Findings

Findings related with “doyouremember.co.uk” Part II

The website was last accessed on March 20th. Reagarding its technological components, the following points were drawn:

Internal Search Engine

DYR has an internal search engine. Users can search for topics they are interested in by providing the relevant keywords. For instance, if someone is interested in finding all entries related with the year “1983”, they can just type the keyword in the upper right corner and be presented with all the relevant search results.

A limitation that should be addressed regarding this feature, is that there is no Advanced Search option. For instance, a user might first like to see all the entries related with “1983” and then drill down the search further, by viewing only entries related to cinema.

Login Area

Once the user logs in, they can create a profile and provide input in the following fields: Name – Home Town – Country – Gender – D.O.B – About Me.

Also there is the Shoutbox! area, where the user can “say something” and share it with others.

Another important aspect is the Friends area; users of DYR can become friends with people that have common interests and experiences. Here emphasis could be placed on giving this feature a more “Facebook-like” character, or integrating it into this popular community, so as to attract more visitors and increase incoming traffic.

Registered users can also contribute by adding their own Memories, distinguish their favorite ones, comment on other people’s memories and finally, subscribe to memories.

Here’s a checklist of basic web design principles and DYR’ s compliance with them:

Primary Audience – DYR covers the needs of its target audience, by offering a large content of related information, that is updated on a regular basis.

Purpose of the site – The site is mainly focused on providing entertainment to its users and secondarily serves some of their educational needs.

Location of the site – The site is hosted by a commercial Internet service provider (ISP).

Type of content – The content provided is mainly text and pictures. There is total absence of sound and videos and this is a limitation that should be addressed. When a piece of information is displayed on the page, on the right hand side there are sponsored links related to it. In addition, there is the “Also remembered” section that indicates relevant information. Right under the selected item there are some related Google ads. Some more advanced Business Intelligence techniques should be adopted, so that the relevance of both ads and related posts is higher, and also some further personalization would be necessary, so that the ads displayed are even more tailor-made (according to the user’s profile, memories and history of browsing).

What is important to indicate is that when scrolling down the page, one can subscribe to the memory displayed each time, mark it as their favorite, comment on it, track new comments and also have a look at the comments of other users. The critical point here is the option provided by DYR to report a bad post, which insures the quality of the posts.

Information provided on the “home” page – The “About” page does not provide a clear picture of who these people are, nor their mission or purpose statement.

“Terms and conditions” and the “Copyright” section are dealt with properly.

Content – it matches the purpose of the web site; it is well organized and spellchecked; it is presented solely in English (German, Spanish or French might be another option; it’s not random that Facebook, for instance, offers such a choice2) The lack of multimedia content such as video/ sound is to be pointed out. Content can be further expanded by the user (like wikipedia). This is not the case in the blog DYR maintains and making it a bliki would better serve the company’s purposes.

DYR is a publishing portal and managing its content and keeping its quality constantly at a high level is crucial. Some ways to do that are presented under the “Other Tools” section below.

Users also have the choice of signing up to DYR’s newsletter (and “receive favorite memories, questions from the forum, and the best in nostalgia-related web snippets”) and that of subscribing to their RSS feed.

Page design – a “back to home” link is included; a consistent template and a uniform color scheme is used on each page; there is sufficient contrast between background and text; font size is appropriate; important information is placed near the top; a long list of links is avoided (not always); information is categorized in smaller chunks and tags are provided; the material is organized so as to prevent excessive scrolling.

Other tools

Also deployed by DYR, that act as compliments to the main web site and further promote its activities.

As mentioned in the first assignment, DYR has a blog.

This hosts general chat about all things from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s plus news about new features and developments on the website. It is interactive and it allows users to upload comments, while it also offers them the ability to subscribe in feeds. It is community based, that is one can make friends on the blog and stay aware of their uploads and comments.

In general the blog acts as a compliment to the web site; one can make a profile and add memories, comments, etc.

Through the blog DYR offers far more efficient communication and knowledge management in a more informal way. Visitors are kept apprised of new developments on the main web site and the company is helped to focus on niche areas and react quickly to the needs and wants of their customers/ visitors. The blog is also a recruiting tool. If someone has an opinion they want to share or a memory they want to tell DYR about, then they can join the DYR staff and write on this blog.

