Likely Success of Internet-Related Business Models? 384
guess-for-success asks: "In Lester Thurow's latest book, published by HarperBusiness Books (Fall 2003), Fortune Favors the Bold: What We Must Do to Build a New and Lasting Global Prosperity, there is a chapter which discusses the beginning of new industries. During this time, several business models are introduced and only a few will survive. Looking at the PC industry, Commodore was the industry leader in the 1980's, but ultimately failed and went bankrupt in 1994. Successful business models such as Dell were not introduced until years after the industry began.
I now ask the Slashdot community: which internet business models they believe are going to succeed? Which companies will rise to the top? Will they be infrastructure related companies such as Cisco and even FedEx, or will they be true dot.com's such as eBay or Amazon?"
"You can find out more about Lester Thurow here. He is a professor of economics and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been the Dean of the Sloan School of Business at MIT. He has three New York Times best selling books to his credit and consults widely around the globe."
Google has the right idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google has the right idea (Score:2, Interesting)
There can be only one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There can be only one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Google has the right idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I've already started to use Teoma.
Re:Google has the right idea (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way I can envision using Teoma, or some other SE as my primary, would be if Google has an IPO this year (please, no!) and self-destructs because of short-sighted shareholder greed.
--
Re:Google has the right idea (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Google has the right idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google has the right idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen.
>Will they be infrastructure related companies such as Cisco and even FedEx, or will they be true dot.com's such as eBay or Amazon?
It doesn't matter, so long as they fulfil the Golden Rule:
Re:Yahoo has the right idea (Score:2)
Internet advertising (Score:2)
Already many succesful internet-only advertising firms have become profitable after many have failed. The smarter firms have figured out how to make a buck.
Re:Internet advertising (Score:2)
boo.com (Score:2)
(Will they never learn?
Sens moral? Do what hardware can do for you today, not when you release; the masses don't have the latest and greatest.
Re:boo.com (Score:2)
Re:boo.com (Score:2)
their style was their logo. i have no idea what their selling point was, but i did get a free fold-up boo.com hat at a nightclub once.
Re:boo.com (Score:3, Funny)
Customers cannot
see,
feel,
or try on the products
they need to pay postage
they have to wait for the clothers to arrive
couple that with a multi-million dollar marketing campaign that was so good that you can't even find out about them with google.
pure genius!
Get in? (Score:3, Insightful)
Gold rushes without stopping to evaluate the true ROI rarely yield results. Better off buying lottery tickets w/ next week's payroll.
Roku is a good example of a "new economy" business (Score:5, Interesting)
The company makes (expensive) digital picture frames that compete with Ceiva, Digiframe, and Pacific Digital. Nothing special there. But Wallflower's startup plan was based around building its high-end products with pieces from recycled computers. To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay, for $25 to $150 each. They were obsolete as workstations (most had 133MHz CPUs and smallish hard drives) but had the right pieces to make nice picture frames--most importantly, working 12" LCD panels.
Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software. Basically, the Wallflower displays are Web servers that appear on a Windows desktop as disk drives--you put one on your network and you can just drag pictures onto it, and call up its internal home page to manage its settings. Now you have a nice big electronic photo frame to show your digital pictures, and changing the display is as easy as typing a URL into your home computer.
Frankly I can't see spending $500 for one of these things--but what do I know? Shortly after Forbes ran an article about the product, Wallflower sold out of its inventory of Frankensteined picture frames. Left with nice cashflow from its rising order volume, and needing more certainty in its supply chain than Weird Stuff Warehouse could provide, Wallflower recently gave up on the whole recycled kick and started buying components from manufacturers, the way most computer companies do.
With the new manufacturing strategy, the company is able to offer more features and bigger screens, but it had to raise its prices since these components are more expensive. Although I imagine they save a fortune in assembly costs, since they no longer have to dismantle laptops to get their parts.
There is a thriving economy in the leftover computer business. Lots of old equipment ready to be used in new and exciting ways.
The internet and business model are no different.. (Score:5, Informative)
Ebay has just taken the traditional auction and used the internet to automate much of the process.
