ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

ONLY 21 PERCENT OF the executives surveyed by McKinsey this year (2008) said they are satisfied overall with Web 2.0 tools, while 22 percent voiced clear dissatisfaction. By contrast, over half the executives surveyed by McKinsey last year (2007) said they were pleased with the results of their investments in Internet technologies over the past five years, while a mere 13 percent say they are disappointed with previous investments.

The reason? McKinsey’s findings suggest that companies are coming to understand the difficulty of realizing some of Web 2.0’s benefits. “However, fundamental changes are beginning to take place among the satisfied companies… [They] are not only using more technologies but also leveraging them to change management practices and organizational structures. Some are taking steps to open their corporate “ecosystems” by encouraging customers to join them in developing products and by using new tools to tap distributed knowledge.”

Mix of technologies used is changing: Blogs, RSS, wikis, and podcasts are becoming more common, perhaps because companies have a greater understanding of their value for business (Exhibit 1).

More technologies are in use: Overall, the respondents say that their companies are using 3.4 technologies from an expanded list, versus 2.2 in 2007. Companies use Web 2.0 technologies more frequently for internal than for external purposes, and the rate of deployment remains high for almost all kinds of uses (Exhibit 2).

Web services remains highest used: Respondents rate Web services (software that makes it easier to exchange information and conduct transactions) as the most important tool, with Europeans providing the highest marks. Companies in all regions perceive wikis and blogs as fairly important, and the use of both tools has increased over the past year.

Satisfaction varies markedly by geography: The developed countries of the Asia-Pacific region had the largest percentage of respondents expressing the highest level of overall satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools, and Latin America had the lowest (Exhibit 4).

LAST THURSDAY, AT THE GEEK TERMINAL CAFE, I announced to all present at the BNI Crescendo meeting, “I am an Internet Coach. I am also the one who started the ‘R-C-G fire’ at Geek Terminal.”

“R” is for “Renaissance”. On June 11, I suggested to the leader of BNI Renaissance, to hold its weekly meetings at the Geek Terminal. The chapter did so the very next Wednesday.

“C” is for “Crescendo”. As a result, a few days later, Renaissance’s mentor (also a founding member of BNI Crescendo) advised Crescendo to hold their weekly meetings there too. They did so the following Thursday.

“G” is for “Global”. Shortly after, some BNI Global members apparently visited Crescendo at the Geek Terminal and decided to hold their meetings at the cafe too — on Tuesdays.

How did I know of (or rather started noticing) Geek Terminal in the first place? It was through blogs! Many bloggers in Ping.sg (such Ben Koe, DK, Keropokman and many others) had been writing about the Geek Terminal, how customers can surf wirelessly and connect their PCs to power points anywhere within this cafe! And so this was how the “R-C-G” fire started. All because of blogs, and partially thanks to me, three BNI chapters (and thus around 60-80 people) are now having business breakfast at the Geek Terminal every week!

Afternote: BNI, by the way, stands for Business Network International. There are over 20 chapters in Singapore alone. I joined the Renaissance chapter as a member a few weeks ago. The Global chapter, for some reason, has disappeared from the listing.

JUST WHO’S SCAMMING? 33-year-old Ewen Chia, dubbed the #1 Affiliate Marketer at the World Internet Mega Summit last month, was featured in The Sunday Times’ Invest section (page 24) on April 29 2007:

Curiously, another Internet marketer 23-year-old Adam Wong apparently listed six telltale signs on Ewen Chia’s website (in a post entitled “How to Smell a Scam” and dated August 26, 2006) as follows:

1. Overall Bad Design
2. Fake Clickbank Screenshots
3. Doctored Clickbank Cheques
4. Poor Alexa Ranking: 1,170,697
5. Stock Photos (used to indicate the car and house that he bought with the money earned on the Internet)
6. Teenage Web Counter
7. No Contact Info
8. No Opt-in box (a must for any Internet marketer)

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DO INTERNET MARKETERS MAKE MORE MONEY on the Internet or off the Internet? This is one of the many questions that came to mind at the end of the recent World Internet Mega Summit (WIMS 2007) at the Singapore Expo. My ex-boss, now a corporate client, had given me a complimentary ticket to the mega seminar. At the end of the four-day event on May 26-29 (Saturday to Tuesday), I was glad to have learnt a number of marketing techniques. I was also troubled by some of the things that I saw and heard.

There were 10 speakers: Brett McFall, Tom Hua, Jay Abraham, Mark Joyner, Armand Morin, David Cavanagh, Ewen Chia, Stephen Peirce, Mike Filsaime, and John Childers. Each internet marketing guru on the stage spoke persuasively of having a simple easy-to-follow system which guaranteed success. Some qualified by adding, “lots of hard work over a period of time”. Somehow though, with the possible exception of Jay Abraham and Mark Joyner, their systems all looked and sounded the same:

Basically, each guru suggested offering a freebie to lure prospects to a site and into giving their email addresses. Then the hardsell process begins in earnest: A one-time irresistible offer is made online and the specially designed website starts to sell in almost all possible ways (upsell, downsell, cross-sell, etc.) until the prospect yields to temptation and pays up.

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