There is also a calendar, which does not appear in the main web site or the blog. There are two types of events on this calendar: normal events and recurring events. Normal Events span the time frame from when the event starts until the event ends. Recurring Events repeat over a set period of time based on certain criteria. Examples would be an event that occurs on the first Monday of every month and an event that occurs every Monday and Wednesday. The administrator may have enabled registered members to post events, but usually this is not the case. Users can also post their own private events that are only viewable to them. Birthdays are shown on the calendar if the administrator has enabled this feature.

Another important point to be mentioned, is referrals. The administrator enables referrals, which allows users to be credited for any new users they invite to the forum. Users gain referrals by promoting DoYouRemember.co.uk forums using their unique referral link.

Finally, there is the RSS feed. By using this, users are able to view newly created threads in guest viewable forums without visiting the board.

More on the technological approach DYR might have adopted & the analysis of info conducted

Connecting to databases

Virtually every EC application requires database access and such is the case of DYR. An EC application can be connected to a back-end database in a variety of ways. Today, most of these connections are accomplished via a multitiered application architecture. This architecture has four tiers:

1. A Web browser where data and information are presented to and data are collected from the end user
2. A Web server that delivers Web pages, collects the data sent by the end user, and passes data to and from the application server
3. An application server that executes business rules (e.g., user authorization), formulates database queries based on the data passed by the Web server, sends the queries to the back-end database, manipulates and formats the data resulting from the database query, and sends the formatted response to the Web server
4. A database server in which the data are stored and managed and database requests are processed.

Usage analysis and site management

To improve EC Web sites, it is advisable to monitor what customers are doing there (usage analysis). Both B2C and B2B Web sites require a thorough understanding of the usage and patterns—the who, what, where, when, and how. This can be done by analyzing Web log files. Access logs are text files. Each line of the file details an individual access. Regardless of the type of Web server, access logs use a common log file format. This makes them easy to analyze and compare. Because log files can become quite voluminous, it is hard to analyze the accesses by hand. For this reason, most Web server EC software vendors provide “free” software for analyzing access log files. Commercial products that provide more sophisticated log analyses are also available (e.g.,NetIQ’sWebTrends).

Access logs provide a variety of statistics that can be used for analyzing and improving marketing and advertising strategies. Among the more valuable statistics are:

◗ Pageviews by time slot. Pageviews allow frequent review of the number of site accesses. Grouping pageviews by “time bucket” (time slot) also enables the company to ascertain the time slots, such as morning, afternoon, or evening, during which customers visit the site.

◗ Pageviews by customers’ log-in status. This information helps determine whether requiring customers to log in is worthwhile or not. For instance, if the number of pageviews of customers who log in is substantially greater than those who do not, the company may find the login requirement effective and worthwhile.

◗ Pageviews by referrers. Some customers are drawn or referred to the site by clicking on banners or links on other Web sites. Knowing the source of such referrers is useful for assessing the effectiveness of the location of banners, and customers’ interest can also be determined from the nature of the Web site with those banners.

◗ Pageviews by visitor’s hardware platform, operating system, browser, and/or browser version. These types of pageviews enable the company to obtain information on the hardware platform (e.g., Mac or PC) and browser type (e.g., Internet Explorer or Netscape) used by the viewer.

◗ Pageviews by visitor’s host. This type of pageview provides information on the customers’ host site. Knowing where customers are coming from can enable the company to target potential customers via popular hosts such as Yahoo!

DYR probably conducts some kind of analysis regarding these different aspects and poses some business questions. Some indicative ones are presented in the link below, where the full report can be accessed.

Concluding remark

Overall, all technological components adopted by DYR (ranging from design of the web site to data mining & security issues) serve one basic business need: maximize incoming traffic, so that the revenues coming in from the ads people click on, or commissions the company receives on purchases done through the web site, also increase. Business intelligence and content management tools are also extremely important, because these will help DYR build on the aspects that “sell” most and strengthen its competitive position even more.

The full report can be accessed here.

