Management

Internet is a real opportunity to start up and develop your business. The main problem is to find out what is in need now for people, what are their intentions and marketing opportunities. The schema of developing business is very simple. Have a computer, make your site and sell your product. No matter what it is. This may be information, or this may be any product, a thing, food, clothes, anything you want. The main poit is all these thing to be in popularity among customers.

Question 1: Using examples, identify some of the main ways in which the activities of small businesses have been transformed by the internet? Are there certain types of businesses which are less likely to benefit from the internet than others?
There are a lot of examples illustrating the success in the Internet when one person starts working in the Internet and then earns millions.
From my point of view among all the internet projects the following ones are the most successful ones. The first one is Google itself like the best research project. Due to its technical innovations Google became the owner of many rewards, including the win «Folk Eye» for the best technical achievement and reward «The Best Searching System in the Internet» fromYаhoo! Internet Life. Google won the prize of «Technical Perfection» by PC magazine и «The Best Searching Machine» by The Net magazine. A big amount of companies including AOL (Netscape) and Washington Post, use searching technologies of Google on their web sites. The leader of the searching machines of the Internet, Google keeps 70 % of global market. Google can find info on 101 languages. (3)
The second is youtube, which Google bought not so long. The project became a good means of entertainment and, having formed its own community, according to Alexa statistic data has left behind in popularity a social net MySpace.
The third one worth to mention is SourceForge. One of the biggest web sites in the world for f free and open source software developers, which is served by VA Software and uses SourceForge system. For the present moment on SourceForge.net are set more than100 thousand projects, the amount of registered users is over one million.
The following project, to my mind, is sure to draw our attention is plentyoffish. PlentyofFish is ranked as a top 10 USA dating site by Hitwise Competitive Intelligence and Nielsen//Netratings and is the top most visited personals site in Canada according to Alexa Internet as of October 2006. Markus Frind from this site PlentyOfFish.com has $300 000 per month. In addition he gets more than $10 000 per day from the context advert AdSense.
And the last one but not the list is Digg.com. Kevin Rose earns $250 000 per month on news site Digg.com. Kevin created the site in December, 2004, having in his wallet only $1000. Less than 2 years passed and Digg.com appeared to be the biggest news site in the WWW with more than более 400 000 registered users. His income consists of AdSense contextual advertisement and modul advert, which is sold through the agency.
The main reason of their popularity and success is in the first place advert, used in a smart and correct way, plus common attitude.
If to make a proper marketing analysis of the examples we should pay our attention on the following: 1) is the product in need? Remembering the fact that templates are very wide-spread today, we can answer this question positively. 2) Size of the market should be in the focus. The more people see your product the better. 3) Using all the means which lead to success.
Mentioning the examples of Forbes Manson and Virtual Scotland, we should take into focus the fact that “Forbes identified that information sites about Glasgow sites about Glasgow tended to be specific to an particular aspect of the city (eg history or pubs) but there was no site that constituted a comprehensive information service about the city including history, culture, places to go, and so on. Forbes also noted that information sites about Glasgow do not offer visitors information… On the other hand, he found that his strategy in terms of forming online communities was highly successful particularly with young people participation in online forums based on various nightclubs throughout the city. The original plan for the creation of these forums and communities was to have a strong consumer base of which to encourage films to become customers of inyourcity in order to access them. Forbes found that while did work throughout the inyourcity range, most lucrative were the very highly populated nightclub forums.”
Online Social Network is a “common term used to refer to the internet sites which unite and connect family, friends, fans, etc. In recent years, an overwhelm of online social networks has appeared on the internet. The functions and purposes of these groups range as do features and target audiences. For instance, LinkedIn prides itself on relationship building, creating and maintaining contacts, and locating career opportunities; Facebook is specifically for a college audience and requires a college or university email address to register; MySpace offers blogs, groups, video, among other features.”
“E-community is a group of people that may or may not primarily or initially communicate or interact via the Internet. Online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other in real life. The dawn of the "information age" found groups communicating electronically rather than face to face. A "Computer-mediated community" (CMC) uses social software to regulate the activities of participants. An online community such as one responsible for collaboratively producing open source software is sometimes called a development community. Significant socio-technical change has resulted from the proliferation of Internet-based social networks.”(1)
Today, virtual community or online community can be used loosely for a variety of social groups interacting via the Internet. It does not necessarily mean that there is a strong bond among the members. An email distribution list may have hundreds of members and the communication which takes place may be merely informational (questions and answers are posted), but members may remain relative strangers and the membership turnover rate could be high. This is in line with the liberal use of the term community.
So, we see that on-line projects which reflect the needs of society are in the success. Most of them deal with the searching information, be it the Information about Glasgo or some other, or projects deadling with connecting people in one unity, but this is side of the matter has some winning and loosing points.

