chat and the majority have a good experience, getting the help they need. This allows small, medium and large enterprises to focus their human resources on other important and challenging tasks internally. Every time a customer chats to a CyberTwin instead of picking up the phone to talk with a human agent/employee, the business is saving time and money and working towards its end objectives.” says co-founder and CEO of MyCyberTwin, Liesl Capper-Beilby.
One Australian company creating this technology is MyCyberTwin, established in 2005. With R&D offices in Sydney and a commercial HQ in New York, it has had thousands of SMEs sign up to use its MyCyberTwin Professional product. NAB, NASA, HP and Accenture are also clients. Currently growing at a rate of 100 percent annually, in 2012 MyCyberTwin is anticipating 200 to 300 percent growth as market awareness of virtual agents continues to quickly mature and become mainstream. MyCyberTwin Professional is tailored to be affordable to SMEs keen to build and deploy a CyberTwin virtual agent themselves. It’s free to open an account and they can select an avatar, publish to the website and monitor their CyberTwin for business intelligence. )
2) Write a one paragraph describing the Turing test and another paragraph describing an argument against the Turing Test, known as the about the Chinese room.
The video (linked in the Powerpoint) ‘Creativity: The Mind, Machines, and Mathematics: Public Debate’ is a debate which asks the question ‘will machines one day achieve consciousness’. Following on from this debate consider the following question -
A Turing test is a test performed to determine a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. The basic concept behind the test is that if a human judge is engaged in a natural language conversation with a computer where he cannot reliably distinguish machine from human, the machine passes the test. Responses from both participants in the conversation are received in the form of a text-only channel. This test was introduced by Alan Turing in 1950.
The Chinese room is a thought experiment designed by John Searle in his 1980 article "Minds, Brains, and Programs", largely as a response to Alan Turing's Turing test. It was designed to prove that computer programs will never be able to create minds; by showing - for a certain degree of "showing" - that they don't really understand communication. The experiment has become well known and influential in various scientific fields, especially cognitive science.
3) Can virtual agents succeed in delivering high-quality customer service over the Web? Think of examples which support or disprove the question or just offer an opinion based on your personal experience. Write you answer on your blog page or express an opinion on this voice discussion board (it’s simple to join). If you choose this option please link (live in an hour or so) to it from your blog page.
In my opinion, I believe that the virtual agent can help a company continue through web. However, constraints for common problems online, it will probably be less effective or less convincing.
References:
http://business.nab.com.au/artificial-intelligence-171/
http://www.techopedia.com/definition/200/turing-test
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chinese_room
1)like to create your own cybertwin as well. The more you ‘train’ your twin, the better the responses will be. Check this link to my ‘intelligent’ cybertwin which I also mentioned in the Powerpoint. You may While it is just a fun exercise, Think of the opportunities. Imagine if we had a cybertwin that could answer your questions about the course. Or perhaps a shopping assistant?
It's an interesting idea. I also would like to have your own cybertwin where I can be trained to serve as my twins to facilitate me. I became more excited after hearing the words of co-founder and CEO of MyCyberTwin, liesl Capper-Beilby. Here the yield of their statements -“A CyberTwin can chat to thousands of people at the same time, delivering instant 24/7 customer service. A customer doesn’t have to wait in a queue for an agent to become available. They click to chat and the majority have a good experience, getting the help they need. This allows small, medium and large enterprises to focus their human resources on other important and challenging tasks internally. Every time a customer chats to a CyberTwin instead of picking up the phone to talk with a human agent/employee, the business is saving time and money and working towards its end objectives.” says co-founder and CEO of MyCyberTwin, Liesl Capper-Beilby.
One Australian company creating this technology is MyCyberTwin, established in 2005. With R&D offices in Sydney and a commercial HQ in New York, it has had thousands of SMEs sign up to use its MyCyberTwin Professional product. NAB, NASA, HP and Accenture are also clients. Currently growing at a rate of 100 percent annually, in 2012 MyCyberTwin is anticipating 200 to 300 percent growth as market awareness of virtual agents continues to quickly mature and become mainstream. MyCyberTwin Professional is tailored to be affordable to SMEs keen to build and deploy a CyberTwin virtual agent themselves. It’s free to open an account and they can select an avatar, publish to the website and monitor their CyberTwin for business intelligence. )
2) Write a one paragraph describing the Turing test and another paragraph describing an argument against the Turing Test, known as the about the Chinese room.
The video (linked in the Powerpoint) ‘Creativity: The Mind, Machines, and Mathematics: Public Debate’ is a debate which asks the question ‘will machines one day achieve consciousness’. Following on from this debate consider the following question -
A Turing test is a test performed to determine a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. The basic concept behind the test is that if a human judge is engaged in a natural language conversation with a computer where he cannot reliably distinguish machine from human, the machine passes the test. Responses from both participants in the conversation are received in the form of a text-only channel. This test was introduced by Alan Turing in 1950.
The Chinese room is a thought experiment designed by John Searle in his 1980 article "Minds, Brains, and Programs", largely as a response to Alan Turing's Turing test. It was designed to prove that computer programs will never be able to create minds; by showing - for a certain degree of "showing" - that they don't really understand communication. The experiment has become well known and influential in various scientific fields, especially cognitive science.
3) Can virtual agents succeed in delivering high-quality customer service over the Web? Think of examples which support or disprove the question or just offer an opinion based on your personal experience. Write you answer on your blog page or express an opinion on this voice discussion board (it’s simple to join). If you choose this option please link (live in an hour or so) to it from your blog page.
In my opinion, I believe that the virtual agent can help a company continue through web. However, constraints for common problems online, it will probably be less effective or less convincing.
References:
http://business.nab.com.au/artificial-intelligence-171/
http://www.techopedia.com/definition/200/turing-test
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Friday 3 January 2014
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