Finding related with www.psfk.com (Part II)

Business Need behind existing Technological Components

Technological Component	Business Need
· PSFK advertising field	· With this feature Psfk.com hopes to increase its visitors offering a free advertisement. This can characterized as a CRM [1] application and especially a Customer facing application offering a high level interaction with the visitor.
· Content browser by topic	· This is an internal application (CRM based model) and especially a customer centric application offering data reporting. The underlying business need can be concentrated on the fact that more traffic on the sites posts offer an interaction, using comments, via personal thought and finally creating more value.
· Ads by Google	· The use of such an application makes money for Psfk.com. On the other hand the relevance between of what a visitor sees and the business that is being advertised helps in a way to enlarge the circle of innovation and trend.
· Twitter service	· One more option of keeping in touch with Psfk.com updates. The use of this feature helps brand new issues to be expanded in a wide audience in order to strengthen the CRM model into a more private way.
· Internal site browser, using Google custom search.	· This application can be set as a CRM collaborative activity, because helps visitors to find what they are looking for and moreover invites people to contribute on this. On the other hand is a customer centric application because of keeping data reporting and mining.
· Subscription feature bar	· The need behind this application is to inform the visitor with Psfk.com newsletters and possibly become a customer. Moreover with the subscription a visitor gets the opportunity to buy a report (Trends and Ideas Reports) and become an official customer for Psfk.com. The reports are part of CRM customer facing applications.
· RSS feed	· The visitor stays informed with sites updates without being obligated to subscribe to the sites newsletters. Moreover privacy of its individual user is highly secured.

Findings related with www.i80s.com

Business Model

I80S.COM adopted the business model of a business-to-consumer e-shop and virtual community. The site is based on a forum built exclusively for individuals who are looking for 80s pictures, music, CDs, books on the 80s, 80’s videos. Together with Amazon, I80S.COM offers a big selection of a la carte, DRM-free (digital rights management) MP3 80’s music downloads. Most songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the 2 million songs priced at 89 cents.

At the same time, a forum is offered for its visitors to discuss and exchange thoughts about various topics, beginning from the decade of 80s which, overall, attracted their interest at first. This fact contributes to the development of a virtual community which can be an important add-on to other marketing operations in order to build customer loyalty and receive customer feedback.

Benefits for the customers can be lower prices compared to the traditional offer, wider choice, better information, and convenience of selecting, buying and delivery, including 24-hour availability. Seller revenues are from reduced cost, increased sales, and possibly advertising.

Marketspaces and Marketplaces

I80S.COM acts as an intermediary, which means that is a third party that operates between sellers and buyers. It offers content of value to its targeted (niche) market and hosts ads of web sites that offer its visitors the opportunity to buy the products they are viewing or other related to these.

I80S.COM is a publishing portal; it is intended for communities with specific interests and provides online search features & some customization. It also allows for personalization and feedback from its users.

Benefits and Limitations

I80S.COM hosts in the 80’s blogs area links of several blogs related to its target group which are ads by google. This act enhances the role of its forum and maintains the interest of visitors and members in high level. In general the blog acts as a compliment to the web site; one can make a profile and add memories, comments, etc. One major risk involved with the blog is the quality of the posts that are made from its visitors. Blogs do not talk; people do once they have practice in the language or style of conversation that is needed. Blog interaction requires formal direction until new habits are acquired. Like any activity, there must be some motivation and direction (Krause, 2005) for effective practice. Moreover, the blog author should edit the original posting to summarize what has been learned from the feedback comments. This is a limitation that could be addressed in several ways:

1. Create a new post with a link back to the previous post and put a link in the old post referring to the new one.
2. Link a wiki-page where the feedback on the old posting summarizes and restates what has been learned yet continues to leave the discussion open to further editing by those interested.
3. Put a link in the original posting to a static web page that summarizes what has been learned from the feedback.

An effective blog requires some discipline with personal scheduling to achieve regular postings and build a loyal fan club or a strong collaborative group. Remaining persistent is challenging. Blog authors must recognize that not everyone who reads blogs has the best interest of the author in mind. Putting personal information in a blog can be dangerous. That personal information can come back to bite you in terms of identity theft, harassment, reputation endangering mistakes in grammar and logic and more. Further, comment links open to all readers can lead to blog site vandalism by those who insert foul ideas, language and web links to trashy web sites such as pornography or hate promoting sites. However, there are a number of effective and quick defenses against the “dark side”, while the personal side just requires good judgment and editing.

