21st Century Dial-Tone

Like all other things in today’s world, businesses are effected significantly by the internet. The change in the trends of business sparked by the internet is commonly referred to as Web 2.0. Tim O’Reilly defines web 2.0 as “the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”

The internet has revolutionized the way companies conduct their everyday operations. The internet’s structure allows for businesses to advertise to a larger audience, all the while pin-pointing the population that they’re trying to reach. Advertising was once heavily found in newspapers, then on television, and now on the internet. Companies can advertise their product or service to an audience that would have interest in it, similar to the way toy companies advertise their products during SpongeBob SquarePants instead of, say, Law and Order: Criminal Intent. The internet has allowed for businesses to market to people based on their likes, dislikes, needs, and their location.

 Anyone can start a business using the internet, given that there is a demand for a specific product or service. Does anyone even remember how we got mail before e-mail, before the days of AOL, Hotmail, or Juno?  Or how they shopped before ebay was created? Or how they did research for a paper or project before Wikipedia or search engines like Google and Yahoo! were created? Or how they stayed entertained before YouTube put millions of videos at their fingertips?  Some of these companies are now significant influences in America’s economy and they were started in your neighbor’s garage. If you can afford to advertise your company on a Google, a Yahoo!, or an AOL, your business could explode over night. Thanks be to the internet.

The area of internet businesses that will see the most change in the years to come will be social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. These sites have made it free and easy for users to stay in touch with friends and families across the street and across the world. Advertising on these sites alone accounted for 72%  of all online advertising revenue in 2007.  Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicts revenue to be almost $350 million in 2008. However, MySpace is predicted to outdue them and net close to $750 million.

With so much money coming into social networking sites, what changes could be made to make them even more profitable? Mary Hodder, founder of Dabble.com, says to look for companies to try to compete by giving users more control over their information. “The changes may seem subtle but I think we’ll see companies now, like Facebook, who try to be everything to you: your bank account for info, your identity, your tools for publishing, and your bar/restaurant for socializing, having to give up some of those roles or hold them less powerfully.” It seems highly unlikely that these sites will volunteerily give up their power.

However, as the co-founder of Citizen Agency and Citizen Space Tara Hunt believes, interacting and empowering the customer more will lead to bigger profits down the road. “In former days of marketing,” she said, ”companies delivered messages and goods and customers were meant to consume them. Not so much any longer.” The less you control and spread the message, she argues, the more the audience will listen to it.

As wi-fi devices become so small that they can fit into our pocket, advertisements from businesses will also be carried around with you. The possibilities of business innovation through the use of the internet are endless. Since we are interacting with other people in this way instead of by telephone, the internet has become the dial-tone of the 21st century. Does anyone even remember one of these things?

A. Martin