The Future of Social Web?

An interesting talk on to the future of the (Social) Web by Forrester's CEO George Colony during LEWEB 2011. 

He foresees three major "Social Thunderstorms" : The Death of the Web (not the death of the Internet), The Social saturation, and the Social Enterprise. Of course next to these trends attention needs to be paid to the real social thunderstorms namely the Social Effects of the Social Media 2.0 era. Hope to have more to say about this soon.

Ubiquitous Commerce (Internet of Things)

In the first courses I gave about E-Commerce, back in the 90s, I was trying to explain to the students that the definition of this term E-Commerce is very dynamic and what we understand with the term is changing over time: In the 80s e-commerce was the EDI, in the 90’s the online merchandising and selling. What I was telling at that time that one of the options about the future e-commerce was to become U-Commerce (or ubiquitous commerce, a term I came across in a report of Accenture some years ago). A few days ago McKinsey came with a report called the Internet of Things explaining that the connectivity has expanded from interpersonal to inter-things! According to this report “More objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate. The resulting information networks promise to create new business models, improve business processes, and reduce costs and risks”.

BBC's SuperPower, the Inteternet Phenomenon Explained

The BBC started today on the World News and online a series of programs and posts about the Internet. The series is called SuperPower. The map with the Internet growth,  a short tutorial about how the Internet works and a counter are nice things to see. Interesting stories to read and of course important the article about the fact that the Internet becomes a fundamental human right. Next to all bad things people can say about the Interent and different problems that still wait for solutions in the virtual world no one can refuse that the web has become a major contributor to consumer empowerment (ask any field marketer about this) and has redifined human communication and life. Dictatorships and pseudo democracies all around the world will be the next victims of the peoples' empowerment despite putting bloggers in jail and trying to censor the web or block people from accessing it.

The social (and multiple) role of the New Media today: The Bottom-up Era

An interesting speech of the British PM Gordon Brown and one of Clay Chirky on the role of the New Media in exposing invisible (or visible) global and local problems and at the same time harassing dictators, quasi-dictators, oppressors, terrorists, fanatics etc. Also a worthy of note plea of Gordon Brown for new institutions dealing with global problems. Worth spending 15 minutes to see.

Digital Samaritans: Good thing happen also online

We hear mostly about fraud, stolen identities, phishing, scams and other types of cybercrime but we hear much less about good things that happen there. Increasingly people find lost or stolen items thanks to the efforts of some to trace them online and return them their found possessions. An interesting article in the New York Times about digital Samaritans.

The Web: Nr. 2 News Information Channel

What many of us though inevitable seems to happen already. After becoming the nr. 2 retail distribution channel the Internet reaches a new milestone of its history by becoming the nr. 2 information channel. According to the results of a survey published by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on 23 December the Internet has already overtaken the newspapers as news information source in the USA. Of course the Pew survey is limited in the US but I would not be surprised if the same thing is already happening in some of the EU countries (and possibly more countries in the world). The survey has looked to the position of the different media as sources of information of national and international news.

While I feel glad with this development I would like to identify two issues requiring some thought.
First of all I want to warn about the overestimation of this development by raising a red flag when it comes to the quality of all information posted online. On this point I share some of the caution of Andrew Keen and others about the fact that much of the online news content is provided by anonymous and sometimes dubious sources that play journalist without being one and more importantly without being accountable to anyone for what they publish online. During the recent riots in the city I was born, Athens in Greece, I read several ‘eyewitness accounts’ that for all intents and purposes were lies and also came across much nonsense labeled as ‘opinions’ indicating that some of my countrymen might need urgently psychiatric help or even detention that will prevent them from committing serious crimes. This of course is happening in many similar situations or conflicts; the global and uncensored Internet offers to everyone a forum and the issue of the Internet censorship remains a hot and controversial topic.
The second remark has to do with the “business” part of the story. Next to the importance of this development as indicator of changing human behavior with regard to media consumption the fact that the web has become the second most popular news channel should persuade the last of the doubters about the swift in the media world in general. While the internet as news provider is by now the nr 2 source it has been long ago the nr.1 source when it comes to business-, personal- and product information.
What I keep saying to my MBA students but also to business people when I have the opportunity is that it is now high time to look once and for good to their company’s online presence in the knowledge that for their customers the web site is the first and often most important criterion of customer quality perception about their firm and products (anyone who doubts about this should ask himself or herself if this is the case or not on personal level). After 15 years of Internet one would say that this is a non-issue by now, that CEOs have now understood the importance of that “Web Thing”. Have they indeed understood it? I am afraid most of them haven’t

American elections 2008: A victory of change (in politics and marketing)

The overwhelming victory of Barack Obama in the US elections yesterday encapsulates the desire of the American people for change in their country, sharing the opinion of the whole world. The personal charisma of Obama, his message of change both in internal and external politics and his promise to make Americans proud to be Americans again gave him the victory over McCain who focused on what he would not do rather on what he would do if elected, gambling on conservatives’ fear for change as one of his main assets.
Next to the factors I mentioned as main contributors to the victory of Obama we should not forget his impeccable campaign strategy that could become a marketing textbook case; anyone who questions the change taking place in the marketing world should study this case carefully. This campaign made a very strong case for what some of us call New Marketing with the individual customer, the Internet and the Social Media playing the central role. Those who doubt about it can read a lot in the press or simply have a look to the online proposition of the Democratic Party as long as it is online. It is a state of the art example of how the New Marketing approach (combined with the perfect “product”) can attract, mobilize and motivate many people and particularly the new generation that for the first time in the American history played such a decisive role in presidential elections.

