Hi. I am Jody Ma Kit Ling.
I am a Yr 3 Student from BBAIS.

My xanga is http://www.xanga.com/is300007

IS 3000: IS for Global Work Teams and Virtual Organization Assignment 1: Analysis of Virtual Organization Technology Name: Ma Kit Ling, Jody SID: 50674660 Agenda l Technology Overview l Technology Function l Virtuality Impact l Hand-on evaluation l Assessment l Conclusion Technology Overview Photobucket is a website which provides photo sharing. Users can upload their images and create slideshows, videos, albums and share all these with people all over the world. It was founded in 2003. It is usually used for personal photographic albums, remote storage of avatars displayed on internet forums, and storage of videos.Also, users can choose different categories for their images, it is very easy for other people to search the images according to the categories. Photobucket’s image can be share at users’ blog such as Facebook, Blogger, MySpace and message boards etc. This is very convenient to share the images will different people.It offers free accounts and paid accounts for users to storage their images. 1 GB storage for free account users and 5 GB for paid account users. Also, the paid accounts users can enjoy a 25 GB free bandwidth and supports FTP service. Photobucket have some terms to protect the images posted at the website. For example, it may drop content holders at their will for violating the Terms of Service without giving any further details. Photobucket is now becoming more and more popular. It was named the fastest growing site of 2005 according to Nielsen/Netratings. In March 2007 Photobucket had a market share of 41.4 percent of U.S. visits to photography web sites. As of March 28, 2007 Fortune Magazine reports that Photobucket has 36 million registered users and adds 85,000 new users per day. As of October 4, 2007 it claim to have over 3,700,000,000 (3.7 billion) images uploaded to the site with the count growing.
I think Photobucket is a very good platform for a virtual organization to operate their business. I will give more detail information in this report. More Details: http://photobucket.com/ Technology Function Photobucket mainly provides slideshows, albums, videos and avatars services, I will explain all these with a free account one by one. Slideshows Users can upload their images and create different slideshows. Users can access into the slideshows page and create different slideshow, they can create in different style and add different effects in the slideshows. It is very simple to do this, users only need to upload their images from the albums or computer and select the style then save it. Finally, there will have a URL link for users to share the slideshow at their homepage or blogs. Example: Albums Users can upload their images from their computer and create their own albums at Photobucket. Videos Users can remix the videos, photo with music. It is very simple to create videos, there is a tool bar for users to make their videos. Users only need to move the pictures to the videos and selected the music from the bar/ upload their own music to Photobucket. When all the images and music are ready, users can save this and share with others. Example: http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d159/jodymkl/?action=view&current=a912b5af.pbr Avatars Avatars are now becoming more and more popular, it is a logo of representing ourselves on the web. Photobucket also provides this service to users to make avatar to share at forum or blogs. It is also very simple and just like the step in creating albums/ videos/ slideshows. Users only need to choose their style for the avatar and save it, and then the avatar can be share with others. Sharing albums/ videos/ slideshows After all the images are uploaded, users can go directly to the sharing pages to share the slideshow, videos, and albums with others. Compare to other “product” There is many other popular website just like Photobucket providing image sharing, creating slideshows. Some examples are Slide.com and RockYou.com, these two websites are also very popular among the xanga or other blog users to share their images. However, these two websites cannot provide the videos sharing and avatars service for the users, they only have slideshows. Although their slideshows have more styles and effects then Photobucket, Photobucket provides a more comprehensive service for the users. The competitive power of Photobucket is still very high and more suitable for a virtual organization to run their business. Virtuality Impact From the technology function, Photobucket is mainly provides images share service. It helps the virtual organization mainly in creating videos and images sharing. The interaction between the products and customers is one of the problems by conducting an online shopping. A virtual organization also faces this problem. With nowadays technology, uploading photo to the Internet and share with others is very simple. However, all the virtual organizations are doing this to sell their products online. So, how to make a different and become more competitive with others? Photobucket can help a virtual organization to create their unique and attractive images. Photobucket services are very simple to use. It provides instructions step by step for the users to create their own videos/slideshows. The virtual organization doesn’t need an expert to make this, everyone can make the videos/slideshows by theirselves. Beside this, Photobucket provide a free account service, the costs from a virtual organization is very low. It is really a good technology in the costs aspect. Moreover, the functions of this technology are very suitable for a virtual organization needs. Not only creating unique and attractive images to attract customers, but also the wide sharing images method. So, organization can use this platform to share the images at the different places throughout the Internet. Hands-on Evaluation It is very convenience and effective for a virtual organization to run a business by using Photobucket. I will use an example to demonstrate an actual use of Photobucket. The virtual organization is selling some hand-make products, customers can access into the homepage to view the products. To make it more attractive, this organization will make some slideshows and videos. If the customer is interested in which product, the customers can add a comment at the post and leave down the email address. The organization will contact with the customers through emails and delivery the products to them using the HK Postal Service when all the payments and enquiries are completed. Website: http://www.xanga.com/is300007 The following are the slideshow and video for some product. Slideshow http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d159/jodymkl/?action=view&current=28bc6039.pbw Video http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d159/jodymkl/?action=view&current=75372640.pbr Beside share at the organization websites, the organization will also share the images at Myspace, Facebook, Blogger etc. to let more people know about the products. With the help of this technology tool, Photobucket, the virtual organization can easily to create images sharing with the customers. The images are conduct in slideshows or videos form, this can raise the customers’ interests in watching the images. Also, Photobucket is a free service, it is simple and effective for an organization to create different images’ effect, and even a simple advertising video can be conduct. It is a very cost effective for a virtual organization to start their business. Beside, the sharing methods are very wide and easily for the organization to share the product with people all over the world. Although the organization cannot make an entry directly in Photobucket to share the images, in creating an attractive image to draw customer attention, it really does very well. Customers have to click the images to view the products in many online shopping services, however, with the help of Photobucket all the images are flew into customers’ eyes automatically. This is a very effective way for a virtual organization to provide a visual enjoyment for the customers and draw their attention.
Assessment I will use different critical assessment to assess this technology for a virtual organization.

