April 25, 2006

where are the web 1.0 ceos now? Prosumers. And Conversations Are Markets Too

I was thinking this morning how many of the smart, too-quickly-gone web 1.0 clients I worked with, who -- had their ideas and business models come just a little later -- might have had staying power.

I wonder where Biri Singh is. He was the head of Intelligent Digital (rebranded idapta) in the high boom days. Working with Biri was like getting a look under the hood of the amazing engine that would become e-commerce. I can't find much about him on the web past the idapta days. But I think he has to be somewhere. He should be blogging. But I did find this article I wrote with him back on digital marketplaces back in 00.

I think about the B2B marketplace when Doc talks about how consumers are not consumers, and if they ever were, which they really weren't, they're TOTALLY not now, because we are smack dab in the middle of a ... well, I'm not going to speak for Doc. But look, the flip is flopping, and when all is said and done, each one of us could be an exchange. an individual marketplace, a realtime living breathing ebay that also takes the kids to the park, C2B, C2C, blow ALL of that, it's M2Y - me to you.

So if I'm anything that you simply must "call" me, then maybe i'm a prosumer, proactively producing services/products that matter to me in partnership - in tandem - with you and your business and what I'm interested in  from you.

Okay, it's the coffee.

I sent Doc an email last week but i dunno if he got it because a lot of times i end up in his junk folder he tells me, something about my version of outlook, and also, the email didn't make much sense. And yet, unabashedly, I bring it to you.


you know the whole thing about ‘consumer’ not being ‘consumers’ anymore but the increasing dual role, online  at least, of being consumer/producer, user/developer, each of us trending toward becoming a minimemarketplace, where I make I buy I make I sell, right? And so for organizations, right, the mandate is don’t look at me as a customer anymore, I’m – yes little individual me – becoming your partner, right, I supply you and you supply me, we exchange, and the marketplace becomes HUMAN because eventually it will be simply too fast for traditional-cos to adapt to, and we are, what, reverting back to a hyperbarter system, a human hub model, I dunno....

...We’re racing, really, to a point where there’s no verb between the two, just take out the ‘are,’ and swap them if you want. From my perspective, the more conversations and interactions I have with people who are thinking and creating stuff this fast is that we’re approaching some merge-point between trust/talk/need/create/ where a call with six women talking about the NEED (market) for a site for moms on the move looking for childcare recommendations from other women they know online (trust), one woman moving to manhattan asking, “Do you know any resources here, and then talking with two others, I just used one in Austin I can contribute, do you have one in Atlanta? And we need a site for this with an amazon-review structure…” that what occurs to me is: these conversations are fucking markets.


Right, so, I had to share.

How would you like to be Doc? Patience of a saint I tell you. ;-)


Tags: , , , , , = Powered by Qumana