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Findings related with www.psfk.com

Business Model

According to plfk.com their site is claimes as B2B services provider. PSFK is a trends and innovation agency that helps companies and organizations make change by inspiring them to make things better – whether that’s better marketing, better service, and new product ideas or a new way of working. Their services are separated into two main divisions. Their publishing division runs the idea sites, trend reports and inspiration conferences while their consultancy division helps international clients find new business ideas through the interpretation of trends. Moreover their site contains much information for many topics working like a blog with posts and comments. This site creates value based on its customers which are organizations and firms around the world. Basically offers innovative ideas to these companies in order to increase profit. These ideas may come from conferences that are placed worldwide or from its own innovation agency. So the income for this company comes straight from the organization that needs their help. Moreover there is an extra income coming from advertising companies that are related with the topic that is being discussed. Psfk.com is a B2B transaction model and listed between many to many and 1 to many offering services.

Marketplace

The area that this company makes profit is mostly the area of innovation consulting in terms of new products and services. So it belongs to the area of innovation marketplaces, where the potential customer can find an innovative solution to his problem. These, for the consulting division of the firm. The publishing division, as been told, looks alike a blog so cannot be put into a marketplace. Moreover psfk.com tries through this division to create a community where innovative ideas can be stated and discussed.

Benefits

According to psfk’s policy the publishing division of its site is more or less a blog. The benefits of this blog are focused basically in the promotion of news, ideas, and views in different topics that people may concern. Moreover as a viewer anybody can share this article or make a comment and generally help with its own ideas to progress in terms of communicating with others and change useful ideas. Moreover there being run conferences where psfk.com gets the world’s most innovative change-makers to discuss trends and the creative ideas they get from understanding them.

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Findings regarding a website related to “the timetravellers”.

Some key facts about DYR

* 450,000+ page views per month
* Visitors mainly from the USA and the UK
* Over 4,000 items listed
* Online since March 2004
* Owned and managed by DoYouRemember Ltd

DoYouRemember.co.uk is frequently featured in newspapers, magazines, on the radio and on television. It is widely used by nostalgia seekers, researchers, television production companies and academic institutions.

Adopted business model

DYR is a virtual (pure-play) organization; that is an organization that conducts its business activities solely online.

According to Ostelwader, a business model is “the business logic of how a company makes money in a sustainable way”. A business model can be described by answering the following four questions: How, What, Who and how much? Here is how DYR deals with these issues:

How
DYR is all about sharing memories with a feeling of nostalgia about the past. The editors’ uploads as well as those provided by its visitors create added value for the users.

What
DYR offers its readers information that is of (emotional) value to them, combined with targeted advertisements (from third parties).

Who
The target group is people that grew up in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and share a feeling of nostalgia about their past. They seek to remember the “good old days” and exchange their ideas and feelings about their common background.

With its large database of information DYR has been able assist various television production companies, radio stations, magazines and institutions including:

* The BBC
* The Oxford English Dictionary
* The British Library
* Channel Four

Adopted revenues models (how much)

Advertising fees
The web site provides content and services (e-mail, chat, forums) mixed with advertising messages in the form of paid links, banners and info-ads.

Affiliate marketing
An arrangement whereby a marketing partner (a business, an organization, or even an individual) refers consumers to the selling company’s Web site. From this are derived affiliate fees revenues. While users surf around DYR’s web site, related (to what they are viewing) purchase opportunities arise; banners of web sites that offer this kind of products appear. The revenues of DYR might be in the form of pay-per-click or according to how many times a company’s banner is displayed, or they might even receive a commission if the user is redirected from their site to another and completes a purchase there.

The following comes from DYR’s website:

DoYouRemember.co.uk is delighted to be able to offer a range of low-cost advertising and sponsorship opportunities to help promote your business:

* Banner advertising
* Sponsored links
* Sponsored product pages
* Newsletter sponsorship
* Competition sponsorship
* Giveaway / product launch promotions

Giveaways and competition sponsorship can usually be provided FREE OF CHARGE if the prize / giveaway is relevant to the content of the site.

