Will Google Go Mobile? What if, it does…
Will Google Go Mobile? What if, it does…then in future you can talk to anyone on Gtalk running on a Google Phone running on a Google Android having a Google Prepaid or Postpaid connection and browsing Google.com to search for any product on Google’s retail website and buy it through Google Checkout.
Amidst the speculations from the media on whether Google will go the Mobile route or not, this is what you can expect if Google Actually goes mobile.
If google gets the Bandwidth, they will pose a big threat to the Telecom Companies, because Google already have the software ready for the hardware and there have been successful trials and prototyping done.
So if tomorrow Google gets the spectrum it won’t be surprising that they run a parallel program to the open handset alliance and come up with their own revolutionary device the much rumored Google Phone.
So what does it mean for the other Telecom providers? More competition, shifting customer loyalties above all focus on better services and best prices for customers.
If it does happen, the question would be: “Can Google fight the giants in terms of services?” and will a product company completely translate itself into a services company?
The TITANs come together (A little late) – AMEX, Kingfisher, Airtel
The TITANs come together (A little late) – AMEX, Kingfisher, Airtel
So what’s this thing about owning an American Express card? Whenever you flash your AMEX card, there are few heads which surely turn. I was one of the people who used to frantically gaze at the AMEX cards being swiped and I wonder why only the crème-de-la-crème have these cards, just to later realize that AMEX charges you annual fee (INR 5K) for owning a AMEX card when everyone else gives it to you free.
Why am I writing about Credit cards anyway when we get so many annoying calls for the same during the week? So the reason is because I recently got an AMEX card. Now why would I want to do that? Well, its not very difficult to explain. AMEX has maintained its class by not going the “Free, Free” way. They have a class and they stick to it. You are a privileged person if you possess an AMEX card. (or this is what they make you believe). And it ties with your lifestyle. Oh by the way we Indians want things free, so we would not take a credit card until you give us something. So Kingfisher and Airtel joined the bandwagon. On getting this AMEX-Kingfisher First Card you get 1 Kingfisher return ticket in any Indian sector free (off course you have to pay the taxes to govt), and you get the convenience of paying your Airtel bills automatically from this special card. Also, you get a free upgrade voucher for Kingfisher First flight. (Though this is not the first tie-up Kingfisher has tied up with other credit cards too {I think ICICI} for similar offerings.)
So, let me get the Maths correctly: If I buy a kingfisher return ticket, I generally pay INR 8K. 4K Tax + 4K fare. Now AMEX is saying we waive the fare for you; you only pay the Tax, and we give you upgrade vouchers to travel in Kingfisher First. Effectively if you like to travel by Kingfisher and you get this ticket without fare with an upgrade too, you are able to reimburse your 5K annual charge. Well seems like this deal was pushed more from Mallya’s team than AMEX. But sounds a win-win situation both for AMEX and Kingfisher. (What’s Bharti Airtel riding on? – I guess their bill payment will get regularized, though, the target audience would anyway be paying on time. And the perfect target audience for their MobileVAS services promotion)
I would want to personally congratulate the AMEX marketing team (though they are late in doing this) for the well thought out and brilliantly executed marketing strategy. This marketing strategy can only be a brainchild of a veteran. Though I would want to find out who devised it, but having said that, let me explain what could have gone behind it.
There was a time when AMEX was under pressure to expand the credit cards subscriber base and simultaneously there was this rat race among all other banks to offer free credit cards. There would have been a meeting where people who thought for years in advance and suggested, that we do not target masses. Our target audience is set of people who are HNIs (high net-worth Individuals). So giving Free…blah blah wouldn’t affect them. What would perhaps affect them would be the premier club that they join and the advantages that they can take.
What they wanted a sales channel which was low cost, a feel of premium brands being associated with, and the feeling amongst customers, that they are joining a premium club with facilities which only a privileged lot gets. And they wanted to still charge people for the credit card.
Strategy Components:
A Paid Credit Card – Amongst dozens of Free credit cards, AMEX positioned itself as the first paid credit card that too in a country like India where people just run to grab anything free. It was able to maintain its premium position and offered its strategic alliances the value for their investments with AMEX.
Sales Channel and Funnel –
->They chose Email Marketing as the channel. Low cost, quick and direct response and effective tracking.
