Posts tagged analysis
It’s been another eventful 7 days! Like I explained last week, from this point on instead of spending an entire blog entry begging for recommendations, I thought it would be more useful to give a weekly recap of what has been covered the past week.
This week’s highlights:
Some excellent quotes ranging from encouragement to common sense were shared by entrepreneurial masterminds Jeffrey Zeldman, Gary Vaynerchuk, John Caples, and Tim O’Reily, whom I was fortunate enough to have my questions answered by directly thanks to Inc. Magazine.
I decided to debut a new series this week, volume I of the Beat The Clock Challenge! There wasn’t quite as much participation as I would’ve liked, but it was certainly a difficult challenge, and this blog is still growing steadily. With a little time, I think we can get some great involvement, and perhaps a little competitiveness from week to week. If you have any good ideas for future challenges, shoot me an e-mail or message me via the Ask button on the left.
Once again, I decided to do a bit of news reporting on an issue that I believe is very important. Mark Zuckerberg’s illegal activity conducted in the past is enough to warrant possible FELONY charges. If you’re a Facebook user, you should know about the shocking actions of the man running this company. The link above gives my brief commentary and a direct link to the full article.
As a follow-up to the poll last week “Do You Consider An Internet Business Professional?”, I have posted the results in two parts. Part 1 shows the poll results and goes through much of the comments sent in by the participating respondents. In Part 2 you can read my personal response to skeptics of internet-based businesses. If you’re a skeptic yourself, let me know whether or not it changed your mind!
Finally, to finish off the week, I decided to offset some of the seriousness with a little humour courtesy of Mr. Glasbergen. His comic gives a good illustration (pun intended) of how different future generations will be due to the rapid evolution of technology.
Please consider a recommendation (direct link via highlighted keywords) if you found any of the above to be useful Tech insight, or otherwise helpful for an Entrepreneur or Startup.
As always, thank you for reading, and your feedback is both welcome and appreciated. Let’s dominate the rest of out week to become the best entrepreneurs ever!
by Ben Lopez
When I asked this question, I wasn’t looking for replies to Webster’s definition of professional. I literally wanted people to share their gut reaction when a person says to them, “I run an internet business.” There was no right or wrong in this poll, it was strictly one’s own personal feelings on internet business.
In Part 1 you heard from some of the participants and the reasoning behind their views, and I’m sure you’ve since formulated an opinion of your own. I didn’t comment at the time to avoid influencing anyone, but I can now openly state that I do in fact consider online businesses to be professional. Think of a church. The church is the congregation, not the physical building itself. Do you become any less a part of the church once you’ve left the building? Of course not. In the same way, business is business, as it still takes place between people, whether within the confines of a physical location, or electronically among people scattered throughout the world.
But as you can see from the mixed poll results and comments in Part 1, not everyone agrees with me. In fact, I was a little surprised that there wasn’t more resistance to the notion of an internet-based business being considered ‘professional’ based on what I hear on a daily basis. As I touched on last week, how we do business is rapidly evolving whether or not we are willing to accept this fact. So what is it? Why do so many refuse to regard internet businesses as on equal footing with traditional businesses, despite the market’s landscape constantly shifting, often times in favour of virtual goods and services? Well, thats the million dollar question, isn’t it? I could probably dedicate an entire blog to this one topic! Though I imagine the hokey late night infomercials, Facebook’s escalating privacy concerns, and the negative press online scammers bring about are some pretty solid contributing factors. Preconceived notions of internet CEOs sitting around in their underwear, or being socially inept probably don’t help matters, either.
Here’s another possibility to consider: what if these online businesses themselves aren’t what people are skeptical about? What if the hesitation of acceptance actually stems from the internet itself? After all, the internet is another world, full of everything from carrot cake recipes to instructions on making plastic explosives. In other words, the internet is still young, and there’s still quite a bit of uncertainty, especially with more casual users. A Verisign logo on a secure website may not provide the same assurance that a consoling, in-person meeting can offer, for instance. But that perception alone doesn’t necessarily make either choice more safe or reliable.
I often imagine what the average business model will look like 10 years from now. And I suppose once those 10 years have passed, I’ll begin pondering what new possibilities are on the horizon for the next decade. Whether or not you consider internet businesses professional, I hope this poll has, at the very least, gotten you to ponder right along with me.