Really, most internet businesses are just innovations, taking a new technology and using it to replace or suppliment an existing medium. The problem with most internet businesses in the dot com era was they didn't understand this and/or fell into the trap of "This is compeltely different" and it wasn't.
Now the internet has helped reduce cost in industries like mail order because it is possible to reach billons with one site unlike say a traditional catalog that would have to be mailed out which costs a lot of money in print and postage. However, there is no secert method to business models. Its still breaks down to: provide a product or service to fulfill a need. Do it well, keep down costs, and hopefully make a profit.
Re:The internet and business model are no differen (Score:2)
Actually - that's only a small part of it.
The REAL economic factor going on with eBay, once we get over the gee-whiz factor of the Internet and it's ability to touch such a wide market, while targeting small, specific interests - it's all about the shipping. Fed Ex and UPS are the REAL winners with the eBay and Amazon story.
And since with Fed Ex and UPS, the profit all depends on Energy input for their tru
I agree that Internet and Business are the same (Score:2)
The key word here is "business". If you plan on running a business and using the Int
The old business rules still apply, more than ever (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, to launch a successful business, you need to have a core competency in mind, that is an idea that is:
Anyways there's my 2 cents from a person who just graduated with a Bachelors in business, I'd love intelligent replies from people who think otherwise, thanks!
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:3, Insightful)
rare, unique, hard to duplicate or hard to substitute but they are huge successes. Why?
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:2)
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:5, Informative)
rare, unique, hard to duplicate or hard to substitute...
Au contraire.
Both companies are extremely adept at taking cost out of their respective supply chains. Consequently they are profitable at price points their competitors cannot easily match.
Re:Yes, operations matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you shop for books and music at the brick-and-mortar WalMart? If you're here, you almost certainly don't.
If a store doesn't have what you want, the lowest price doesn't matter.
It's widely known that WalMart selects its intellectual content to be "family-friendly" and forces publishers to censor what it does buy.
I don't buy censored books and movies and you probably don't, either.
Amazon makes its money selling to literate people, a market the WalMart doesn't even understand.
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:2)
Sometimes you don't have to have a brand new business idea to win, you just have to implement an old one better than anyone else has.
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:2)
You are correct that none of these is unique, but when you put them all altogether you get a very successful c
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:2)
The skill competiting with them would be getting your suppliers to do the work, and you manage to survive (and prosper) on razor thin margins.
Ewan
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:2)
Capital-intensive, non-existent margins, and bleeding money all come to mind with any Detroit manufacturer...
In fact, the only division that is profitable in Ford is the car loan financing division. They don't make money from cars...
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:2)
So I retract the statement using Ford as a success in a present tense anyways (unless someone would care to challenge yet again).
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:3, Insightful)
1. When a new idea is found, the initial companies need to move in fast and get name recognition. Sponsoring events, Charity work, etc. is the Advertising medium used here.
2. Once a demand for a product has been started, companies need to provide quality, which they can charge more for. Word-of-Mouth is the advertising media here.
3. Once the market has developed enough customers, companies need to provide low pri
Re:The old business rules still apply, more than e (Score:5, Interesting)
The final blow was when in fall of '93 Mehdi decided to build a few 10's of thousands of the new (AA/AGA) machines (A1200, etc), and 300,000+ of the old chipset-based machines (A600). Needless to say, the old machines didn't move off the shelves very fast at Xmas, and that was the final nail.
There were other instances like that too. Mostly it was caused by not following up on successful products (C64, A500, to some extent A3000) and trying to milk them for too long. The A1200 was the right machine; it was just too late by a year or two. Engineering had it's issues too, in particular biting off more than we could chew on the total redesign of the chipset which was never quite finished ("AAA"), and not giving enough attention to the potential high-volume products, though in general engineering was pretty focused on them.
It's tough when the CEO won't let marketing talk to engineering directly, and insists all contact go through him and his cronies... Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Commodore engineer from these times, and after bankruptcy was declared, we burnt Mehdi Ali in effigy in my backyard (literally).
