For me, it's been the more you learn about doing business over the web, the less it makes sense. Facebook, Twitter, and others in the social media space were defined 'successes' before they made any money or in some cases had even remotely viable business models. I've had discussions with start-up companies who's sole mission is to collect registered users and then figure out how to 'monetize' them. It's hard to argue. Case in point, Mint.com, a free online budgeting website with somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5M users, was acquired by Intuit in 2009 for $170M. At the time, Mint.com had been operating for about 2 years.
But the website world is just the beginning of the rush to give away products and services that once were highly valued. Today's push to the Cloud introduces a cost structure that makes it silly for almost all companies and organizations to internally build, update, and support the IT infrastructure they once held as a critical, maybe even differentiating, component of their business. With SalesForce.com, Google Apps, Microsoft Cloud offerings, etc., everyone can have enterprise class infrastructure without paying the big upfront cost and on-going cost of ownership of that infrastructure. It's all available, some for free, and some for ridiculously low per user per month charges.
For someone who's spent a career developing and selling software, a business model that demands it be provided without cost seems odd. As a consumer, knowing my personal information can be sold for hundreds or maybe even thousands of dollars, as websites monetize their free services, makes me a bit more cautious when registering to 'try out' a new thing on the web.
These realities led me to adopt a quote from one of my favorite movies, Armageddon. While trying to blow-up the asteriod hurling toward the earth, Rockhound (Steve Buscemi) makes a telling comment, "Guess what guys! It's time to embrace the horror! Look, we got front-row tickets to the end of the earth!" In my case, it's embrace the horror of the new world of social media, the new rules of doing business, and the new requirements of securing personal information.
In subsequent entries, I'll try to highlight specific topics and examples. See you then.
Rick Huebner is President & CEO of VISTECH.com, a technology company based in Hartford, CT. VISTECH.com assists clients with their IT strategy and delivers a wide range of products and services including Cloud Managed Services; Unified Communications/VOIP solutions; and outsourced software/web application design, development, maintenance, support.
