"The traditional manager is taught to command and control. Web 2.0 challenges that model.... Companies are not democracies, of course. And social media will deliver little value if it becomes some giant water cooler conversation because not all the best ideas are discovered at the water cooler. Huge quantities of absolute rubbish are talked there too. So, social media and Web 2.0 are not a replacement for management decision making, but rather a support to make better, more-informed decisions.

"The naïve tool-centric view of Web 2.0 still exists. ‘Just give them the blog and the wiki software and get out of the way’ has very limited logic. But it is classic IT-thinking. As if the tool was the be all and end all, and the only purpose of life was to discover the right one. As if it was the type of quill that Shakespeare chose that made him the writer that he was."

"So Web 2.0 and social media still need management.... But the managers are not the only clever people in the room anymore. The room is much bigger and it is speckled with cleverness. To manage in the Web 2.0 world is to converse, to listen, to be honest and upfront, to collaborate, to moderate, and constantly watch out for the trends and patterns that always emerge when many minds mingle and mix in the network."

The message needs to sink in that companies need to start giving up some control over the conversation with their customers. I know this is very hard to hear, and even harder to do, but it is happening whether comanies like it or not. Those that continue to keep a stranglehold on the conversation will eventually find that no one is listening...

and

While the teams have members from different backgrounds, they both have a common goal, which is to promote the team members' collective works and hopefully gain sales.

I cant believe it already the end of summer!  I've been so busy with work and travel, I almost had to double check my calendar because I cant believe I was writing "September" in the title of this post.

In terms of the website, there has been a lot going on in my life that got in the way of my progress, (or that I have allowed to get in the way) but I did finally start a much needed site update, changed hosting, CMS and shopping cart providers this week.  The website has a completely different look now.

The hosting and CMS is with Pappashop (I wrote about it last month) and the cart is with Mal's e-Commerce.  Though the site isn't completely finished and my store isn't officially opened, I'm glad I was able to complete that part so that I can move forward with offering products.

www.greenandchic.com

A média de compras em 2007 ficou em R$ 302, sendo o Natal a época mais rentável, com média de R$ 308 por aquisição e faturamento total de R$ 1,081 bilhão - um sexto de tudo vendido no ano.

As cinco categorias de produtos que mais registraram compras no ano passado foram, respectivamente, livros e assinaturas de revistas e jornais; informática, eletrônicos, saúde/beleza e telefonia celular.

Já o número de internautas residenciais ativos no País em janeiro de 2008 ficou em 21,1 milhões. Na comparação com janeiro do ano passado, quando o universo foi de 14 milhões de pessoas, o incremento alcança os 50%.

Também em 2007, o PIB (Produto Interno Bruto) brasileiro cresceu 5,4% em relação ao ano anterior, o que elevou o consumo das famílias em 6,5% e aumentou a massa salarial em 3,6%. Tudo isso impulsionou o e-commerce, segundo a Ikeda.

Fonte: Baguete

However, those days are long gone at least for me cos I stumbled across a most innovative product at Zenithbank known as the Mastercard Websurfer. The Websurfer card by Zenith Bank is a debit card that gives you the same functionalites as your normal marstercard. The big difference however, is that you're hardly charged for any services or goods paid for online. It is not a personalised card and you can only use it online and no where else...so don't even think of using it on one of your trips abroad except you'll be making online purchases.

If you're interested in having this card, visit www.zenithbank.com and apply online for the websurfer card. You will need your driving license or an international passport for registration and identification purpose and you will also be required to select the nearest branch where you would like to pick up this card. The process usually takes about 15minutes and voila! you're off to the bank. You'll be required to activate this card with $120 ($20 is for annual charge while you'll be charged $5 everytime you reload this card).

This has saved more money than the normal mastercard where I was incurring some stupid charges that were unexpainble. So, i've been paying for online goods and services ranging from VictoriaSecrets, web design and development, business cards and stationeries and several other things that were shipped directly to Nigeria. So, if you need a revolution in the way and manner you conduct online e-commerce transactions, the WebSurfer card is the way to go.