Look to the past for examples of future success. (Score:3, Interesting)
You need a solid plan, a solid product, and a company that can be successfully run by idiots (because sooner or later it will be). And you can't discount the role of serendipity -- for it was she that made successes out of the unlikeliest things. Take chopsticks, for example; who would have thought that a pair of wooden twigs would have caught on here in the U.S. mining colonies in 1800s (where they were invented by immigrants seeking to differentiate their new and tasty cuisine) to the point where they've actually spread across Asia and now account for 3% of our lumber exports! Or the success of the Post-It note: once thought to be entirely useless outside of the labs in which it was developed, it created a whole new 'need' in society for these notes that could be attached to things without paperclips.
At the end of the day, sometimes you just can't predict what'll be wildly successful and what will fall by the wayside. But I think if you find something unique and stick with it you've got a good shot.
Re:Look to the past for examples of future success (Score:2)
Chopsticks have been found in the tombs of Chinese emperors who ruled thousands of years ago. How exactly do you explain that, if they weren't even invented until 200 years
Re:Look to the past for examples of future success (Score:2)
Forks are an Italian invention - Marco Polo brought noodles back so they could develop spaghetti, but forgot the necessary eating utensils....
Re:Look to the past for examples of future success (Score:3, Interesting)
"For those really interested in chopsticks visit the Kuaizi Museum in Shanghai. The museum has collected over 1,000 pairs of chopsticks. The oldest pair is from the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 AD)."
From chinavista.com:
"When the Chinese began to use chopsticks as an eating instrument is anybody's guess. They were first mentioned in writing in Liji (The Book of rites), a work compiled some 2,0
You're asking Slashdot this? (Score:5, Funny)
Both will be necessary, for a while. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, massive restructuring will have to occur if this is to happen. Sure we are a market leader in margins and, as a cargo airline we have a good record of adapting new technologies, but we're still running on a heirarchy reminiscent of the generation that brought us Fred Smith. Reworking our buildings from warehouses to more dynamically creativity-inspiring circular buildings would be a decent start. We work on a hub concept. We need more creativity and flexibility in on-road route planning, more power taken from beaurocrats in Memphis who really don't get a good picture of on-road day to day activity other than pages full of numbers at the end of the day and share that power in the form of actual couriers and managers being able to make more broad decisions based on their locality. We have our own form of standards. The point is that practices that work in an inner city (which spawns the greatest density of deliveries and pickups) are completely wrong for people out in the country who may have ten to twenty stops a day.
And I'm not saying this as a courier. I'm an administrator, but I think it's very important to put more faith in our frontline employees. Unfortunately not all of the higher-ups share that point of view.
Dotcom ventures, all negative late-nineties stigma aside, are still in the realm of providing virtual services. Even if those are for real products, people will STILL want to feel like they're interacting with other people. Make it too impersonal, and you'll ultimately lose touch with your customers (and their reality). It'll be interesting to see what "they" do to reverse the trend.
Not to mention there will, in the forseable future, be a consistent and even increasing demand for companies like FedEx. As more people migrate to do their shopping online, they'll need companies like us to deliver the goods.
Damon,
Re:Both will be necessary, for a while. (Score:2)
What do you think of the Kinko's buyout? As a former Kinko's employee who still owns 53 shares of stock, I'm hoping to profit from it... but I don't know if it's going to be good for FedEx or not.
Re:Both will be necessary, for a while. (Score:2)
I'm hoping for a profit too, naturally. I think it is something of a positive direction, and actually a smart wait. Some people may think that FedEx is just being a copycat (after UPS buying out Mailboxes, Etc.) but FedEx and Kinkos have had a close relationship for years. I sincerely doubt the buyout was a recent idea. We simply wanted to see if it could work and what mistakes UPS made that we can avoid. By doing so we stand to improve our margins beyond those of UPS sim
Re:Both will be necessary, for a while. (Score:2)
However, FedEx is great for providing part-time jobs for college kids. Caveat, though, even though it's a part-time job, it comes with full-time job responsibilities, but the compensation and benefits package more than makes up for it.