Question 2: With reference to the two case studies, discuss the challenges involved in managing an E-business.
Recognition is important to online contributors such that, in general, individuals want recognition for their contributions, some have called this Egoboo. Kollock outlines the importance of reputation online: “Rheingold (1993) in his discussion of the WELL (an early online community) lists the desire for prestige as one of the key motivations of individuals’ contributions to the group. To the extent this is the concern of an individual, contributions will likely be increased to the degree that the contribution is visible to the community as a whole and to the extent there is some recognition of the person’s contributions. … the powerful effects of seemingly trivial markers of recognition (e.g. being designated as an “official helper”) has been commented on in a number of online communities…”
For every boon there is always a downside-such is the case with the Internet, which has become not only the information highway, but also a playground for individuals who seek to wreak havoc on others. As San Diego criminal defense attorneys are quickly learning, as useful and entertaining as the Internet can be, a lot of information about Internet users resides online and an enterprising criminal knows where and how to find it.
Although MySpace.com recently eclipsed more traditional Web sites to become one of the Top 10 Internet destinations, several widely publicized incidents of cyber stalking have also raised concerns about user safety. In addition, the discussion has now turned to questioning the responsibility of the management of these online communities when a domestic crime is committed by their members. San Diego criminal defense attorneys are aware that chat rooms and online communities are not the only electronic means used for cyber stalking; E-mail, text and instant messaging are also being used to harass victims. (4)
Cyber stalking may include the use of Email to harass the victim directly, posting the victim�s name, phone number, or Email address in a newsgroup or chat room in order to solicit third person harassment of the victim, preparing of websites designed to harass the victim by displaying personal or pornographic material involving the victim, or the use of the computer to access the victim’s personal or financial information, in addition to computer tampering which is also included as a cyber stalking crime. Currently, there are 45 cyber stalking (and related) laws on the books.
The management of the various online communities are also aware of these statistics, however, coming to terms with what they can do to prevent cyber stalking is proving just as difficult. Most agree that they have an obligation to their users to provide sufficient guidelines that clearly define what types of behavior is unacceptable, the consequences of such behavior and the steps that are in place to enforce the policy. Many of these Internet companies are now retaining lawyers to determine how they can protect their interests, as well as protect their members from cyber stalkers.
The growing amount of evidence of the damage of using the Internet as an instrument to harass, threaten and abuse, is the reason why courts have decided to include cyber stalking in the new definition of domestic violence. Cyber stalkers may claim the First Amendment as a criminal defense to any state law, but the First Amendment does not protect true threats.
Considering the example of Vetclick.Co.Uk, we see that “The start-up team discovered that although there was some competition amongst veterinary practices in some areas of the UK, as a service that would serve the industry as a whole they virtually had no competition. They knew they had to work quickly and create a service that would be difficult to imitate. One of the big problems for Internet companies is the fact that once others know the idea the idea may be easy to copy or imitate. The barriers to entry are often lower than that of bricks only business.”
This really a big problem in the business community.
Building a successful e-business requires such enterprise capabilities as global networking, integrated business processes, sharing information with supply-chain partners, agility in responding to the market, and intelligent decision-making. At the same time enterprise systems have extended beyond the traditional business functions and include features to support supply-chain management, customer relationship management and electronic commerce. The new focus on e-business is, in part, driven by the adoption of the Web as a new channel for product distribution, marketing, and interaction with customers. The integration of the traditional as well as the Web-oriented functions is the cornerstone of a successful e-business. This paper presents an e-business framework that, on one hand, builds on the enterprise system but, on the other, encompasses the new e-business dimensions.
Conclusion
Building the companies into successful e-businesses has become an important objective for today’s enterprises. To do so requires such business capabilities as global networking, process integration, information sharing, supply-chain agility, and intelligent decision-making.
Web as a new channel for product distribution, marketing, and interaction with customers. The integration of traditional as well as Web-oriented functions is the cornerstone of a successful e-business. At the same time, information systems have become the nerve center of most enterprise systems. As enterprise operations increasingly go global, proper coordination between business, manufacturing, and the global value-adding chain needs special attention. Information systems can help provide that coordination. What makes information systems the backbone of business operations is the emerging global information infrastructure. Through this infrastructure, enterprise systems can achieve business integration and coordination. That becomes the foundation of any e-business.

References:
1. (http://wiki.ittoolbox.com/index.php/Topic:Online_Social_Network
2. http://www.criminallawyergroup.com/criminal-defense/should-myspace-orkut-online-domestic-violence-crimes.php
3.http://www.truman.missouri.edu/uploads/Publications/Scott%20and%20Johnson%20Online%20Communities.pdf
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community
5. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
6. Smith, M. "Voices from the WELL: The Logic of the Virtual Commons" UCLA Department of Sociology.