->The email campaigns across India generated leads which were passed on to a 25 odd team in Gurgaon call centre to qualify at level 1 of interest and net worth.
->The qualified leads were passed on to the sales reps / relationship executives on field for final closure.
Brand Association -
->They chose Kingfisher as a brand to get associated with, again a premium brand with high equity.
->And finally they tied up with Airtel (oh by the way, Airtel offered Mobile VAS card free of charge, perfectly thought out target audience).
Service –
->The brand distinction will continue with their high class service.
->They have tie ups with most of the major banks to make online payments for their credit card bills.
Sell More –
->Obviously you won’t stop here; if you take a life time membership for 25K you then get a whole lot of benefits. So let’s say this year you enjoyed the services, you are bound to see more customers lining up though references as well as more renewals. But this is yet to be seen based on how the service promised actually turns out to be in practice.
Probably the next step would be promoting the offerings more over internet, mobile and some more email marketing.
Popularity – How much is enough?
Popularity – How much is enough?
Whenever I think of how technology has impacted life of people I just feel amazed and the way things have changed so much in the past few years. In today’s world we can’t imagine a research done without help of google. We search almost everything sometimes even our own names on google. And wow, google shows you instance of your name or your footprints on web as search results to you. Sometime people debate on privacy and how people are exposed to the world now. I consider it as a free popularity that you get and you can market yourself as a Brand. But How Much Popularity is Enough?
Just look at the hype everyone creates around new launches like Apple did for iPod, like Hillary Clinton or Obama are doing for elections. How Videos these days talk about the real ground situation as well as present to you a very interactive way of communicating.
How blogging and personal blogs have changed the procedure for buying for a lot of people. We look out for users and opinions from other users and mold our decisions based on recommendations. The negative side of over publicity can be something like when a mediocre singer with some good music in songs like Britney spears gets free popularity. How a website selling Steroids which might be good for health in some cases gets spammed because of some spammers who are selling some harmful drugs.
What would any baseball or cricket team player expect as his popularity? 10000 people knowing him in his state or 1 Million people knowing him in the country…but where does he stop his popularity and says yes, know I am popular?
How much is enough when you want to be popular? And how do you manage your popularity? Good, Bad and the Ugly?
Online Media is part of me now
A strange thing happened this morning. The bell rang at 7 AM and I went and opened the door to see a man standing in front, holding a pile of newspapers and saying something in Kannada. I could barely understand what he said, but I got the gist, he was trying to sell me “The Hindu” newspaper. He was telling me, to try out “The Hindu” newspaper, it’s good and today we are giving you this free of charge. I refused to do that because I told him I read Times of India and anyways I read online. Did I say online?
Wow, this is very interesting. I never thought I would give reading online as a reason to the newspaper boy. But yes, I said that automatically.
Almost 3 months back, I was conducting an interview for the position of marketing and this journalist who used to write for CEO and CIO articles for a premium media group was not enthused enough hearing about our plans. As I was telling her that we do only online marketing in our company. She couldn’t believe that and said what about offline? At that moment I made some bold statements like soon you would see the offline media taking a hit because of popularity of online media and people will start migrating to online media, even to read newspapers.
That girl went away and later called me to say that she couldn’t join us as she wants to stay in offline media only. She couldn’t see the future and couldn’t analyze how the world has rapidly moved over a short period of time.
Am I jumping the gun? Probably not, after looking at how Times group, India Today Group and others have moved to online channels by launching their online portals and how people have started reading and spending time online much more than offline. Looking at how finding a word meaning in a dictionary format has moved to searching in a PC dictionary or even better for searching anything now we just Google it, its rampant and its obvious the traditional media has taken a definitive hit.
Will the offline media die? I do not know, may be not, however, the future is online and mobile and if the companies do not see this yet, they are doomed. I would have spent this money to promote my online channel than sending a messenger boy to my door step asking me to buy the Hindu newspaper.
Online media has become part of me now and I haven’t even conciously realised it till these small incident make me realise this. Why suddenly this change has come, probably bacause of Web 2.0 proliferation. This is going to be my next topic.
What’s the Future Series – Web 2.0 Strategies for organizations
Part 1 – History and Definitions
Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.
The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.
In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It’s like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:
- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.
- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.
- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.
- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.
- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.
- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.
- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.
- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.
- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.
We now have more than a BILLION people on the Internet, a few hundred million of whom are online at any given moment.