Web 2.0: A Fact or a Fad?

With so much written and told about Web 2.0 many people wonder whether this new buzzword is something worth worrying or even talking about. The issue becomes pressing since Web 3.0 is already underway.

In early postings of this blog I explained some of the aspects of this phenomenon and more specifically its effects on the market power structures. The issue seems to attract the attention of the academic community, there are already papers published about it and journals are getting interested, some already announcing special issues about the subject.

Web 2.0 attracts also plenty of attention in the blogosphere. Blogs like those of Nicholas Carr, Don Hinchcliffe, Andrew Keen, or blogs like Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Micropersuation TechCrunch , Webware and hundreds of others but also online forums from serious and bona fide sources like Britannica, together with many books recently published have contributed to a very lively debate full of enthusiastic as well as critical remarks and arguments.
Next to that all kinds of marketing tools necessary for making this environment useful to marketers and marketing strategist are emerging: From search engines specialized on collecting the online customer murmur about brands and products to tools measuring the power of blogs and their potential as advertising tools.

In the next posts I will try to present some of my ideas on the matter: a definition of the term, the position of Web 2.0 in the marketing domain, the main types of applications and the ways this technologies are used by businesses as marketing tools.

As to the question / title of this post, I am not going to give any specific answer to it. I will leave the answer to the reader.

Is there a life without the Web?

This blog is not meant for posting personal stuff but for once I will deviate from this rule in order to apologize for the irregularity of recent postings. The reason is simple; I am on vacation somewhere in South Greece.The place we stay is a beautiful sea-side village: I have no TV in the house (let alone cable TV), only a dial-up line for occasionally checking my email and updating my blog in 40 kbps. This is one of the few places where my notebook does not detect any wireless networks. I get the news talking with people on the beach, listening to the radio or reading the newspaper. Pretty much like years ago when the Internet was not yet part of our everyday life.
Some German tourist I met told me that they found this place after a documentary about this area of Greece on the German TV last winter; unlike Austrian, Italian or German towns and villages who have mostly beautiful web pages for attracting tourists this village (pop 600) does not need a web page to be found by visitors.
Reading the latest statistics bringing my native country as one of the last in Internet usage in the European Union I wonder sometimes if the people in this village miss a lot not having access to the web. I think not. And if we believe the bleak picture painted by Andrew Keen in his book “The Cult of the Amateur, how today’s Internet is killing our culture” these people must be rather happy for missing the whole digital revolution altogether.
My best wishes for nice vacations to all friends, colleagues and readers of the blog

Power to the (online) consumer Part 2

Quick summary Part 1: The Internet has become an indispensable part of our life

Next to becoming the prime source of information for most of us the Internet influences in other ways our position as consumers. You will hardly find anyone around who does not have a personal story to tell about getting a better deal the last time he or she bought flying tickets, vacations, books, furniture, computers, new or second hand car, clothes, electrical appliances, kitchen equipment and anything else you can imagine, just by taking the time to do some search with Google before buying the product.
The whole situation is often labeled as “customer empowerment”, a situation attracting a good deal of the attention of both academics and practitioners. A symptom of changing attitudes: business people are not anymore surprised when you tell them that the era of the corporate market domination is over and that the existential, online consumer is on his way to become the dominant party of the marketing equation.

Customer empowerment has its roots to a number of evolutionary causes but it is primarily related to the Internet that made available and easily accessible large amounts of information that has led to a unique transparency of the marketplace, in combination with the ease of transacting with any supplier, in any part of the world as long as he offers a better deal. Recent developments around the social media (blogs, forums/bulletin boards, communities and social networks) have further contributed to customer empowerment by offering to consumers the option to further refine their product information and better assess the value of different offers by directly getting in touch with other users or experts and asking their opinion or experiences. The customer empowerment is also visible in the fact that the Internet has given consumers the opportunity to act as part of the supply chain, eliminating traditional intermediaries from the process. A simple example: The photo film and film processing industry are in the edge of extinction because of the digital technology replacing the film role and the Internet replacing the photo shop. Similar developments have affected a whole series of industries: airlines and Travel, banking, media, newspapers, telecom, employment services, printing and even the traditional high-street retailer.

The effects of customer empowerment on customer behavior but also on business processes and market structures are remarkable and far-reaching yet for many businesses it is not exactly clear what the consequences can be. A few tips in my next posting.

Next week: Part 3

Power to the (online) consumer Part 1

The Internet is hot again; having fully recovered from the boom and bust of the 90s the virtual economy has entered a new era of robust growth in all fronts; with over 1 billion users worldwide it is in several countries already the nr 2 retail channel while online advertising is the fastest growing advertising category. The broadband connections are expanding quickly (there were 285 million subscribers in 2006, expected to reach 560 mill. by 2011) and new technologies like Wiki and Ajax support a whole new family of interactive applications (known as Web 2.0 or social media) giving web users countless new options and capabilities.
The growing importance and influence of the Internet is clearly visible to consumers and businesses. As a teacher I experience a steady increase of requests for supervision of student assignments with subjects related to corporate online presence, mobile commerce and e-marketing during the last two years. On the other hand more and more literature and textbooks about E-Marketing are published every year (the last four months alone I was asked to review two concepts for textbooks about E-Commerce by different publishers).
The Internet has been fully integrated in our life as part of our decision making process. There is hardly anyone around using any other medium than the web when searching for information ranging from news, weather reports, medical information and train departure times to flying tariffs, movie theater schedules, telephone numbers, personal information or information about any person, product, brand or company everywhere in the world. According to a recent study 70% of the high income consumers use already the Internet as their nr 1 information source in the US.
Next week: Part 2