For your last blog post, please discuss one of the business models you found interesting form this week’s presentations of our final projects.  Please do not discuss your own proposed business model.  Highlight the strengths of the business model and provide some suggestions for improvement.

Prediction markets are only effective if a lot of people participate.  What are the best ways to encourage more traders and trading within internal company prediction markets?


If you’re not familiar with prediction markets yet, read the NYT article in the syllabus, check out the Wikipedia page, and I highly recommend experimenting with some prediction market trading before class.  You can trade futures and options on movies and Hollywood stars for free on the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) or vote to predict political events on Intrade.net.

What are the similarities and differences between a community-driven product development process and a traditional product development process within a firm?

What’s the best way for companies to engage with their customers using social media?

How do Wikipedia’s processes for creating and modifying articles ever lead to high-quality results? In other words, since anyone can easily edit Wikipedia, how is it that good (and usually accurate) content emerges?

What new features and functionality would you want to see in Facebook and why?  How could these new features help Facebook earn revenue?

1. How does Hulu’s value proposition differ from traditional broadcast and cable television?
2. How do network effects (cross-side and same-side) impact Hulu’s business model?