Status of e-commerce
The first thing we noted is that it is quite difficult to compare the status of e-commerce development in different countries due to market size, Internet population, GDP and purchasing power. How can one compare properly between such diverse markets as the United States, China, Japan and South Korea?

After working on various models, we identified the share of e-commerce as part of the total retail market as a usable metric to highlight the development of e-commerce. This confirmed our intuition that South Korea is the most advanced, with 6.5 percent of all retail being e-commerce. The United States and Japan are somewhere around 4 percent, while China is still at a very early stage with 0.63 percent, but poised for explosive growth.

If Japan is not that advanced in e-commerce, it is the world leader in mobile commerce; the leading B2C player Rakuten gets 20 percent of its revenue from mobile commerce. The whole market represented over $6 billion in 2007, far ahead of any other market and even close to the entire Chinese EC market at $8 billion.

Why and how to grow a successful EC market
This was a question discussed at a recent seminar between China's Ministry of Commerce and the European Union where we contributed as invited experts. A successful e-commerce market actually develops the retail market and helps companies sell more, but more than anything is able to create jobs. Well over a million users make a living from eBay globally and there is huge potential in job creation with Taobao and other services in China.

One might then wonder how to enable e-commerce and accelerate its development. There are many reasons for e-commerce development that can be attributed to culture, purchasing habits, regulations, logistics reliability, credit card usage and GDP development, but once we completed the following graphic, we became quite convinced that the main enabler for e-commerce or mobile commerce was IT infrastructure.

Korea leads in Internet speed and in e-commerce, while Japan leads in 3G and mobile commerce, which seems in line with their IT infrastructure development. The key element aside from the presence of a sophisticated IT infrastructure seems to be the length during which said infrastructure has been around. For instance, Japan developed its fixed broadband more recently than Korea and has less experience with it, but Japan is expected to grow rapidly.

Just as governments have a responsibility in developing roads, bring electricity and water, we tend to think that building a strong IT infrastructure is the best enabler to develop the knowledge economy and retail market, and that governments should - directly by financing or indirectly by stirring up competition - support rapid IT development to enable economies to go digital.

Future trends
As a conclusion, here are some key trends in e-commerce we identified:

(1) B2C (e.g. Amazon) and C2C (e.g. eBay) models are converging. B2C is generally a guarantee of quality but not of price, while C2C offers good price, but quality and payment is generally more risky. This year, eBay's "fixed price auctions" are going to represent half of its revenues.

(2) Mobile commerce is going to happen. In fact, it is already happening in Japan because of their advanced infrastructure. Other countries will have the same happening when they will catch up, within the next few years.

(3) Social networks will blend with e-commerce. Remember the time when there was no Internet? There was also a time when there was no advertising. At that time, people mostly asked their friends about what to buy and what was good. As people become more and more disenchanted by advertising, this time is coming back and we saw the first signs of convergence in some services like Alimama and Japan's NicoNico Video.

(4) Online and offline will connect. While an increasing number of offline stores are going online, already some online stores in South Korea are opening offline shops. Some Korean and Japanese auction and e-commerce sites are using existing retail networks such as convenience stores or subway stations as delivery and pick-up points.

(5) Meta-shopping will develop. This is a new concept in Korea. If you remember Korea is the world's most advanced e-commerce market, this is worth looking into. It follows the development of numerous online shopping malls (several thousands in Korea), and provides a sophisticated-yet-easy-to-use combination of price comparison and user reviews. It has been created by Korea's largest Internet portal Naver, who call this service "Knowledge Search".

Just as China sells today more music online (PC and mobile) than offline, we think the combination of strong SNS usage and online shopping developments are able to help the country leapfrog from an offline to an online economy. Moreover, for retail success in China, China has the advantage of having very few barriers compared to other countries which have a strong offline retail legacy. So here is our advice to retailers in or coming to China: think digital!

Junto ao faturamento, o número de consumidores também cresceu, saltando 42%  em comparação ao mesmo período de 2007, para 11,5  milhões de brasileiros que usaram a internet para fazer compras. Destes, 37% são 'heavy users', ou seja, realizaram mais de quatro compras no semestre.

