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.
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