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Do Dot Coms Determine Your Internet Strategy
Everyone knows by now that the year 2000 was deadly for countless
Dot Com or Internet companies, devastating for others, and just
plan mean spirited. Consider a couple of 52 week highs and lows:
(my apology to stock brokers everywhere for rounding off numbers
and not updating this just prior to publication) Net2Phone's $70/8,
PriceLine $104/1.4, AOL $95/35.
Tech investors got shell shocked. Non-tech investors seemed oddly
pleased that those upstart dot coms finally got their comeuppance.
The biggest losers, however, could be the business people who
have concluded that these crashes mean the Internet might be bad
for their businesses. Or they've concluded an Internet presence
is unnecessary.
Let's go back a year, when dot com stocks were flying high. The
publicity these stocks received got the attention of countless
business leaders. Some leaders spent time wondering how their
businesses could get rich quick. Some got email and Websites because
they were joiners. Some became believers.
Whatever the reason, the high profile of dot com companies caught
everyone's attention, and some business leaders moved their companies
onto the Web and into e-commerce because of those dot com stories.
Here's the key point: a year ago, using Yahoo's success as a reason
to launch the XYZ company's Website made no sense, unless, of
course, the XYZ company's business model paralleled Yahoo's. In
other words, XYZ companies everywhere need their own reasons for
using email and a Website, reasons that are tied to their business
plans and in particular tied to their marketing and communications
strategy.
What was true then is true now. That is, your organization needs
its own reasons for using email and having a Web presence. Even
if PriceLine and Net2Phone both go out of business, it is extremely
likely that their failure will have nothing to do with what your
organization needs to do regarding the Internet. And what your
organization must have is an Internet strategy, complete with
a timetable for implementation.
Just take a brief look at the near future. Streaming audio is
already highly functional on the Internet. Go to www.tvlc.org
and you can hear a sermon by Pastor Frank Nausin or go to CNN
and you can listen to President Bush's acceptance speech.
Big-time bandwidth is here already, and more is coming all the
time: in wireless, DSL and cable modem varieties for starters.
With increasing bandwidth, in 2001, video will begin to play a
bigger role than ever before in the history of commerce. News,
sales, instructional and training videos, and more, will all be
downloaded daily and commonly from the Web. Companies throughout
the world are and will invest in digital video cameras to produce
their own video presentations. These videos will be uploaded to
their Websites.
We don't know whether Net2Phone will survive, but we do know
that VoIP -- Voice over Internet Protocal -- will have a huge
impact. Even if we're talking over our phones, many of us will
have our calls made by our computers that route our long distance
calls over the Internet so that we pay about two cents a minute,
or we call for free (go to www.msn.com
for an example).
By then, the CEOs who saw year 2000's Dot Com crash as an affirmation
that the Internet was overrated will be in for a rude awakening.
By then, getting any kind of search engine registration position
will be more difficult and costly than ever. And by then, luring
customers back from the companies who built great email systems
and Websites (and earned those customers) will be more difficult
and costly than ever. Yes, new dot com companies will rise and
fall. To make sure your organization doesn't fall with them some
day, get an Internet Strategy in place, and start implementing
it.
This article first appeared as a column written
by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for Inside Tucson
Business and/or the New Mexico Business Weekly.
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