Re:Both will be necessary, for a while. (Score:2)
Re:Both will be necessary, for a while. (Score:4, Interesting)
Our current upper management has made an attempt to put on a face to the frontline employees of consideration and a promotion of customer service; however, I have seen customer service be put aside time and again in favor of padding our numbers in order to gain a higher "service level" average within the company. I think I'm one of the only administrators who sees the irony.
Finally, we've had to do a lot of cut-backs of management itself, as well as collapse a lot of routes in order to save hours and, ultimately, lose less money over the past two years. What is interesting is that FedEx, while still maintaining that they will by no means lay off anybody, has been eliminating positions left and right. However, in order to maintain, they have kept those employees in the ledger, pointed them to our internal open-position postings, converted them to "casual employees" and told them that when anything comes up they're welcome to take it. Many of these employees have opted to resign because most of the open positions were on a lower pay-scale and often only part-time. I do admire the company's efforts though, considering that we HAVE gone through hard times (I've watched the numbers myself). They've made a stringent effort to "promote from within" even if the shuffling really isn't promotion at all, as opposed to hiring and training new employees. I know it's been tough and we've lost some people, but the truth is that we've not gone out and hired a bunch of new people (company-wide, anyway). It doesn't make your situation better, but it doesn't look as bad.
bad example and poor question (Score:2, Insightful)
The internet is just a thing , you know? If you have a product/content people want, they will buy it.
There have been precedents..... (Score:2)
After that the new golden age begins with the survivors. Amazon and eBay are the cornerstones of the industry.
It's happened previous times in the American economy with car companies being the best example. There were several in it's "bubble" period, much like there were scores of internet companies during the tech bubble.
Gold Rush (Score:5, Insightful)
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska! [alaska-freegold.com]
I know the answer! (Score:2)
The Slashdot subscription model will undoubtedly rise to the top, generating billions of dollars for CowboyNeal and his comrades.
FedEx branching out (Score:2)
It would be easy for FedEx to sit on its laurels and continue to scrape more bucks out of the traditional shipping market. This purchase, while risky, shows that they've got management that can think outside the box. Granted, UPS is a step ahead with their UPS Store [upsstore.com] locations (formerly Mail Boxes Etc.). But as several articles have already pointed ou
Which is the Right Business Model Changes (Score:2)
What business model is "right" changes. One business model may be the right thing to do initially, but, down the road, a slightly different (or a radically different) business model may become the right one. The companies that survive are the ones that can successfully change their business model as the situation changes.
For example, take GE. Initial business was build lightbulbs and things involving electricity (motors and such). If GE had only continued to build lightbulbs and electrical motors, it
That's Easy (Score:2)
Companies that have a business that Microsoft approves of will succeed. Companies that have a business that Microsoft disapproves of will fail.
Commodore failed because Microsoft wanted it dead. Dell succeeded (suck-seeded?) because Mikey Dell wore out the knees of his pants for Billy-boy. Monopolies get to pick the winners and losers. That's the way it works in the laissez-faire world.
Re:That's Easy (Score:2)
They are not that powerful. If they were, there would be no unix, no Oracle, no Intuit, no sun Java, no choice.
They are a tough competitor, though.
voluntary compensation model for content (Score:3, Interesting)
I've cited this here already several times, but I wrote an essay for sharethemusicday.com [sharethemusicday.com] that describes why a voluntary compensation model would work.
Remember when... (Score:3, Insightful)
And Amazon sold books, and did it well?
Then somebody said "Portals" and they became "portals".
Then somebody said "Auction" and they all followed e-bay.
Then somebody said "e-commerce" and they all started selling everything.
And books became Amazon's sideline to their patents on everything but the color of money. And their site became a Navigational Nightmare(TM) (patent pending).
Now everybody wants to be a search engine again.
The reason Google is succesful is because it does it gives people the information they want, and stays the hell out of their way.
