13 December 2002

2 - The business logic behind commerce-oriented online communities is that they most efficently integrate communication, entertainment, interest and of course commerce (according to Hagel and Armstrong ). Therefore, for the sake of convenience and/or because shopping is a social activity for many or/and because we as consumers want to realise our collective power and form online communities in order to help fellow consumers that share our interets (ie. buying sci-fi books or Dylan records or whatever) and then some day even aggregate our purchasing power to get better deals, and so on. In your opinion, is the online community a viable business model? And do we really want to deal with other people when buying staff online? Philip Kaplan (or Pud of fuckedcompany.com) argues that we shop online in order to evade the social activity that shopping many times is. Is the mantra "online social interaction helps bring profits" just a myth? 12:10:31 PM    comment []

1b- In addition, what do you feel about the promise of (e-CRM and) personalization on the Net? According to the business press, personalization technologies (or processes) such as collaborative filtering are the way forward and companies that deploy (most cited example is Amazon.com) them will reap substantial benefits. Last year i read in the Economist (UK) that “companies now also have the tools to exploit what they know about their existing customers…companies are starting to realise that they cannot offer the same quality of service to everyone. They know that the true promise of customer data is to help them to discriminate, in service quality and perhaps in price, and to target their services so that they give priority to the most profitable folk on their books”. The way I see it, as far as the online community model and personalization dogma are concerned (sometimes they were one thing such as in the case of My Yahoo!), the rise of e-CRM is based on appreciating cross and up - selling opportunities and diffrentiating on price and service...what do you think? Should I also add targeted marketing and product/service customization to the above? Is (e-CRM and) 'online personalisation'just a passing fad or we are simply witnessing the early stages of a wider revolution in commercial practices and is the "commercial online community" a step closer to real "personalization"? 12:10:06 PM    comment []

1a - It has been suggested that the process/technology of weblogs and collaborative filtering can be deployed for commercial purposes with a striking success. Most typical example is Amazon.com but others extend this line of argument to include websites/online communities such as slashdot.org since so many commercial products and services are discussed within the /. community every single day and we shouldn't neglect the fact that the most efficient form of marketing is "word-of-mouth". Essentially, the argument for personalization and mass customisation systems on the Net suggests that the process of weblogs/social navigation/collaborative filtering will increase demand and stimulate impulse buying. Some people claim that such systems effectively restrain our ability to explore (limit our choices and eventually lead to a personal straightjacket - the apotheosis of shallow individual consumerism) whereas others point that the "community" on which these processes/technologies are dependent upon in order to blossom will ensure that our ability to explore enhances since there is always a certain degree of diversity among community members and thus, this is a process of cross-fetrilization among ideas, opinions, market-customer needs/wants and commercial offerings. What is your opinion regarding the commercial (direct or indirect, forced top-down or emergent bottom-up) potential of such community processes/technologies? 12:09:39 PM    comment []

Piece of cake. Wrong, easiest than eating a piece of cake Second posting 11:34:15 AM    comment []

-- Nonsense we write late at night when we should be shagging -- First posting 11:27:02 AM    comment []