I have found that when introducing a new idea or product it would seem the vast majority of people say either by rote or is it ingrained in their minds? "That it won't work", or "If it's such a good idea why hasn't somebody else done it?" more suavely "There's stiff competition out there", as if they intrinsically know what will or won't work. Now that's amazing in itself because it's these very same people who end up being the very users of these products, in the billions. In 1996 I recall a comment by a high level administrator saying the Internet was a fad and would soon go away. I wonder where he is now?Another example, this one comes from the International Grocery Trade Conference at Toronto, attended by the Who's Who, like Proctor and Gamble, Kraft, General Foods and the like, although I am not attributing the comments to anyone specifically here is what was said: "ha the internet and your new Grocery Trade NewsMagazine... " (another of this writer's efforts) "Nobody is ever going to be shopping online period end of story." I guess later the likes of Amazon.com or eBay.com must have come as a big shock to that guy.
Well let's look at some facts before I tell you my story behind the story. Most companies like Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, Google, Facebook and a dozen others were created by individuals, not corporations. We've all heard the statement "hey did hear about them... yeah their billionaires now and they did it all from their garage... " As the coming and going of products and companies prior to the DOT COM bubble it wasn't very hard to spot the dogs, but the investors went wild buying up anything with a name ending in.com. Now that's a herd mentality on steroids.
Certainly the Internet is evolving and has now included over 2 billion mobile smartphones. The computer has come off the desktop and we now hold it in our hands and the future is before our eyes.
HERE COMES... JOHNNY - THE INTERNET
Through 1993 to 1999 internet companies were being born literally overnight and in 1994 I was busily reworking my plans to introduce an online data service. There simply was nothing out there except BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) which were hooked up through acoustical 64 KBPS (kilobits per second) modems such as the popular Hayse or USR (US Robotics) modems all of which used Telnet type screens, think of a black or orange screen with characters moving down the screen and a lot of type making even the best of eyes gloss over. There wasn't any graphical user interface like Netscape or Internet Explorer. Of course I was busily developing one using a "sprite-based system". Well anything could be better than a bunch of darn characters on a black screen right? Or maybe that won't work.
In 1995 Netscape became the most popular WWW browser and despite its efforts to redefine itself as Napster predictably it went the way of the dodo bird with the advent of Microsoft's free Internet Explorer. See at that time and even now most people could not wrap their mind around the fact that the Internet was free and not owned by anyone and that the business model was very simple.
Get enough users out there to use it and let the advertisers pay for advertising. What a win, win, win. That's another reason people and corporate models don't understand how a company can make money by giving away free product. Well let's look at some popular ones. AVG is an antivirus program that started free and now has a 155 million user base but they always have had both a free version which worked as well as any paid version but their business model is a huge success common and synonymous with the Internet.
Free product, Free to Try, Free Trial before you buy and paid versions. So a lot of the success of a product has to do with reaching the mass market, providing rich content and not trying to use the old business model of nickel and diming everyone who comes in the door. As you have noticed companies like Google and Facebook do not charge anything to use their browsers or their search engines. Nor do the other dozen similar Social Networks. Yes there is room for more. Billions of more eyeballs are out there just waiting to take advantage of falling prices and new programs.
I will give you my opinion on why Google was a no brainer to success. Prior to Google we all used to use search engines like Lycos, Alta Vista and such and Meta Search Engines which was considered a big step forward as it searched multiple indexes simultaneously. But nevertheless the searches were based on a very simple principle of matching words.
An improvement was plainly obvious to this writer at that time. Why not write an algorithm and mathematically match trends and patterns such as geography and parts of statements to enhance the user's internet search ability. So say goodbye to the market share of the dozen or so search engines like Lycos and Meta Search and say hello to Google. Literally the new kid on the block.
Of course that begs the question why did I not do what Google did? The answer is very simple. I was still asking people for their opinion and participation rather than doing it myself and still getting: "That it won't work", or "If it's such a good idea why hasn't somebody else done it?" more suavely "There's stiff competition out there."
See what I am doing about the future of the Internet.
Regards,
Bob.
trxc Presents
Certainly the Internet is evolving and has now included over 2 billion mobile smartphones. The computer has come off the desktop and we now hold it in our hands and the future is before our eyes. See our presentation of the software solutions, the products we have exclusively developed for use with head mounted displays such as Google Glass, Air Scouter, by Brother Inc. and Lumus.
Given this short historical record you may ask what I have in mind now. Where do we go from here?
Please share this blog as I will be posting more regularly on my insights into the Internet Revolution. I hope you have enjoyed this brief introduction.
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