PC Advisor is whistling in the dark to keep its spirits up. There is a bubble 2.0 and it will burst.
One of the reasons why the first dotcom bubble popped was that many of the companies behind the unwarranted enthusiasm for e-everything assumed that people were eager to spend money on the internet, and that minor niggles such as web security wouldn't affect user confidence. But not enough 'normal' people were relying on the internet on a daily basis in 2000. And in the years that followed the daily security threats and arrival of hi-tech crime as a viable business ensured that few were prepared to reveal their credit card details to the wider web.
Six years later, however, things have changed: Google, a search-engine company in 2000, has become as advertising firm; eBay, an auction site for geeks back then, is a viable business allowing anyone with a net connection at home to set up shop; and traditional old media firms like News Corp are terrified that their readers and advertisers will abandon the printed page and are snapping up web firms left, right and centre. The web is a viable business, and so many of those predictions about Bubble 2.0 are completely unfounded.
The real problem is that web 2.0 is massively predicated on the advertising model.
Ads ain't everything.
Emerging from this will be a state of relationship development that invites people to become consumers. Advertising is too clumsy, it irritates, it gets in the way, it can be ignored and any economy that falters by just a tiny bit will bring the whole edifice tumbling.
Emerging from the fall will be a different and more competent paradigm which is beginning to emerge. It is a paradigm that sees people who are involved in social media as the nexus of relationships with shared values. The conversation with these people will change organisations and the way they can contribute at many levels.
Pop! to the advertising model.
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