Recap: B2C Strategy 2.0

I came across this conference I had participated in, the slides of which are available at this link: http://www.mca.org.mt/infocentre/openarticle.asp?WsAppId=590&id=1238&pin=podfk5465g4v6e5r4g6

The presentation is almost a year old. I'd like to revisit it and check what's still valid!

Monday blab: websites and the 5 eras of the social web

I have come across a chart promoting one of Forrester's Research tackling the future of the Social Web. The chart has been sitting on my desktop for quite some time. Over this weekend I have also dedicated sometime to the Razorfish Feed report. The latter is a recommended read for anyone flirting with the 2.0, cutting edge interactive technology or digital overall. It offers brief chapters about anything from the device, to the browser, to the end of the browsing content itself.

In this context I believe the Forrester chart may in the future conflict with the 'Razorfish vision'. Rightly so the Forrester research speaks about the evolution of social WEB and assumes websites will be at the heart of the social web (at least in the above graphical chart). Really and truly though, web sites may soon come to an end. As Kevin Kelly rightly explains, the web of things will replace the web as we know it, away from the screen or standard device. However the chart may not say it all. Finally I managed to find an interview with Jeremiah Owyang which explains the future eras much better than the chart and complements Kelly's vision. The question though remains, will there be any website in 5 years time?

I am posting both videos below:


Kevin Kelly predicts the next 5000 days of the social web


Jeremiah Owyang on the 5 eras of the social web

Which is the largest retail store locally?

Strategy 2.0 (post no. 1)
Without trying to be too 'online' oriented my answer to the above question is Amazon.
- It has at least 16 million products on sale
- A very large chunk of the occupied households can access it (walk in) all day long
- This implies they can review (window shopping), purchase and evaluate (recommend)

If your answer is not somewhat similar to the above you probably still perceive the online world as an interesting topic, a very effective medium for companies in other markets and a 'nice-to-have' channel which in the real world locally is not key. This does not exclude your interest in experimenting with it sometime in the future, when business is running smoothly and you have some cash and time to waste on an online website.

If on the other hand you agree with my answer, then you must already be exploring new ways and means to reach out to your customers, either by partnering or by competing with the Amazon store. As I do, you probably realize that the largest connected community locally consists of 347K mobile subscribers, that at least 24,000 locals have a facebook profile, and that when each of these post, poke, tag or even comment on a popular social site (news portals incl.), they are speaking to a mass audience of approximately 200 other locals at least.

Finally, whether you agree or not with my answer, you will have a very hard time to debate Amazon's global success. And if Amazon is successful online, then it is also successful offline (a.k.a. the real world). Hence, all the above has serious implications on your current business processes whilst redefining the market you currently operate in.

The above discussion is drawn from '(B2C) Strategy 2.0', a presentation given out by Karl Galea at the 6th MCA Annual Conference. Presentation slides will soon be made available at mca.org.mt.