Virtual community (open content) based model
Focuses on added value of communication between the users, while it acts as some kind of infomediary, in the sense that it aggregates information by offering a large database; this can be expanded by its users (they can provide their input if the piece of information they are looking for is missing).

DYR’s involvement in e-marketplaces

DYR acts as an intermediary, that is a third party that operates between sellers and buyers. It offers content of value to its targeted (niche) market and hosts ads of web sites that offer its visitors the opportunity to buy the products they are viewing or other related to these.

DYR is a publishing portal; it is intended for communities with specific interests and provides online search features & some customization. It also allows for personalization and feedback from its users.

Benefits and limitations of DYR’s blog

DYR has a blog which can be found here: http://blog.doyouremember.co.uk

It hosts general chat about all things from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s plus news about new features and developments on the website. It is interactive and it allows users to upload comments, while it also offers them the ability to subscribe in feeds. It is community based, that is one can make friends on the blog and stay aware of their uploads and comments.

In general the blog acts as a compliment to the web site; one can make a profile and add memories, comments, etc.

Through the blog DYR offers far more efficient communication and knowledge management in a more informal way. Visitors are kept apprised of new developments on the main web site and the company is helped to focus on niche areas and react quickly to the needs and wants of their customers/ visitors.

One major risk involved with the blog is the quality of the posts that are made from its visitors. Blogs do not talk; people do once they have practice in the language or style of conversation that is needed. Blog interaction requires formal direction until new habits are acquired. Like any activity, there must be some motivation and direction (Krause, 2005) for effective practice.

Moreover, the blog author needs to edit the original posting to summarize what has been learned from the feedback comments. This is a limitation that could be addressed in several ways:

1. Create a new post with a link back to the previous post and put a link in the old post referring to the new one.
2. Link a wiki-page where the feedback on the old posting summarizes and restates what has been learned yet continues to leave the discussion open to further editing by those interested.
3. Put a link in the original posting to a static web page that summarizes what has been learned from the feedback.

An effective blog requires some discipline with personal scheduling to achieve regular postings and build a loyal fan club or a strong collaborative group. Remaining persistent is challenging.

Blog authors must recognize that not everyone who reads blogs has the best interest of the author in mind. Putting personal information in a blog can be dangerous. That personal information can come back to bite you in terms of identity theft, harassment, reputation endangering mistakes in grammar and logic and more. Further, comment links open to all readers can lead to blog site vandalism by those who insert foul ideas, language and web links to trashy web sites such as pornography or hate promoting sites. However, there are a number of effective and quick defenses against the “dark side”, while the personal side just requires good judgment and editing.

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TIME Magazine: An Elderly Resetting His Roots To Meet The Future

Time, whose trademark is capitalized TIME, is a weekly American newsmagazine, similar to Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. A European edition (Time Europe, formerly known as Time Atlantic) is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition (Time Asia) is based in Hong Kong. Time publishes simultaneously in Canada, with separate advertising. The South Pacific edition, covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, is based in Sydney. In some advertising campaigns, the magazine has suggested that through a backronym the letters TIME stand for “The International Magazine of Events”.(*Wikipedia)

This report will discuss the Time magazine website (www.time.com), a successful e-commerce model that was able to effectively integrate a business that was established in 1923 in the fabric of the internet era; as a modern competitive publishing firm. The issues of the business model, marketplace adopted and the benefits of the blogs that are integrated into the site will be detailed in the sections of this report.

The Business Model:

According to Ostelwader, HEC, Lausanne, 2003; a business model is “the business logic of how a company makes money in a sustainable way”. A business model can be described by answering the following four questions: How, What, Who and how much?

How: the unique ability of the TIME Magazine to provide cutting edge news to their readers through the web as well; is the core capability that helps the company in generating value for its users. Not only that, but also the establishment of a partnership with CNN to provide content and promotion for its site makes their online presence even more attractive.

What: the company offers its reader minute by minute news updates through the internet medium. But what differentiate their web presence is that they offer facilities such as videos, blogs, and the ability to leave a comment, or read other people comment, which makes them much more interactive Online.

Who: the target customer for the TIME is the same group of well educated sophisticated reader, but with the web presence it is providing more means to reach their target customers with even more services.