O tíquete médio, parâmetro para medir os gastos dos consumidores brasileiros, foi de 324 reais, aumento de 9% em relação a 2007, quando o valor era de 297 reais. Com relação à qualidade de atendimento, 86% dos brasileiros se disseram satisfeitos com as compras online.

A categoria de Livros continua como a mais popular, com 17% de participação no setor, seguida por produtos de Informática (12%), Saúde e Beleza (10%) e Eletrônicos (7%). Embora não revele o faturamento de cada categoria, o e-bit afirma que os artigos tecnológicos e eletrônicos corresponderam a 50% do total de faturamento no período.

Felipe Zmoginski, do Plantão INFO

Fonte: http://info.abril.com.br/aberto/infonews/062007/20062007-6.shl

Nuestros primeros sponsors, un verdadero lujo. Nada menos que Grupo NetCom, Doppler y BuscaPé Argentina, tres empresas líderes en el mercado.

Agradecemos a todos quienes participaron, a il Gatto y a nuestros sponsors por apoyarnos en esta primera iniciativa.

Próximamente, el calendario de eventos y ciudades.

Les dejo algunas fotos del evento, y los distintos archivos de información.

• Presentación desayuno
• Información sobre BuscaPé
• Información sobre Grupo NetCom 1
• Información sobre Grupo NetCom 2

Bienvenidos. Be-online4.com es una empresa de ideas y conocimiento, con un formato innovador dentro del mercado.

¿Cómo surgió?

Vimos la necesidad de las PyMEs de ingresar al cada vez mayor y más competitivo mundo de Internet, y de alguien que les hable en su idioma sobre todas las posibilidades que tienen para desarrollar. Así creamos una ronda de actividades mensuales que buscan, mediante un evento simple y de fácil comprensión dentro de un ambiente relajado, trasmitir conceptos, despejar dudas, educar y (claro está) crear oportunidades de negocio.

BO4 es una manera de tomar la decisión correcta basada en sus conocimientos.

I haven't the time to delve deeply, but I imagine that this will be quite excellent. The parent company - Opera - makes the Opera browser and was instrumental in the development of Cascading Stylesheets and their subsequent encapsulation as a web standard.

http://www.opera.com/wsc/

Ich persönlich finde diese Initiative gut - man kann diese Produkte gesondert vermarkten, muss aber auch sicherstellen, dass diese über die "normale" eBay Plattform auch erhältlich sind (und das ist zum Glück der Fall). Was mir nicht so gut gefällt ist die Tatsache, dass man den check-out über die normale eBay Plattform machen muss, es gibt keinen Warenkorb und die Artikel sind im Moment nur in den USA erhältlich - zum Glück gibt's da noch Firmen wie Bonvu.com.

Auf der Homepage eBay.com habe ich leider auch noch keinen Link zum neuen Marktplatz gefunden...oder habe ich den übersehen?

I know i am currently going through SEO, but i would like to put that on hold while i vent my excitement at what Google are creating.

There is now a beta version of thier new web browser called Google Chrome.  I have downloaded the beta version, it does look pretty elegant.  It is different to what we are used to with IE and FireFox or various others that you may use.  It really stresses pure simplicity and I am a big fan of this.  I took a few screen shots of what it looks like, one with the Google home page and one with the Ryan website:

You will notice how Google has made as much space as possible on the screen, this will enable websites to look better on a single screen.

I like it a lot...!!

You can see Google's blog here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

I am always available on 07985 736 168

see us at http://www.ryan.uk.com

I know i am currently going through SEO, but i would like to put that on hold while i vent my excitement at what Google are creating.

There is now a beta version of thier new web browser called Google Chrome.  I have downloaded the beta version, it does look pretty elegant.  It is different to what we are used to with IE and FireFox or various others that you may use.  It really stresses pure simplicity and I am a big fan of this.  I took a few screen shots of what it looks like, one with the Google home page and one with the Ryan website:

You will notice how Google has made as much space as possible on the screen, this will enable websites to look better on a single screen.

I like it a lot...!!

You can see Google's blog here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

I am always available on 07985 736 168

see us at http://www.ryan.uk.com