Hmm. (Score:2)
Amazon? Try Yahoo (Score:2)
EBay, Google and Yahoo are more obviously and sustainably profitable.
the models (Score:2)
Using airplanes to deliver packages sounds normal and trivial today but remember, FedEx shipped thousands of empty boxes around for two weeks because they had to know that their infastructure worked. That's
Depends on how you define "Internet Business" (Score:3, Interesting)
It's an interesting question but we need to know exactly what the business model entails. Is it PURELY Internet? If this was the case, I would say Google has a good model. They managed to stand above when there were a huge number of search engines available for users. They managed to find the righ mix of algorithm coding, marketing, and selling adwords.
Same goes with eBay. Remember when there were a few different auction sites available to users? Yet eBay managed to differentiate themselves and move to prosperity.
When we define "Internet business" though, do we mean only "Internet"? No brick-and-mortar ties at all? Meaning we exclude entities such as Dell?
I think the basic formula for a successful Internet business has these following traits:
1) Be the first to gain as much market share as possible. This includes Amazon, eBay, iTunes. In eBay and Amazon's case, they gobbled up the share and let the other's die out. iTunes happened to do it by providing the most viable and easy to use music download service. Others are finally getting on the bandwagon but have to play catch up with them now.
2) Differentiate yourself. When you can stand out from the crowd, people use you. Dozens of booksellers, everyone uses Amazon because of their mix of ratings, price, one-click buying, etc. Google differentiated themselves in the beginning when they claimed to have indexed over 1 million pages. iTunes by being amazingly easy to use and by getting major labels to jump on board.
3) Ease of use. Google is damn easy. Amazon is easy. eBay is easy. iTunes is easy. Sure you can use other services, but Amazon has spent a lot of time, money, and research on ways to make their user experience easy and enjoyable.
4) Act like a normal business. Gone are the days of getting $4.4 billion for an idea with no real business sense. If you want to have a successful BUSINESS model, act like a business.
I'm sure there are more, but these four basic rules will be seen in all successful Internet businesses.
That's a no-brainer (Score:4, Funny)
Business Models and Reality (Score:4, Insightful)
* Comodity service, periodic (annuity) style bill.
* Distributor
* Reseller (buy, markup, market, resell)
* Service - flat fee (I'll do that website for $50K)
* Service - hourly rate (I'll bill you $150/hr)
The top causes of business failure are well documented. If memory serves correctly here are five top business killers:
* Undercapitalization - Not enough jack, jack.
* Demand Over/Under estimation - Build it they don't come... or too many crash your party
* Fraud & Embezzlement - Where did the money go?
* Cost overruns - 50% of the budget on furniture? Eghad!
* Poor sales - We're a ____ company. Our product is 733t. We don't need to sell anything.
Most of these mistakes are fairly easy to make and usually gang rape the business owner - as in you are undercapitalized because you underestimated the demand, cant produce enough widgets to fill orders and are experiencing legal expenses because you overpromised and underdelivered.
Ahhhh ... (Score:2)
Porn! (Score:2)
This is a year of growth and expansion for hosts with solid businesses.
Providing services instead of goods (Score:5, Informative)
In the mid 90's we developed a windows application solution. Now we provide the application CD and tell them the requirements (SQL server, windows network, recommended hardware requirements). Everything except our software is a commodity on their network now and so we extract ourselves from the costs of having to work on buying it. We allow the customer to pick their own or they can pay our consultants to help them out. We negotiate contracts for how much an hour they would have to pay for consulting. Everything is driven by consulting, custom work, training, services. Our software is the only hard good we produce any more, and its questionable if you want to call that a hard good these days. In fact we aren't worried too much about piracy, because our main source of income is the customer paying on the contracts we sign for purchasing the software (which requires a huge amount of setup) and for supporting the software, which is a percentage of their initial purchase contract.
Expertise is never a commodity and as companies find a way to make hardware construction cheaper, people move to providing quality by just having a bunch of knowledgable people sitting around who know how to provide some kind of technological help (read: billable consulting, not tech support) to a specific market space.
I also see the tech support outsource trend swinging back to the US a bit as US companies demand better quality of support. Between the cookie cutter, script reading mentality of overseas operations and some unintelligible accents, customers, especially businesses, will demand a change. They already are.
