I have a friend who has spent over 40K on domain names for the "B2B" revolution. He has asked me to participate in a start up beginning with the city of Atlanta. (atlantabusinesstobusiness.com)

My opinion is that this is information brokerage. Information today is predominately free. I feel in order to be, B2B successful, you must have a value added service or product. Any single area of B2B commerse may yeild an opportunity to "value add", some more than others. And, I feel each of these would/could be challenge enough. Taking on the whole B2B economy and trying to simply add value to general information will not work.

What are your thoughts?

AL

-- Al Livingston (aliving@charter.net), January 16, 2001

Answers

Put it is this way Al and I hope you catch my drift. When people talked about the death of telegrams they said it was because of the invention of the telephone. Why send telegrams when you have the phone. Where those people right? Telegrams are dead right? No they are not. What is an e-mail, it is a 2-way telegram. What is this note that I am writing to you, it's a telegram. Yet if there was no internet, then those who think they can do business using "telegrams" would not get too far if they failed to understand that what those living in the phone society want to use, what people in that society understand about common platforms and how much they take for granted and/or are willing to use that system.

That is B2B law-made-simple by me. What will you be using and will everybody use the same medium and for how long? You can think whatever you want about B2B but between those "B's" is a 2 and you have to figure out what that "2" is and how long it will last. Those that can work and sustain the "2" will have a shot in the B2B game. Those that can not might be sending a telegram (e-mail) to their mother asking how the weather is like in Australia and describing how much they miss and look forward to her wonderful and tasty home style cooking.

M.

Jan 2001 Profile at: http://www.fastcompany.com/fasttalk/replypost.html?p=9738

-- Mark Zorro (zorromark@consultant.com), January 18, 2001.