How much: the site has four main sources of revenues:

• TIME customer online services subscription: offering services such as special reports and assisted archive search access.
• Advertising fees from other companies: Since the site has managed to generate massive traffic, more and more companies are now advertising their offerings on the TIME website.
• Affiliate Marketing: by leasing some of their banner and ad space to a third party that put their clients’ ads on their site.
• Extra sales for their hard copy magazines generated by the site.

All those services offers the TIME a notable amount of extra revenues, while only carrying a small fractional cost to establish their online presence.

Another way to look at their business model is describing it as: B2C if they sell their services directly to individual reader, B2B if they sell their services to companies, and B2B2C if they sell their services companies that buys it and offer it to its employees.

Marketplaces:

TIME.com participate in market places in two main ways; the first as publishing portal that offers communities with the interest of being updated with what is happening in the world a verifiable trusted source of information and the ability to perform extensive online search for whatever topic of interest they have.

The second is a mobile portal (m-portal) that enables subscribers to login to a customized news portal that offers an individual preference based news briefs that one can access through his/her mobile phone.

Those market places can be looked at as a case of Disintermediation because readers no longer have to go to newspaper kiosk, or subscribe with the magazine home delivery service to get their news, rather they can now use any internet access point that they have (PC, Mobiles, …etc) to read the news they want when they want from the source they have always trusted.

Blogs:

TIME.com has twelve listings under the blog tab that appears in the main page, those listings are:

• Main: which gives a feed for all other blogs
• Swamland
• Tuned In
• Curious Capitalist
• Real Clear Politics
• Work In Progress
• Looking Around
• The Middle East Blog
• Nerd World
• The China Blog
• White House Photo Blog
• Eye On Science.

TIME has established the above list of blogs; it has reporters dedicated to updating them, and offers readers the faculty to comment on different posts of those blogs. The advantage of having a pre-established set of topic for blogs is to maintain the high quality of the site while at the same time optimize this function by only offering topics that their readers will actually check regularly, and consequently increase traffic.

Also the blog will give the readers the feeling that they are empowered, which will make them more eager to post and comment. This will increase the material on the site and in turn increase the number of reader and web traffic.

This significant increase in readers and traffic will enable them to push higher prices for their advertisement space, while at the same time growing their market share by getting more readers to subscribe to their services.

All of those factors made TIME able to realize a sizable increase in profit from offering the facility of bloging on their website. From a personal stand point, I think that they should add more bloging topics because the topics offered are very limited, but I also agree with their strategy of limiting those topics to a pre-set in order to be able to keep and monitor the quality of the data their website present, after all the blogs have the same outlay as the main TIME homepage, so it should have information that meets up with TIME standards.

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This report is the second report written by me that analyzes the Time Magazine website (www.time.com). However this report focuses on the technological components utilized in that website and the business need behind using them, while the first report focused on issues of the business model, marketplace adopted and the benefits of the blogs that are integrated into the site.

The Technologies and Their Strategic benefit:

In this section the table below will present the different technological components employed by the Time in their site, define those technologies, and try to explain the business need and strategic benefit that the site reaps from using them.