Dealing in Data Info & Knowledge & Action (Score:2)
I conceive of cyberspace in a fashion where there are at least 3 independent time frames, and there is constant interaction between the physical and abstract. A schematic showing the conception is here [hypermart.net]
From here we can now see different levels in which economic activity can be generated.
things that will really work on the internet (Score:2)
Things that scale effectiveness by bodies or trucks or physical widgets are less clearcut -- they are extensions of the old models with new efficiency, e.g, Amazon.
This is why peer to peer is so seductive a technology. Everyone knows it offers the payback of the network ef
Local networks and content (Score:3, Interesting)
When I say local networks, I mean last-mile solutions. Of course, some of the technologies involve longer distances than that -- up to the last 22,500 miles if you happen to own a geosynchronous bird. There will be opportunities outside of the areas served by the big players -- telcos and cable companies. This is a business where there are significant economies of scale, so small guys will have to win on the basis of superior service. Wireless technology is probably important, since wired solutions are CAPITAL-INTENSIVE, and will generally require permission from local regulatory agencies. Building the devices used in such networks doesn't seem like a particularly profitable business -- if there's a significant market, there's going to be lots of competition and the profit margins are probably quite thin.
There are opportunities to make money if you can provide some form of compelling content. I've always thought there were opportunities in almost any small city with a university. There are dozens/hundreds of music majors with performance requirements -- can you create and distribute a library of performances? Can you design and implement a multimedia tutoring system that connects students and tutors? Can you make deals with the local last-mile providers so your servers are close to the end user, rather than having to trust the Internet for performance and/or reliability?
It's called "stuff" (Score:2)
Property.
People aren't interested in an internet economy. They're interested in stuff. If you can find a way to use the internet as a leg up supplying stuff to customers, well, there ya go.
But anyone who thinks of the internet as a way to get people to just send them money isn't going to go anyplace.
People are also interested in certain services, like having their pool cleaned and the oil in their car changed. Ain't gonna happen over the internet
why.. I don't understand.. (Score:2)
dude.. face it, there never was a "bubble" it was called "you got screwed over by some savy businessmen who have now moved on" and sitting around lamenting that fact is just plain sad.
The real businesses that had actual products made it through that time and the guys who didn't, are gone and in my eye "good riddance to them"
The next "bubble" that you guys are going to sit around and babble about for years will be
Opportunity exists in aggregation (Score:4, Interesting)
A look at the big winners:
* e-Bay - Started as a way to buy and sell collectibles - now an aggregation of small vendors and casual shoppers selling 1.7 million items a DAY!
* Amazon - Started as an on-line book store with the content of your local shop - now an aggregation of just about any book in (and sometimes out of) print and available to you in a few days (or for pickup at Borders).
* Google - An index of all this Internet stuff - now an index with so much info that it has made itself a household word.
*
* iTunes Music Store - the next great aggregator - they have found a way to BROWSE music and sell it legally. A creative mix of low-tech product, high-tech delivery, on-line shopping, and off-line use (iPod).
So yeah Dell can make a few bucks on a commodity product, but the real winners are the ones who make a new market space by putting people in touch with the products or information that is more valuebale to them than what's in their wallets.
Amazon (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing about Amazon is that they haven't sat on their laurels. Digitizing whole books and making them searchable is invaluable and basically mimicks that old ability to browse books.
I worry though that we'll end up with these large super-conglomerates who hold whole market segments, somewhat like Microsoft achieved in computers in the 90's. The only real competitor to Amazon for books is Barnes and Nobel, but Amazon's really beating them in many ways.
Re:trusted computing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:trusted computing (Score:2)
Trusted Computing will be the shiz-nit until Marketing produces the Next Big Thing, when Trusted Computing joins <your pet buzzword here> in the bit bucket with Bob [toastytech.com]
Re:trusted computing (Score:2, Insightful)
Try creating something new for a change.
And further, people don't want to hear it because they happen to value their freedom. They would rather be more constructive than destructive.
Re:trusted computing - oh please (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yeah, and an addition to CallerID called CallerIQ.
Re:trusted computing (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with "Trusted Computing" is that inorder to come up with a standard and have it enforced, the standard would be rejected by most software companies because it would require them to open up the code and development process to outsiders to inspect for compliance with the standard.