1. Cost to the organization	Photobucket provides a free account service to the customers. For a virtual organization, it can be a zero cost for it to make the images on Photobucket. It is very costs efficiency to use the Photobucket in the operation of the virtual organization.
2. Distributed Intelligence of the technology	This technology provided at anytime and anyplace service. A virtual organization only needs a computer to share the images. The organization can upload the images at anytime and can share these with others. This is a very convenience service.
3. Operating Efficiency of the organization	With this technology, a virtual organization can save a lot of time and costs in making their images. Photobucket is a very simple and user friendly software, it provides steps by steps tutorial for the user. This saves a lot of resources for a virtual organization to make their images and increase the operating efficiency in manage the images.
4. Competitive power	Photobucket provides a unique image create service to the user. For a virtual organization to compete with others on the Internet, unique slideshows/videos are very useful This not only can draw customer attention, but also create a special and unique image for the organization. The competitive power can be increased among all the competitors.
5. Innovation	Photobucket provides a very good innovation function to the virtual organization. Since, the slideshows/ videos are created by users, so all are innovated by the users. Photobucket will update the style, music and pattern regularly for the users to make a new and different slideshows/ videos. For a virtual organization to develop a more Innovative slideshows/ videos Photobucket helps a lot and gives a chance for organization develop into an innovative organization.
6. Customized service	A virtual organization can use Photobucket to create a customized slideshow/ videos. With the communication with the customers, the virtual organization can get some feedback on the slideshow/ videos, so it can create a more customized slideshow/ videos next time. Customized slideshow/ videos can make the customers more interested in it and fit their expectation. The virtual organization can provide the right things to what the customers wants.
7. Communication between customers	Photobucket doesn’t do very well for helping the virtual organization to communicate with the customers. Since, Photobucket doesn’t like Facebook or Blogger have the blog function that can communicate with customers. It is quite trouble for an organization. If it wants to post an entry to share the images with customers, it has to copy the link to xanga or other blog or homepage. Photobucket doesn’t do very well in this.
8. Accuracy	The service provided by Photobucket is very accuracy. The waiting time for the slideshows/ videos is only a few seconds. Also, Photobucket has its own storage systems to store all the images uploaded to their website. It is a very consistency service, so the virtual organization no needs to worry about the loss of images/ dead link/ systems errors with their slideshows/ videos.
9. Function of Photobucket	Photobucket also face competition with some close competitors. Such as Slide.com, however, the function provided by Photobucket is more special and unique. Slide.com can only provide slideshows creation, but Photobucket have videos and avatars. The video creation is more suitable for the virtual organization to promote their products. Photobucket is the best choice among all the relative competitors.

Conclusion Photobucket is an image sharing technology. Image sharing is one of the important factors for a virtual organization to operate successfully on the Internet. So, I think Photobucket is a suitable technology for a virtual organization. From the above analysis, although there some disadvantages of using Photobucket, to a less virtual organization it will be a perfect partner for the organization. Photobucket is very suitable for an organization which starts to go virtual at the very beginning. Since, the functions provided by the Photobucket are suitable and fulfill the basic requirement for the less virtual organization. Also, the cost is very low if the organization uses a free account. Moreover, by using Photobucket the virtual organization can do a very simple advertising online. Organization can create simple advertising videos to conduct some marketing promotion. Not only posting the videos on the homepages, but also sending to the customers regularly. This can let the customers get the most update advertisement and they can download it to their PDA or computer to share with other about these interesting videos. Photobucket provides a new and low costs marketing channel for the virtual organization to promote itself and its products. However, when the organization goes more virtual, it may need to upgrade to the paid account in order to fit the organization’s need. And the costs may become higher. I think in term of costs, special, unique and innovative image sharing, Photobucket does a very good job in this. However, it is not that convenience for users to share the images directly on the Photobucket website. So, if the organization doesn’t care about this sharing inconvenience and give a little bit of time to link the images to their homepage or blog, Photobucket will be the perfect partner for it to start and run its virtual business.