Internet Business Trends

I love facts. Facts and measurement give real answers, but often they’re either incomplete or inaccurate - leaving us with false or half baked answers.

I say this because I’ve decided to not to emphasize statistical evidence on this blog.

While I will rely on facts and figures, I will even critically question them from time to time.

The goal of this blog is to talk about where we think business on the Internet is headed. And we don’t need 100% of the facts to have a successful conversation.

I believe statistical information can lie, tell a different story, or lie. Having worked as a consultant for the government for many years, I’ve seen plenty of this and the spin that statistical info can help deliver certain agendas.

I bet you’ve seen unbelievable and questionable numbers in the press too.

Take estimated losses from computer viruses for instance. CRN Channel Web reported “Computer viruses have wreaked an estimated $10.7 billion in clean-up costs and lost productivity worldwide so far this year, according to a report released Friday by Computer Economics.”

Later, Trend Micro reported “It is estimated that PC Viruses cost businesses approximately $55 Billion in damages in 2003.” Where do they get these numbers?

It’s not they have a team of forensic accountants go around to every business to audit and ledger the numbers – as if the loss could even be measured.

Then Information Week reported “U.S. consumers lost $7 billion over the last two years to viruses, spyware, and phishing schemes, according to Consumer Report’s latest State of the Net survey.”  A questionable number from a questionable survey to begin with. More important, the number doesn’t jibe with other estimates.

Why even publish this gibberish… other than for simple entertainment?

Even insurance companies seem to have wildly different numbers according to IBM and Dataquest “according to a Dataquest survey and spokesmen for several different insurance companies, a virus spreading among several PC’s in a company costs (on average) several thousands of dollars in down-time and data lossage; one company interviewed by Dataquest reported a $2 million dollar loss due to a single incident. At least one insurer offers a $100,000/year policy for damage due to computer virus infection.”

Something better but still questionable in exactness are Internet user population numbers. These give estimates like InternetWorldStats.com’s 360,985,492 Internet user count back in 2000, and 1,463,632,361 today. While they pull data from “reliable” sources like Nielsen//NetRatings, the numbers could still be questionable if you looked close enough. In any case they give a rough sense for comparison between world regions. This is good as long as the numbers aren’t wildly fake. Quite often, these estimates are guesses at best.

While we won’t examine belly lint here, we will talk about the obvious. And perhaps the not so obvious but reasonable and provable.

We don’t need stats to tell us the iPod is wildly popular today. But if you wanted more info to support the assertion, you could go to eBay to how hot it is – by comparison to other things like competing MP3 players. Or you can even use third party tools like HammerTap DeepAnalysis, Andale Research or Terapeak ResearchComplete to look into the iPod popularity on eBay. Ultimately, you can often get real numbers on real people buying real stuff at a micro level.

With that, let’s move onward and talk about Internet business trends…

Yesterday I expressed the need to see things they really are, to be successful in business.

I must confess I’m not perfect, and I’ve made the mistake of prescribing qualities that don’t exist to people and things… many times before and with painful outcomes.

Take opportunities for instance, I once lost thousands on investing in a “highly promising” venture linked to stocks, when the market trend was headed down and evidence suggested the marketing was going to keep going down. At the time, I ignored the trend and evidence. I blindly fell for the venture promises, and only dreamt of the future windfall. I also gave more credit to the person leading the venture than I should have. I went on only the assurance of that person from someone I trusted.

I’ve bought into courses and programs that promise big windfalls too. Often, they don’t deliver. The bigger the promise, the less likely it’ll deliver.

I’ve learned my lessons, and fortunately, the lessons are finally paying off. If there’s anything valuable I can share from this, it’s be wary of big sales promises and look at them while strongly rooting yourself in reality.

A key factor to a business leader’s success is the ability to see things they really are – not how they’d like it to be.

By this, I mean one must be able to make objective assessments in order to succeed. Vision is not the same as objective assessment of the current situation. One can see a picture of the future, while knowing where they truly are today. The problem comes in when one sees the future, doesn’t see where they truly are today, and draws a roadmap to the future based on a starting point of false reality.

The challenge is we all have the tendency to prescribe qualities to something or someone, even when those qualities don’t exist.

We believe an opportunity will be a winner even when the evidence suggests the opposite for instance, or we think someone likes us when they really don’t. The fact is we all have imagination, and we can see the world with a blend of imagination and reality.

To be successful however, one must assess the reality – without the imagination – and make appropriate decisions. Failure to apply reality is a recipe to be taken advantage of, by others or one’s own imagination.

Since creating my first web site in 1993, I’ve seen many changes on the Internet. Among the biggest has been the area of business, and the money businesses have poured into the Internet. And this transformation to commerce continues to this day.

Despite the implosion of dot com hype, persistent scamming, and problems like poor security and privacy practices, business growth on the Internet remains strong and healthy. Even the prospect of recession gives no sign of a slowdown on the Internet anytime soon.

This in itself has been a fifteen year positive trend, with a trajectory of continued positive growth in the impending years.

Future growth will not only be fueled by greater access availability and speed, and technological and infrastructure advances, but also by user and business adoption. The Internet is far less of a gimmick than it was ten years ago. It’s become a part of everyday life, and it’s no longer just for privileged few or determined souls.

While these changes happen, there will be good and bad for both users and businesses. Both offset the other to the degree the trend continues in a positive direction - however we’re affected individually.

With this in mind, I felt it was time to start a conversation about these changes, their good and bad, their impacts, and how we can benefit from them.

This blog is dedicated to you – the participant in the discussion of Internet business trends as we see them today. So let the conversation begin…