Building The Net Brand
from the rah-rah-rah!--go-internet! dept
An interesting article suggesting that those of us “in the industry” need to work harder at building the “internet brand” as something that is useful to everyone in their everday lives. The writer points out that most “normal” people now think of the internet as a joke – a place of dead and dying dot coms mixed with annoying spam. What he doesn’t mention is that a lot of this was caused by people building up that internet brand too much in the first place. There was way too much hype about the internet, and plenty of people started to believe their own bullshit. What people should really be doing instead of “building a brand” is building interesting products that work well, and which are actually helpful. Building a brand comes after that.
Comments on “Building The Net Brand”
Business as usual.
It’s strange becuase the whole dot-com bubble mimics the behavior of newcommers to the Internet. At first everything is so new and cool, you have to send 100 email forwards to all your friends. Your like a kid in a candy store. Then it wears off, you get depressed… nothing is that interesting anymore, and you get deject with the whole scene. But after a while you come back, find a few places where you can find decent information or services, and life goes on.
If this reasoning holds true, dot-coms will come back in the form of more robust businesses. (just like the flowers after you prune the dead and dying) It’s like you posted earlier, Internet Business is really just Business.
Re: Business as usual.
I have to admit – that is one of the best analogies for this whole mess that I’ve heard. I think I’m going to steal that and start using it myself. 🙂 Thanks.
Re: Re: Business as usual.
Brian’s hit the nail on the head. “Do X on the Internet,” where X was getting insurance quotes, trading stocks, selling pet food, or anything else, used to be new and exciting just because no one had ever used the Internet to do those things before. Now the Internet is practically as mundane as the telephone, so the focus has gone away from the “on the Internet” part back to the “Do X” part, where it belongs.