On the occasion of Internet Evolution's 5th anniversary, Editor in Chief Mitch Wagner and Editor in Chief Emeritus Nicole Ferraro reminisce about how business on the Internet has changed over five years. Also, Mitch tries to remember what "Enterprise 2.0" means.
lin crampton - You certainly have a refreshingly contrarian view! As I see it -- and this is the common wisdom -- online is still clobbering retail. Online offers convenience -- get in, get out, get your stuff as fast as possible, forget about it until it's delivered a couple of days later.
Brick-and-mortar retail has to pay for real estate, storefronts, staff, and unsold inventory. And they're cutting staff and other costs, which is a death spiral, because they still have to pay significantly more overhead than online retailers. Cutting staff makes shopping with them unpleasant, which drives their customers to online.
I think we're in agreement that the solution is to "make shopping fun again," if by that you mean brick-and-mortar has to start hiring knowledgable staff again, and emphasize customer service. Give people a reason to come to brick-and-mortar stores and they'll go there. People like to shop when you give them customer service.
@lin I've actually found Amazon to offer very competitive pricing on most things. However, I also notice that when a larg item qualifies for "free shipping," the shipping cost is often added on to the base price. That can be easily ascertained by checking the price at other online retailers who sell the exact same item for less, though they add on the shipping charge. What's interesting is that Amazon often gives you access to other sellers in its original product line of books. The other book sellers sometimes discount so much more than Amazon that it pays to buy from them even with the additional shipping charge. But Amazon is still generally cheaper on books than brick-and-mortar book shops, which is why so few of them are left.
These days benchmarks have become so high that creating a great shopping experience has to come without increasing price to the clients. Secondly, tech has become so cheap that per unit costs are sliding down rapidly as well.
I'd like to say congratulations to IE team leaders Mitch, Nicole, Kim and Mary for making it a success and I wish best of luck so that IE completes its decade anniversary successfully.
I like Amazon, and I've had good service from them recently. But no, I'm not happy with data gathering, and as for it enhancing my shopping experience; that's ridiculous. I find what I need without anyone having to "target" me.
@Mary -- "Are we willing to have Amazon and the rest really get more information on us online than ever before in order to fuel better shopping experiences?"
Amazon has collected a ton of information about you since you began shopping there. One of Amazon's early employees says that was one of Bezos' early goals for Amazon - "bottomless capacity for data collection ... allow you to sort through entire populations with a fine-tooth comb. Affinity would call out to affinity: your likes and dislikes—from Beethoven to barbecue sauce, shampoo to shoe polish to Laverne & Shirley—were as distinctive as your DNA, and would make it a snap to match you up with your 9,999 cousins."
Amazon needs to step up their game. Not only do I want to have shopping be fun, but I want to be comfortable that the price I pay on Amazon is competitive. Last week I bought a Rubbermaid shed from Sears. I paid $70 less for this shed at Sears than I would have paid for the exact same shed on Amazon, even though Sears has the overhead of brick and mortar stores and maintaining a staff of sometimes-helpful employees.
I love Amazon, but I won't shop there if I can get the same item cheaper from a local store.
Interestingly, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has become THE great example of an online commerce CEO. He's revered.
Idols have fallen, though, and there is always a risk that Amazon could get complacent. Nothing in the Internet market is guaranteed.
I was thinking of the privacy issues that surround more targeted online shopping. Are we willing to have Amazon and the rest really get more information on us online than ever before in order to fuel better shopping experiences?
@Mary - it wouldn't cost much more to make a great shopping experience. Creating a great shopping experience wouldn't make nearly as much of a dent in their profit margins as does losing the interstate sales tax expemption. If online retailers want to stay in business, then they will have to find a way to create a great shopping experience.
Online-only retailers have enjoyed a great run of incredible margins by parlaying the sales work done by brick and mortar stores, by low shipping rates, and by avoiding state sales tax.
All of the online retailers' historic advantages are going away - shipping costs have multiplied, the inter-state sales tax exemption has disappeared, while brick and mortar stores are moving away from serving as a showroom for online retailers. Physical presence retailers are maintaining a more limited in-store inventory and redirecting customers wishing large and unusual items to their online sites (sometimes at in-store kiosks), where the customer can order whatever they want for later in-store pickup.
Are big online retailers (like Amazon) hungry enough or nimble enough to compete in the new landscape? It is easy for a company that is raking in money to get complacent. Look at RIM.
Two years ago, RIM was king. In two years are we going to be talking about how Amazon lost their way?
Your description of online shopping possibilities sounds really fun and attractive. My only concern is the price we will have to pay to enable and maintain it.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
Michael Brutsch, a.k.a. Reddit's Violentacrez, is a creep who posted borderline kiddie porn to the Internet anonymously, and got fired when outed by a media outlet. It's a cautionary tale even for people who aren't jerks and predators.
When whole departments do BYOD and consumerization, it's a threat to IT and the whole organization. It's also an emerging business technology cliché you'll be sick of soon enough.
Sean Smith, a US Foreign Service IT manager, gave his life in service of his country and the world. His life and death are a humbling example for all of us who work in IT.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
That's what Larry Page said on Google's earnings call, referring to the conjunction of mobile and the cloud. Well, let's chart it then! We need to be thinking about an Internet where 90% of our traffic goes to 70 destinations within 40 miles of us.
Software-defined networks, which deliver virtualization functions to enterprise networks, have the potential to dramatically change network design and significantly reduce costs and maintenance.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
Companies need to take advantage of new technologies to simplify interfaces, improve capabilities, and enhance back-office processes. But they can't upgrade their Websites too often.
Wells Fargo uses social software to replace email chains and help its sales team collaborate more effectively to land deals, according to Kelli Carlson-Jagersma, VP Collaboration Strategy for Wells Fargo. Mitch Wagner spoke with Carlson-Jagersma at the E2Innovate conference
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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