Yikes (Score:2)
This is either an attempt to be funny, or it is one of the most disturbing things I have heard in a while.
Re:My experiences with tech business trends (Score:2)
Hmm, seems like providing better customer service than your competitors would qualify as a business model or even a management technique, but what do I know?
Re:My experiences with tech business trends (Score:2)
That *is* a business model.
Re:My experiences with tech business trends (Score:5, Interesting)
Advertising is what keeps AOL afloat (at least for the time being). Not word of mouth. Microsoft dominates for any number of reasons, but none of them are customer loyaltyor good community relations (though to his credit, Bill does give plenty to charity).
I'm not saying that you can't make money with your method. Apple managed to stay around during the late '90s, prior to Jobs's return, largely due to fanatical customer loyalty, from all accounts. But Apple is now on the way back up (perhaps, though they aren't exactly profitable yet, if I remember right) because they've managed to expand their customer base by good, expensive advertising.
Consumers aren't exactly rational. It's cheaper for Dell to advertise how good their tech support is than actually improve it. It's cheaper for Apple to advertise how amazing their PowerBooks are than, say, bring the price within range of Intel laptops (not that I don't covet a nice 12" AlBook). You can get business through word of mouth. But you get ahead through sound business practices and aggressive marketing.
Re:My experiences with tech business trends (Score:2)
This is SO true - and is a great example of what is so great about free market capitalism.
The darker side of that is - when a company gets to be the size of a Dell or an HP, and it's seen as more profitable, since there's so little competition, to instead, loot their market. Which is what Dell is doing.
That's why, politically, we've got t
Re:My experiences with tech business trends (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is it that in today's business world we label idiots like Darl Mc Bride and other CEO's as "industry leaders" or "examples of what leaderships should be" when they take the customer and ream them up the arse as hard as they can, whenever they can, yet the real business men and women have the attitude like the above poster, who seem to have scruples and are interested in doing a good job.
Why do we as a country reward assholes and ingrates by giving them job's a CEO's CTO's and CFO's or worse yet, electing them to government offices and ignore the real business professionals?
Customer service is #1.. without your customer you are absolutely nothing. Yet today's big business trend to to piss on your customer at every chance... from retail to banking (espically banking!) to services, to everything....
why?
Re:My experiences with tech business trends (Score:3, Interesting)
Darl McBride - President, CEO [caldera.com]
I'll quote:
Re:My experiences with tech business trends (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it boils down to one thing: people just don't care.
Corporations grow so large that instead of long term gain in mind (making the customer happy), they try to find each and every way to improve the bottom line.
Minimize inputs: employee pay, design/research time, manufacturing/testing time, customer support.
Maximize income: lots of marketing (IMAGE is everything), high prices, lots of control over the end-product after it's left the shelf.
You get bombarded with ads to buy crappy products, made by overworked and underpaid people, and as an added bonus get to fuss with control measures that make it difficult to switch to a competing brand. Cellphones sound familiar? CDs?
And everyone eats it up because they don't care. Capitalism works if the consumer is interested in looking out for himself, but these days most folks are completely happy to give everyone their money and say "Take care of me." This is why nobody sells a product anymore, they sell a "solution."
Politics is the same. Nobody takes a vested interest in taking control of their lives and exercising their own power. People contract with the cellphone company that promises them the best service, pay loads of money and then get reamed and the same is true with politicians. People elect politicians who promise to take care of them, happily turn over 20%+ of every penny made and most end up hating the government.
Nobody cares. Society has no problem giving up every dime if someone promises to take care of them -- but it's rare that anyone is held accountable.
I'll end this with a favorite quote of mine:
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." [Samuel Adams]
Re:My experiences with tech business trends (Score:2)
Re:Amazon is where it's at (Score:3, Funny)
No, they're not. Amazon has no offline book stores, so they are not "click and mortar". BN.com, BestBuy.com, even ToysRUs.com (powered by Amazon, interestingly enough) are click and mortar stores, and aren't doing nearly as well as the pure dot-com, Amazon. So if anything, Amazon proves click and mortar *doesn't* work.
