Free Stuff

Keyword Selection Tool

Match Type Tool

The Truth About Internet Marketing

Did you come across with people on the Internet who were promising you the Holy Grail of making money, getting out the carefully guarded so called "Secret Formula", the "Cookie Cutter Method", "from Rags to Riches way", the "Superfast, guaranteed way to get on top of the search engines" and a lot more?

Your Weekly Dose of Internet Marketing

 Your Weekly Dose of Internet Marketing

Topic Hierarchy

[ News Main Page ]  Your Weekly Dose of Internet Marketing  What People Tell About Us?  Free Reports and Articles

Close

Cyber Monday, Your Business and the Economy

Added by Kevin B on Mon, Nov 02, 2009, 02:15 PM

The old New Economy and CMS

In the following mini-series we will talk about some very important things that YOU as a small business owner MUST understand if you want to be successful in the 21st century.

It is the on-line version of Black Friday, right after Thanksgiving, the official start of the holiday shopping season in which most merchants make their profit for the whole year. This day became a widely celebrated day in the on-line community in spite of the gloom and doom that was predicted by some analysts back in 2000 after the bubble, created by the 'New Economy' frenzy, burst.

How did it all start?

On-line shopping started as early as the origination of the 'user friendly', or so-called 'public' Internet. How did this whole Internet phenomenon that makes your life so easy (in most cases) come along? You may not know that the Internet was originally a military project in which the main goal was to get computers to talk to each other even when they were in the different part of the country. The military leaders envisioned these interconnected networks as part of the defense system. They wanted a flexible network in which certain parts of the network are still operational even when the other part is hit by the enemy.

So ARPANET was born.

Eventually this military project, similarly to other previous ones (just like the radar or the television), the predecessor of the Internet made its way to the civilian life. By the end of the 1980s all major universities, bigger public and private institutions in the United States were interconnected. Many users used a so-called bulletin board system (BBS) to send messages, share information and even files with each other electronically from the distance. In those days personal computers just started to evolve and they were difficult and clumsy to use so one had to be a technical expert, in other words, a 'nerd or geek' to be able to use them.

Then everything changed.

The user friendly, graphical interface that was initially developed, but then actually scrapped by Xerox got picked up and tweaked by some very talented software engineers at Apple. Their creativity, innovation and hard work lead to the development of the first Macintosh computers that were the predecessors of today's convenient graphical user interface (GUI) that an average user with minimal technical knowledge is able to use. To make the long story short, eventually Microsoft's Windows operating system revolutionized the way computing was done and gave way to millions of people to join the action and eventually have a small part of the phenomenon called the kind of Internet that an everyday person can easily use.

Many skeptics initially called the Internet just a toy for kids...

...or adults who wanted to be kids again. However, most of the participants in the cyber action had actually something else in mind. They wanted the Internet to be a useful tool for the masses. Something that can be used to assist solving problems, delivering information and sharing files (just like in the good old BBS days), but on a much larger scale with many more people involved. There was also a movement that rapidly started to develop in the newly created cyberspace in the mid 90s that focused on utilizing it for generating income and eventually setting up a business model that can provide a new way of doing business in many areas. Yahoo and Amazon were the pioneers in that. Yahoo focused on generating revenue from advertising other businesses on its portal. Amazon was one of the first on-line retailers giving grounds to today's massive e-commerce and on-line advertising. Basically the Internet and e-commerce developed hand-in-hand. This development was not without pain, however.

Many venture capitalists saw a big opportunity...

...to make a quick buck on the Internet in the late 90s so they started to invest heavily in the emerging so-called 'new economy'. The buzz was on. They gave billions and billions of dollars to new startups with no real business plans and no strategic vision for the long term. As you may remember, this era was called the dotcom boom or craze. In 1999 and early 2000 the Internet all of a sudden became a hot commodity and everybody started to jump in. And that created an enormous bubble (almost as big as the housing bubble lately). In 1999 there were 4 times more IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) on the NASDAQ than in 2001. Over 90% of the new IPOs doubled in price in 1999 whereas only a few of them made close to doubling in 2001. There was even one more factor that contributed to the bubble. Remember the Y2K scare? In 1999 many companies got huge sums of money for fixing a problem that affected some computers mainly in the banking system. After fixing the problems, most of these companies disappeared along with the money that was given to them.

During the dotcom craze many analysts (interestingly, sometimes the same skeptics who, a few years earlier were ready to write off the Internet as a toy for kids) now envisioned a bright future with the new economy in the center. They pointed out that in this new economy there would be no need for physical stores or shopping malls, no need for cars because everybody would shop on-line and work through telecommuting from his/her computer.

Then came March 11, 2000.

What happened on that day? Find out from the next episode of this mini-series.

Questions or comments? We are happy to answer them. You can also give us a call and talk to one of our Web Applications and Internet Marketing Specialists.

Call now: 1-888-969-3887

<< Back

 Comments

No comments yet.

Post your own comment!

All fields are required.

Name:
E-mail address:
Your comment:
Verification:	[ Reload image ] Please enter the five letters you see in the box to prevent automated programs from abusing this service. If you are not sure what the letters are, click the reload link above.