In general, how should organizations deal with issues posed by user-generated content and other information spread over social media?

I think active monitoring of social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook is becoming a business operations requirement.  Proactive monitoring will help ensure potentially damaging user generated content is identified early enough to implement a damage control strategy.  Should the content be inaccurate and/or slanderous, the firm should actively publicize (through social media and potentially elsewhere) their defense.  If the content is factual, as it was with the United Breaks Guitars case, the firm can utilize social media to express their plan of action to address the issues at hand.  The rapid information spreading capabilities of social media can ultimately help the firm to assuage customer concerns. 

Firms can also leverage social media sites to improve their service to customers.  As United planned in the United Breaks Guitars case, content and feedback from social media can be used to educate employees and even aid in training programs.  Firms could actually extend the use of social media even farther by enlisting social media sites as another form of customer support.  For instance, firms could add their facebook page as another form of customer support input (in addition to home page, in person and phone support). 

Network affects of Hulu's Business Model

Several different network affects are at play with Hulu.  First, an increase to the amount of video content on the site provides a positive cross-side network affect for customers of the service.  The more movie and tv options that are available, the better the value proposition for Hulu users.  A possible negative,  IT related network affect can occur through an increase in users to the site by increasing the load on Hulu's servers and decreasing the performance of the service.  Conversely, a positive cross-side network affect can occur for content providers and Hulu if user load increases.  The more users on the service the higher the revenue potential of and marketability of the service. 

These effects impact Hulu's business model by:

- Focusing Hulu's growth efforts on content acquisition.  They try to partner with as many content providers as possible.
- Ensuring their system up time and high performance is constent
- Growing their marketing options for advertisers on their site.

Key factors behind google's early success

Clearly Google's success started with its vastly superior search algorithm.  This search algorithm encouraged Yahoo! to invest in the fledgling firm and license the technology for Yahoo's own search site.  From the user's perspective, the higher quality search results got the user to the info they sought quicker and eliminated the "noise" common place in the search results of competitor sites.  When Google stood up its own search site, google.com, it was an extremely simple site that lacked any form of advertising.  The site did one thing and did that one thing well.  Any visitor to the site would instantly recognize the purpose of the site and how the site works.   Given there were/are no real switching costs for users of internet search engines, it took very little time for search engine users to recognize the superiority of the Google search and switch for good.

Following the fundamental algorithm, the creation of AdWords and AdSense helped Google monetize their algorithm in ways competing search engines could not.  The combination of the powerful search algorithm and the unique approach to advertising based on that algorithm provided an insurmountable differentiating factor during the first decade of the 21st century.