Crowdfunding: disintermediated investment banking

This paper introduces crowdfunding as a concept and model for the evolution of investment banking. Crowdfunding, an application of crowdsourcing, is defined as one party’s attempt to finance a project by offering three types of investment opportunities to potential investors. The investment opportunities are donations, passive investments, and active investments. From this foundation I develop a model in which interdependent agents operate in a dynamic, discrete setting. Potential investors decide whether or not to invest in one of three opportunities each period while the entrepreneur sets the parameters of the game to maximize the probability of successful financing. I then simulate the model to analyze the effects changes in key parameters have on the results of the game.crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, network, finance, banking, relationship, evolution, investment, commercial, customer, participation

The Pop-Pickers Have Picked Decentralised Media: the Fall of Top of the Pops and the Rise of the Second Media Age

The BBC has recently announced that Top of the Pops, the long-running weekly popular music programme, will broadcast its final episode in the summer of 2006. This brief \'rapid response\' article considers how the conclusion of Top of the Pops\' 42 year history may be understood as representative or indicative of broader transformation in musical appropriation. As such it considers the fall of Top of the Pops in relation to the rise of what Mark Poster has described as a \'second media age\' (Poster, 1996). This second media age is defined by the emergence of decentralised and multidimensional media structures that usurp the broadcast models of the first media age. This article argues that the decommissioning of Top of the Pops, and the ongoing expansion of \'social networking\' sites such as MySpace and Bebo, illustrates the movement from a first to a second media age. In light of these transformations I suggest here that there is a pressing need to develop new research initiatives and strategies that critically examine these new digitalised forms of musical appropriation.Music, Digital, Digitalisation, Internet, Capitalism, Social Networking, Rhetoric, Second Media Age, Authenticity, Culture

On being part of the solution, not the problem: taking a proportionate approach to managing records

Purpose – This article seeks to provide a perspective on a future pathway for records management that is based on taking a proportionate approach rather than striving for perfection. This approach requires a re-interpretation of traditional principles and their application in practice and recognition of the predominance of people in successful information and records management in the digital domain. Design/methodology/approach – The views are the author's based on the headline findings of a major research project (AC+erm) which investigated issues and practical strategies for accelerating positive change in electronic records management. They incorporate views on contextual developments since the project, in particular the characteristics of today's hybrid and increasingly mobile office environment such as the use of recognition technologies. Findings – The ten headline findings of the AC+erm project are shared. Two strategic findings are highlighted, namely, articulating a vision of successful electronic records management and the approach to applying records management principles in order to realise that vision of success. The article then focuses on two of the other findings, about the need for information and records professionals to adopt proportionate and risk based approaches and to ensure they (the records professionals) are an essential part of the solution not the problem. Post the project, views on these and tactics for addressing them are discussed with reference to real examples and potential future research and development. Research limitations/implications – The research that provides the context for the article was qualitative and therefore its findings transferrable rather than generalisable. The views expressed about tactics for moving forward are intended to contribute to the debate about approaches to managing records in the democratic, digital domain. Practical implications – A proportionate approach to managing records by definition implies a risk-based approach. This may prove challenging in organizational, societal and cultural contexts that are risk averse. Originality/value – The research which underpins this article was the first on the subject to be conducted in the UK and adopted a unique evidence-based approach. Undertaken in the context of the “promise” of electronic document and records management systems, its findings are relevant in the broader systems solutions. They provide a context for this perspective on current and potential tactics for addressing strategic issues for managing records in the digital domain. This provides a significant contribution to knowledge and debate in this field

Shopbots, Powershopping, Powersales: New Forms of Intermediation in E-Commerce - An Overview -

With the advent and proliferation of the Internet many aspects of business and market activities are changing. New forms of intermediation also called cybermediaries are becoming increasingly important as a coordinator of interaction between buyers and sellers in the electronic market environment. Especially the overwhelming abundance of information offered by the Internet promotes the development of new intermediarie like malls, shopbots, virtual resellers etc. This paper provides a detailed overview of different new forms of cybermediation and illustrates their influence on consumer choice, firm pricing and product differentiation strategies.comparison shopping, cybermediaries, e-commerce, shopbots

Customer Retention Strategies For Disintermediated Travel Agents: How To Stop Customers From Migrating To Online Booking Channels

Remaining relevant to customers and retaining customers who could consider booking online, requires travel agents to modify their marketing strategies.  Travel agents need to find new ways to add value for customers and suppliers to reinstate their roles in the travel distribution process and ultimately retain their customers. A total of 600 travel agencies in South Africa participated in the study through the completion of an online survey.  The data analysis technique used for the study was path analysis.  The findings stipulate that travel agency owners and managers believe that providing differentiated products to their leisure customers, is the key to winning back lost customers and keeping existing customers.  Travel agency owners and managers further indicated that this is an existing reintermediation strategy that they plan to practise in the future as well.  It is therefore recommended that travel agents focus on delivering high-quality service to win back lost customers and thus reintermediate their businesses.

The Digital Role in Building Public Profiles of Political Actors

In the middle of an era characterized by continuous electoral campaigns and by the personalization of politics contained in the better-known platform society, our paper aims to shed light on the planning dynamics and practices carried out inside and outside the Net by those political actors in charge of the local election arena. Which factors related to political networks push individuals to run for a political position? What are the biographies, cultural and local relations of the territories they run for? What are the differences between political competitors in terms of the digital competence needed for campaign communication and promotion? The research design focuses on a specific case study shaped on the last local election in Naples. Through the study of the political biographies of the candidates, a framework analysis was conducted on press releases, aiming to understand the inferred narration of the election and a content analysis conducted on their official social media sources to comprehend the self-building political narratives of the observed candidates. This study aims to create a clear categorization of candidates, to understand the current digital customs adopted by political actors to draw and define their own political strategies

Ecological and Holistic Analysis of the Epistemic Value of Law Libraries

We examine the libraries\u27 roles within the epistemic foundation of society.” Our analysis is in response to the omission of Yale Law Dean Gerken of the role of libraries in her recent article about legal education\u27s new focus and to remarks by AALS President Vicki Jackson that suggest an uncertain role for libraries. We have adapted holistic ecological media theory, as developed by Ronald Deibert, to reject a technologically deterministic view of libraries as having no future. We have considered the role of law libraries in the social epistemology or cognitive authority of the legal community, the role of law libraries as knowledge institutions (in multiple facets), the function of technology (including language and media), and geopolitical and physical considerations. We have reviewed our past in terms of reading as a legal profession, considered the development of libraries, and have speculated about the future--all through ecological holistic lenses. We conclude that libraries are not victims to be sacrificed on the altar of technological determinism—they have many features, not only compatible with the current and future information environment, but valuable to the society embedded within it

An Inquiry into Bloom's Taxonomy as a Hierarchy and Means for Teaching Legal Research Skills

Includes bibliographic references.Pedagogy requires both a theory and a consistent method of implementation. While the literature of law librarianship abounds in suggestions and descriptions about how legal research is being taught, it lacks sufficient consideration of pedagogical theory from the field of education. In light of the Carnegie Report, and efforts at comprehensive curriculum reform, the time is ripe for law librarianship to develop a comprehensive and properly grounded pedagogy for legal research instruction. This paper proposes and illustrates adapting Bloom's Taxonomy as a means to identify legal research skills, prioritize objectives, and organize course curricula