From Consumer to Prosumer to Produser: Who Keeps Shifting My Paradigm? (We Do!)
Buzz, Buzz, Buzz: Web 2.0
Less than ten years after going mainstream, the Web returns to its roots as a read/write tool while entering a new, more social and participatory phase. Many interactive features of the Web have merged into a trend many now are calling Web 2.0 — “a new and improved Web.” Yet what exactly is Web 2.0? Some people, rightfully suspicious, ask about the meaning of this current buzzword. Is it a bubble or hype similar to the “new economy” of the last century? Does anyone remember how dot-com turned into not-com practically overnight? Is this a similar rabbit hole, a place where billions of dollars might disappear without a trace? Or is it something truly new, something that will take root deep within the Web, yet transcend its boundaries at the same time? That could be the right answer. Let’s try it on for size — Web 2.0: consumers have a new role. They are now not-so-silent partners in a business relationship.
Nothing New — Yet Everything Has Changed
Web 2.0 is not merely a technological development that opens new opportunities, nor is it a new form of connectivity. Rather, what has developed is a specific style of how to interact with customers and with data, a style significantly different from the early stages of the Internet as mass media. Back then, in the early days of Web 1.0, the roles were clearly delineated: companies used the Web to offer information; users called up this information. The medium was organized along the logistics of transfer of goods or information: supply here — demand there: not different in appreciable ways from the brick-and-mortar economy where every company’s goal (still) is to become the customer’s preferred provider of goods or services.
The favorite format of the old Web was therefore the portal, which, resembling a brick-and-mortar shopping center, bundled as many thematic offerings as possible. In the early years of Web commerce, the goal was to become an online shopping center.
The first online stores were static, one-way conveyors of information and topdown disseminators of “stuff” — customers knew their place and their role in this paradigm. With Web 2.0, this paradigm is changing. While portal was the buzzword of the early Internet, platform is the keyword for the second act. Web 2.0 — simple applications, giving users a platform, a framework they can use. The new style, which established itself in the past few years, also breaks with the old, ordered casting of producer on one side and consumer on the other side of the economic fence.
A good example of this new format is eBay, which does not sell directly (in fact, it insists on being called a “venue”) but, rather, offers its customers a place where they can become sellers and/or buyers. In eBay’s world, both seller and buyer are eBay’s customers. Performance evaluations — on both sides — come with that territory; however, the seller pays for the privilege of selling (via a complex system of final-value fees levied against the total cost of the transaction), and only the buyer can leave negative feedback (a recent update to the feedback mechanism that resulted in a near rebellion of small- and medium-volume sellers). Although eBay, via PayPal, offers a safety net for transactions, most transactions are self-regulating. At the end of a transaction, both sides — seller and buyer — leave public feedback on a variety of the transaction’s aspects. While in the world of brick-and-mortar transactions the customer usually remains anonymous, in eBay’s world, the customer is publicly evaluated. Thus, in a manner of speaking, eBay’s customers take on the role of employees. And there is more: eBay offers its customers a whole range of venues for expression, ranging from discussion boards about coins or purses to help with transactions gone bad. What is interesting in these forums is that very few actual eBay employees participate; the content and answer providers are fellow eBayers.
The business model of eBay, fusing customer behavior with employee activity, allows all participants to feel like they have “skin in the game” — the lively and passionate discussions in the forums whenever a new policy is introduced bear witness to that.
In this business model, customers are not only served; they are also integrated into the transaction. More specifically, they drive the transaction; they make (as in: build) the business. Like eBay, Amazon.com successfully deploys this strategy while defending its dominant market position. At Amazon, customers review and evaluate books, films, gadgets, clothes, food items, beauty products — anything that’s for sale on Amazon.
Open, public, and often unsparing — even very bad reviews are published. For example, a brief sampling of reviews of various steam cleaners brings to light the following comments:
I am so angry that I am taking it right back to the store.
I cannot recommend this product to anyone.
I got it for $9 on closeout so can’t really complain but wouldn’t recommend it even at that price.
This product shoots scalding water from the steamer nozzle, not steam.
Oh, it worked once or twice (and if you have three or four arms using it would be as easy as you’d anticipated).
I am VERY disappointed with this product.
Customers are not coaxed, persuaded, or suckered; they are encouraged to do research, exercise their own judgment, and participate in the multilog of discussions. Amazon and eBay are primary examples of how to create added value through transparency and participation. In this way, these companies represent the “new” Web.
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