Technological Component	Definition	Business Need and Strategic Benefit
Search Engine <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	A Web search engine is a search engine designed to search for information on the Web. Information may consist of web pages, images and other types of files.	Time search engines also mine data available in the Time website, to ease the navigation for the users. A thing that will eventually generate more traffic for the site because of convenience the user perceives while surfing the site.
Subscribers Area <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	The method whereby a user obtains access to a system.	Such a service enables Times to keep track of its customers and their behaviors and needs, as well enable the customer to be serviced in a customized manner.
Blogs <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.	The blog will give the readers the feeling that they are empowered, which will make them more eager to post and comment. This will increase the material on the site and in turn increase the number of reader and web traffic.
Web Ads <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	Web ads are different advertisements that are placed in different places within a website with the intent of diverting traffic to the advertiser’s site.	A major result of online advertising is that information and content that is not limited by geography or time. The emerging area of interactive advertising presents fresh challenges for advertisers who have adopted an interruptive strategy.
Photo Galleries (http://www.time.com/time/photoessays)	Photo galleries are websites that are dedicated on presenting multiple sets of photos for the readers of those sites.	Time hopes these photo galleries to presents its news as photo essays that would be more attractive for the readers.
Web Archive <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	An archive refers to a collection of historical records.	By means of keeping an archive, Time hopes to attract the readers who are looking for articles that were published in the past, for research or other reasons, those readers constitute a big market that can me exploited.
RSS Feeds <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts.	Time hopes to keep their readers informed with up to the minute updates about all their articles. At the same time this feed offers the readers an easy and convenient way to stay updated.
News Letters <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	Are emails that are sent to readers to with updates about the site content, on a periodical basis.	Time hopes to keep their readers informed periodically about areas of their interest as well as using those news letters as a marketing tool.
Comments Area (opinion leaders panel) <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	Is an area where users are allowed to submit their comments and thoughts.	To be able to better serve the readers in the way the readers want.
Video Player <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	The ability to publish videos that the visitor can stream from the site.	To meet up with the multimedia needs of the users.
Podcasts (Audio) <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	A podcast is a collection of digital media files which are distributed over the Internet, often using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.	To meet up with the multimedia needs of the users.
Mobile Portal <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–>	The ability to service the cell phone users, through offering a customized interface for mobile devices.	Enables subscribers to login to a customized news portal that offers an individual preference based news briefs that one can access through his/her mobile phone for a small fee.
Shopping Carts <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	Shopping cart software is software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online.	The software allows online shopping customers to place items in the cart. Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and the associated taxes, as applicable.
Payment Gateway <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–>	A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes payments for e-businesses, online retailers.	To facilitate a secure means of selling their offerings online. A thing that will increase Time revenues.
Ad Banner <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–><!–[if !vml]–> <!–[endif]–>	Is a form of online advertising that entails embedding an advertisement into a web page.	It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser. Time has other companies’ banners on its site for the purpose of utilizing the site to make extra revenues.

Conclusion and Recommendations:

TIME.com has proved its ability to take advantage of a lot of the new technological components of the web and use them in a way that will mainly boost the company revenues, its site traffic and make the site visitors as comfortable and satisfied as possible with their web surfing experience. It is apparent that by doing so it has set its path to be a leader in news reporting industry in the internet era as well.

A recommendation that is not very necessary but is worth mentioning is that Times could use web framing to ease the navigation through out its site. framing means that a website can be organized into frames. Each frame displays a different HTML document. Headers and sidebar menus do not move when the content frame is scrolled up and down. Apart from that the site is equipped with the entire set of necessary technological component that its readers’ need.

FINDING FOR I80S.COM Part II

Components related to web site features, functionality and capabilities	Business need	Strategic importance
Top Selling Items Catalog provided by Amazon.com	Provides a database for product descriptions and prices	Direct marketing, enhancing effective marketing
Shopping cart	Accepts orders and clears payments	Easier purchases, creation of customer favourite list,enhancing sales
Image gallery	Stores and delivers streaming media content	Personalization of services, interactive communication with customers
Blogs and Forums	Creates an environment for online real-time text and audio interactions with customers	Building a strong relation with target group, customer feedback
Interactive Network 80’s music to the web	Delivers streaming media content	Personalization of services-friendly environment for customer
I80S.COM Interactive 80’s Network Newsletter	Creates and serves mailing list	Manages e-mail marketing campaing
Ads by Google	Maintains Web-enabled database of advertising banners	Effective marketing practice-permits customized and personalized display of advertisements based on consumer behavior and characteristics
Search engine by Google	Indexing of site or web content,keyword search capability	Better navigation into the site, content connection with the web
Search engine by Amazon.com	Indexing of site content -keyword search capability, provides a database for product descriptions and prices	Automation of business
Guest book	Communication between vendor and customer	Continuous improvement of services
Components that enables specific transactions/business activities to occur
Security Servises	Verify username and password, process certificates and private/public information required for credit card processing and other secure information	Execute transaction payments, provide registration in a safe web environment
Data capture	Log file of all visits, time, duration and referral source	Essential tool for effective marketing
Site management tool by SiteMeter	Calculate and display key site statistics	Essential tool for effective marketing