See how much clearer things are when you understand what the hell you're talking about?
Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Amazon lost 149 million last year. Conversely, ToysRUs made 229 million. ToysRUs.com may not have made money, but it is apparently part of a business strategy that is functional. Indigo books made money last year (well, a bit anyways). Barnes & Noble made money last year ($100 million - not too shabby).
Anyways, I just find it entertaining that Amazon is being trotted out as a success in comparison with companies that are actually makin
Not quite... (Score:2)
Re:Amazon is where it's at (Score:3, Insightful)
By allowing its customers to contribute on-line feedback about its products (that is, people can upload their opinions about the books that they have bought; positive or negative), Amazon has created the model intern
Amazon? Are you nuts? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll agree that Amazon.com is a business model to follow, if you don't mind a model like this:
1. Get open-ended financing
2. Sell everything at a loss
3. ???
4. Profit [satirewire.com]!
Now, I'm obviously not an expert, but my Googling only finds a couple of quarters where Amazon turned a profit, and the latest news [yahoo.com] is that the company's losses were almost $40 million over the last 9 months -- and that was considered a Good Thing because it was a 75% drop in losses.
When I was in Junior Achievement [ja.org], they told us that successful companies made "larger profits," not "smaller losses." Amazon may not be going anywhere anytime soon, but treading water (even if you're the size of a battleship) hardly seems like a "success".
Let me explain (Score:5, Informative)
What? (Score:3, Informative)
No, you didn't actually spend $40,000. You spent $200,000. Of real money. It's just that the IRS doesn't let you write it off as an expense all at once. Instead, you have to depreciate it over its useful lifetime, which was 5
...if you want to issue record corporate debt (Score:2)
Amazon by the way is trying to shed its "mortar" rapidly as it realizes it cannot hope to compete against huge retailers like Walmart or bottom-feeders like Overstock in the long term. They are trying to go the route of search (A9, a Froogle competitor) and store hosting (to compete with Ebay and Yahoo Store). We'll see if it works.
Re:Commodore was the leader ? (Score:2)
The Amiga was popular, but so was the Atari ST. I seem to remember that the "war" between those two systems was pretty much neck and neck until they both
Re:Commodore was the leader ? (Score:2)
Of course we know that if a computer can run cutting edge games(for the time), it would have no problems running business apps.
Apple and IBM computers were for real work. At least I think some folks felt this way.
Commodore was the leader, Yes (Score:2)
After about two weeks of playing around with the Atari ST, I realized that I had 'thrown away' a huge amount of money on a computer that was practically worthless. Fortunately I was able to sell it for no loss to someone on the Atari corporate BBS system that had a different opinion.
Eventually I was able to get low-cost development tools fo
Re:Commodore was the leader ? (Score:2)
Commodore computers were there first before apple (the apple I does not count, I'm taking assembled and working not a kit) and were hugely popular in small businesses in the early 80's many schools had droves of them before apple.
Re:The only way (Score:2)
Utter Misery:
Somalia. ( Lack of Property Rights )
I thought Somalia was at one point heralded as the dreamland of libertarianism. You know, no centralized government, everything belongs to the strongest faction that can lay a claim to it, no outside economical interference, in fact no laws at all to hinder "progress". By no stretch of imagination is it communism or even socialism.
Too bad all that together forms total anarchy.
Re:The only way (Score:2)
Re:Let's See...What have we achieved so far (Score:5, Insightful)
WalMart and Microsoft stores don't *follow* Apple's internet business model.
If the next bubble is content, you need to device a profit center. The internet is good at distribution, therefore removing the costs associated with it. I suspect the next bubble is not so much content, but content awareness: If Apple can make it easy to find stuff you like amidst a sea of choice, then you will keep using iTunes MS and a future prototypical Video Store.
The money of course is when you buy a device to store/facilitate all this content. A video iPod is about as likely to occur when you start seeing 300 disc DVD changers; then Apple will produce the digital equivalent, iPod2, which can store 300 DVDs in a convenient footprint and equivalent quality.