Salesforce.com, the On Demand CRM company (and the corporate in the corporate foundation that employees me) is forwarding a new meme, the Business Web. The central idea here is that the Internet is more than a network, it is a platform. The pitch centers around the cost savings that come with:
a dramatically reduced IT infrastructure
a transparent and dynamically adjustable ROI
the leveraging of a common platform (the Internet) to create increased flexibility, customization and integration of mission critical services.
This is a sea change in the way that corporations will do (are doing) business. However, the power of the Business Web is not felt solely in the private sector nor has it been solely developed there. Along side, integrated with and catalyzing the Business Web, is the Community Web. Clearly the lucid reaction to have at this point is, “haven't we always had the Community Web, the Information Superhighway, the World Wide Web? Isn't that the same thing?” “Nope.”
What is now being called Web 2.0 (specifically, functionality characterized by peer-to-peer communication and an ability to uncover unusual, potentially cogent alignment between divergent individuals or groups) is every bit as revolutionary for the public as it is for the private. This is something separate and distinct from what the web looked like before it became a platform (as opposed to a network). The Community Web is participatory, it simplifies access to powerful, relevant tools that facilitate success by removing irrelevant complexity and infrastructure. Some examples:
Social networking and the much maligned and wildly successful Myspace.com which, while being derided as the domain of miscreants, was also the organizing engine behind the recent spontaneous display of overt civic participation by stereotypically apathetic teens in LA. There are other more staid but similarly successful social networking tools like linkedin the Omidyar Network and my current favorite, Last.fm.
Open Marketplaces - Digital India poverty reduction projects have as the first of 5 criteria for funding that projects be, “Internet-Focused: We want initiatives that employ the Internet itself in a creative way. The aim is to leverage the Internet's openness, its use as an operational tool and as a device for promoting bottoms-up involvement, collaboration and feedback.” One of the projects in the Digital India initiative is the Madhya Pradesh State Initiative, which aims to eliminate self-interested middlemen from the process of rural farmers getting their crops to market. This model removes the need for small, locally sustainable producers of anything to go through large buyers who's value add has to do with an ability to aggregate supply and demand. Instead it facilitates matchmaking and symbiotic relationships between niche producers and their consumers. This model is very promising and can be extended in a number of ways like, The Peer Water Exchange. “PWX is a new online community where funders, intermediaries, implementers, and observers work together to solve local water problems around the world. PWX is the answer to the scaling problem in community water projects.”
Participatory Democracy Re-imagined- “Smartocracy is an experiment in 'augmented democracy', a meritocratic social network for collective decision-making. Each participant gets 10 votes to give away, and gets to exercise those votes given to them.” In the web 1.0 world, citizens can use email and the web to contact their representatives who will, in the best case scenario, collect the responses and judges them 1) by their volume, 2) by the thier perceived accountability / vulnerability to the issue. Similarily, elected officials tend to use email and the web to disseminate PR information designed to convince voters accountability /efficacy. However, In a net neutral, web 2.0 world, we will not be sending our opinions and information in to a void. Our voices will be commodities. We will be able to find like minds with whom to aggregate, elaborate and accentuate our opinions. Dare we call it an open market of ideas. I think I just did. I can dream.
Enhanced productivity and collaboration through services delivered via the Internet platform. (I have previously written more completely about this.):
- salesforce.com – data management of all flavors
- Google - (maps, mail, calendars and collaborative documentation)
- VOIP (skype, Asterix, Vonage...)
- and many, many more (visit TechCrunch and http://www.econsultant.com/web2/ , Netsquared.org for more)
The current debate about net neutrality versus pay as you go Internet, or, as Tim Wu puts it in “Broadband Debate: A Users Guide”, the Openists vs. the Deregulationists, is leaning heavily toward those with the most money to lobby their representatives, towards “deregulation”, towards pay as you go. If you see the Internet as a platform, as an open network analogous to the electrical grid, then you are losing. The competing point of view sees the Internet itself as a service, a place where the institutions that control the backbone have the right to regulate the flow of their service, to regultate the flow of information, to provide tiers of service, to institute redlining on the Internet.
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