–>People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.
–>Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.
–>A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.
–>A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.
–>In October 2005, Microsoft issued a company-wide email telling the troops to embrace “the services wave” [Web 2.0]. Then, in May 2006, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is focusing over $6 billion of R&D towards ‘software as a service’ in 2006. Software as a service is one of the patterns of Web 2.0.
–>A small team of programmers started a website in 2003 that would help them build their social network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace in August 2005 for $580 million, less than 2½ years after it was formed. He bought it because social websites like this are massive revenue generation engines.
–>Half a million people MAKE A LIVING on eBay.
–>Nineteen people run a small site called Craigslist which is now the seventh largest website in the world. This little operation is DECIMATING the North American classified advertising industry which can’t compete against FREE listings.
–>Content is exploding. Technorati, a service that tracks the number of blogs on the internet, listed effectively zero in March 2003 and reached 20 million blogs in October 2005. This means that the number of blogs doubled every five months for 36 months in a row.k Between October 2005 and the time this Manifesto was July 2006 when this Manifesto went to ‘print’, that number went from 20 million blogs to 49.8 million blogs.
I will be covering the details on how to leverage this for your organization in the next entry…
What’s the Future Series – Web 2.0 Strategies for organizations
Part 1 – History and Definitions
Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.
The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.
In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It’s like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:
- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.
- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.
- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.
- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.
- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.
- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.
- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.
- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.
- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.
We now have more than a BILLION people on the Internet, a few hundred million of whom are online at any given moment.
–>People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.
–>Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.
–>A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.
–>A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.
–>In October 2005, Microsoft issued a company-wide email telling the troops to embrace “the services wave” [Web 2.0]. Then, in May 2006, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is focusing over $6 billion of R&D towards ‘software as a service’ in 2006. Software as a service is one of the patterns of Web 2.0.
–>A small team of programmers started a website in 2003 that would help them build their social network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace in August 2005 for $580 million, less than 2½ years after it was formed. He bought it because social websites like this are massive revenue generation engines.
–>Half a million people MAKE A LIVING on eBay.
–>Nineteen people run a small site called Craigslist which is now the seventh largest website in the world. This little operation is DECIMATING the North American classified advertising industry which can’t compete against FREE listings.
–>Content is exploding. Technorati, a service that tracks the number of blogs on the internet, listed effectively zero in March 2003 and reached 20 million blogs in October 2005. This means that the number of blogs doubled every five months for 36 months in a row.k Between October 2005 and the time this Manifesto was July 2006 when this Manifesto went to ‘print’, that number went from 20 million blogs to 49.8 million blogs.
I will be covering the details on how to leverage this for your organization in the next entry…
What’s the Future Series – Web 2.0 Strategies for organizations
Part 1 – History and Definitions
Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.
The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.
In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It’s like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:
- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.
- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.
- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.
- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.
- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.
- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.
- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.
- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.
- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.
We now have more than a BILLION people on the Internet, a few hundred million of whom are online at any given moment.
–>People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.
–>Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.
–>A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.
–>A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.
–>In October 2005, Microsoft issued a company-wide email telling the troops to embrace “the services wave” [Web 2.0]. Then, in May 2006, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is focusing over $6 billion of R&D towards ‘software as a service’ in 2006. Software as a service is one of the patterns of Web 2.0.
–>A small team of programmers started a website in 2003 that would help them build their social network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace in August 2005 for $580 million, less than 2½ years after it was formed. He bought it because social websites like this are massive revenue generation engines.
–>Half a million people MAKE A LIVING on eBay.
–>Nineteen people run a small site called Craigslist which is now the seventh largest website in the world. This little operation is DECIMATING the North American classified advertising industry which can’t compete against FREE listings.
–>Content is exploding. Technorati, a service that tracks the number of blogs on the internet, listed effectively zero in March 2003 and reached 20 million blogs in October 2005. This means that the number of blogs doubled every five months for 36 months in a row.k Between October 2005 and the time this Manifesto was July 2006 when this Manifesto went to ‘print’, that number went from 20 million blogs to 49.8 million blogs.
I will be covering the details on how to leverage this for your organization in the next entry…
What’s the Future Series – Web 2.0 Strategies for organizations
Part 1 – History and Definitions
Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.
The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.
In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It’s like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:
- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.
- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.
- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.
- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.
- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.
- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.
- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.
- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.
- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.
We now have more than a BILLION people on the Internet, a few hundred million of whom are online at any given moment.
–>People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.
–>Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.
–>A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.
–>A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.
–>In October 2005, Microsoft issued a company-wide email telling the troops to embrace “the services wave” [Web 2.0]. Then, in May 2006, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is focusing over $6 billion of R&D towards ‘software as a service’ in 2006. Software as a service is one of the patterns of Web 2.0.
–>A small team of programmers started a website in 2003 that would help them build their social network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace in August 2005 for $580 million, less than 2½ years after it was formed. He bought it because social websites like this are massive revenue generation engines.
–>Half a million people MAKE A LIVING on eBay.
–>Nineteen people run a small site called Craigslist which is now the seventh largest website in the world. This little operation is DECIMATING the North American classified advertising industry which can’t compete against FREE listings.
–>Content is exploding. Technorati, a service that tracks the number of blogs on the internet, listed effectively zero in March 2003 and reached 20 million blogs in October 2005. This means that the number of blogs doubled every five months for 36 months in a row.k Between October 2005 and the time this Manifesto was July 2006 when this Manifesto went to ‘print’, that number went from 20 million blogs to 49.8 million blogs.
I will be covering the details on how to leverage this for your organization in the next entry…
What’s the Future Series – Web 2.0 Strategies for organizations
Part 1 – History and Definitions
Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.
The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.
In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It’s like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:
- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.
- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.
- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.
- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.
- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.
- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.
- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.
- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.
- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.
We now have more than a BILLION people on the Internet, a few hundred million of whom are online at any given moment.
–>People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.
–>Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.
–>A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.
–>A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.
–>In October 2005, Microsoft issued a company-wide email telling the troops to embrace “the services wave” [Web 2.0]. Then, in May 2006, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is focusing over $6 billion of R&D towards ‘software as a service’ in 2006. Software as a service is one of the patterns of Web 2.0.
–>A small team of programmers started a website in 2003 that would help them build their social network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace in August 2005 for $580 million, less than 2½ years after it was formed. He bought it because social websites like this are massive revenue generation engines.
–>Half a million people MAKE A LIVING on eBay.
–>Nineteen people run a small site called Craigslist which is now the seventh largest website in the world. This little operation is DECIMATING the North American classified advertising industry which can’t compete against FREE listings.
–>Content is exploding. Technorati, a service that tracks the number of blogs on the internet, listed effectively zero in March 2003 and reached 20 million blogs in October 2005. This means that the number of blogs doubled every five months for 36 months in a row.k Between October 2005 and the time this Manifesto was July 2006 when this Manifesto went to ‘print’, that number went from 20 million blogs to 49.8 million blogs.
I will be covering the details on how to leverage this for your organization in the next entry…
What’s the Future Series – Web 2.0 Strategies for organizations
Part 1 – History and Definitions
Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.
The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.
In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-
Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It’s like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”
The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:
- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.
- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.
- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.
- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.
- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.
- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.
- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.
- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.
- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.
We now have more than a BILLION people on the Internet, a few hundred million of whom are online at any given moment.
–>People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.
–>Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.
–>A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.
–>A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.
–>In October 2005, Microsoft issued a company-wide email telling the troops to embrace “the services wave” [Web 2.0]. Then, in May 2006, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is focusing over $6 billion of R&D towards ‘software as a service’ in 2006. Software as a service is one of the patterns of Web 2.0.
–>A small team of programmers started a website in 2003 that would help them build their social network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace in August 2005 for $580 million, less than 2½ years after it was formed. He bought it because social websites like this are massive revenue generation engines.
–>Half a million people MAKE A LIVING on eBay.
–>Nineteen people run a small site called Craigslist which is now the seventh largest website in the world. This little operation is DECIMATING the North American classified advertising industry which can’t compete against FREE listings.
–>Content is exploding. Technorati, a service that tracks the number of blogs on the internet, listed effectively zero in March 2003 and reached 20 million blogs in October 2005. This means that the number of blogs doubled every five months for 36 months in a row.k Between October 2005 and the time this Manifesto was July 2006 when this Manifesto went to ‘print’, that number went from 20 million blogs to 49.8 million blogs.
I will be covering the details on how to leverage this for your organization in the next entry…
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