The internet is dead

Welcome back the world wide web.

The world wide web. It’s the next big thing.

The internet is moving from being domain based to event based supported by embedded applications that do not necessarily reside in the host domain. Users are moving from one supplier of information, goods and experiences to another just as they do on the high street but rather than jumping through search and bookmarks (ok, both of which are still growing) they jump within social networks or the pages of one habitually visited website.

These websites can be social networks i.e. linkedin, facebook providing applications from slideshare or mobwars respectively; or aggregators like Google Reader. So the information, goods and experiences that people have, will come through a net of sites that are caught by the owner of a customer. Domains no longer own a customer. Only the supplier of the experience.

Welcome back the world wide web and goodbye to the internet. All products, even financial products where regulation interrupts immediate sales as it requires rigorous investor background checking and open consumer protection. Why? Because it’s who owns the customer that counts, it always has. Consider KYC, anti money laundering and fraud regulations that must be fulfilled prior to a transaction of buying a term deposit, shares or even the use of a credit card occurring. In these cases whoever owns the customer is king.

When the customer commits to a supplier it stops them from shopping around unless they join all providers of that security/account/card. But what if you could sign up to one provider who got you through all the regulatory necessities so as a customer you can plug into any provider at any time? Your choice would then depend on product selection and price right? The free market wills it. The providers increasingly unproductive cost base requires it.

Also consider accommodation affiliate marketing where a nice brochure website syndicates the customer out to a chosen provider for booking a cottage. Why not give the customer the choice and have all the cottage providers on a best price basis so they compete for your customer’s dollar in real time?

Syndication of information, goods and experiences can appear as an event in part of the work flow of any website with relevant content. As soon as you get your head around that fact, the possibilities move well beyond your domain being the centre of your universe. You save money on advertising to get them to your site because someone else is already doing it. You scale quickly in return for providing a revenue source to portals struggling to justify their costs of content creation. You lend off someone else’s brand to gain trust for the customer to hand over cash. You close the sale before they search for a trademe/amazon/strawberrynet solution. Domain led internet businesses are not the future.

The internet that concentrates on the biggest sites or search engines is not the future. Passive browsing that moves the customer between events in a continuous work flow is the future.  So goodbye to the internet and welcome back the world wide web. The next big web thing doesn’t operate on a domain.  It operates on any domain.

Embrace the internet

Having a conversation the other day it dawned on me that businesses, outside of the cool kids in marketing, really haven’t started to embrace the internet yet.

An example where the way an HR department worked. They interviewed candidates only in their city. If someone wanted a job and they were from a different city they had to get themselves to that city to interview. Interestingly, their cousins in training have great interactive tools everyone can access.

Another example was a legal department. They feared the internet and all the bad things it could do to them. Especially email. The perception of an interruption of privacy because ‘this stuff’ appeared in their room on their computer. And they hadn’t ask for it! Seemingly they missed the point of the internet.

The conclusion I came to was that businesses were not embracing the core concept of the internet – instant, limitless  distribution of information. And the newer concepts of interaction and communication.

We’re now beginning to see the start of Web 3.0 – the read/write web. A great talk on this is here at TED by Kevin Kelly. Most of these concepts for read/write have been around for a while but have waited for more open systems and bigger pipes. XML is a great example.

Yet the majority of business is being left behind because they haven’t yet  embraced web 2.0.  Some of these older technologies available to them can make them more efficient or provide them a competitive edge. But the technology sits on the shelf.

So even though this sounds like the same broken record everyone else plays, perhaps businesses can start looking at ideas like the following and join the cool kids in marketing. After all, the internet isn’t just a place to advertise jobs.

1. Skype interviews: Get the skype address from your candidates and interview them online. You can do it at your desk with a mic and camera. I means you can meet and filter those you don’t want and get them out of the office quickly. Especially for internet based jobs, you’ll easily know if someone is hooked up and plugged in when they ask you what skype is.
2. XML your investor relations releases: On the stock exchange for example there is no real reason why businesses can’t XML their corporate disclosure news straight to the exchange. It would be instant disclosure and instantly distributed to those investors subscribing to the feed. It also means investors get the information at the same time as their broker.
3. You can also RSS your newsletter, which is something we’ve had reasonable success with in article marketing. If you have it in RSS you can push to publishers who can choose to pick it up. If it is interesting your newsletter has become a great external marketing tool.
4. Instant message your account and project management: This is common in the internet world and not unseen for some of the larger bsuinesses like banks or insurance companies. But why just business to consumer. If you have a high touch account or project that you’re billing anyway, IM will provide that instant communication that will help you work through issues and solutions and save a few meetings and a fair bit of travel time.
5. Wiki your system documentation: A great service from an IT company would be to share a wiki with your customers. I know all you software people have one, you share it between your developers. But why not publish one to your customers? It can show them how you are developing the technology road map, what solutions other customers are consuming and invite feedback as you go to help improve your product. It’s business social marketing. Your customers can talk and sing your praises turning it into a great marketing tool as well.
6. Limewire your application: P2P networks have great distribution capability for businesses who want others to trial and test their software. It doesn’t have to be kids stuff, send business stuff down the pipes and see who picks it up. Someone somewhere is always searching for a software solution and P2P is an ignored area by businesses.

So as we move into read/write web don’t forget you might not have used yet.