Awakening from the Storm

When the storm of the financial crises finally subsides (I realize for some that the light at the end of the tunnel is still quite dim), we’ll be left with a shell of our former economy that will need to be filled. It’s in that shell that, for savvy entrepreneurs, a superb place to break ground, innovate, and turn a record profit will be found.

One could say that Web 1.0 collapsed at the end of the initial dot com boom. All of the sudden folks realized that establishing a website wasn’t going to make them rich overnight. This realization often struck just after investing thousands into building said website. It wasn’t long after the coinciding recession that the flag of Web 2.0 would be waved proudly above the proverbial ashes and companies climbed back to profitability.

Unfortunately, one of Web 2.0′s core principles: semantic search technology (being able to identity from obscurity what a person is looking for),  was quickly overshadowed by Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing (SEO & SEM). SEO and SEM companies popped up all over the map, from office parks to college apartments, all promising something akin to the next gold rush on the Internet.

The remnants of the SEO and SEM boom remain today. Sure, some companies are still turning a profit, but it’s ultimately a war that can’t be won. What’s the Achilles heal? Keywords and page rank. The entire process of fighting for the first page on Google’s results is a highly artificial process that the SEO/SEM giants have proven can be manufactured with relative ease. Sensing an industry shift, Google is gradually taking steps to counteract that trend, much to the chagrin of industry leaders.

Enter the era of Web 3.o, where search technology and marketing finally begin to mold themselves around our natural habits. Keywords and page rank will always be valuable tools, but that’s just what they are, tools. They, just like the websites of the 1990′s, are not sufficient on their own as a marketing strategy. Take Microsoft’s Bing, it’s gaining ground, forcing Google to modify it’s own technologies, with the argument that search results must be more substantial and less driven by top keyword hits alone.

Modifying the way search engines return results is the first shot across the bow, and hopefully not the last, of a renaissance. The direct hits are the social networks. From a personal standpoint, they offer several rewarding characteristics. Staying in touch with family and friends is among the best. However, it’s how these networks accommodate businesses that will set the pace of what’s to come.

Facebook has proven itself as an avenue upon which businesses may purchase ads. The returns are often nothing short of revolutionary, even for the so-called little guys (small businesses without the money to manipulate their SEO/SEM in the traditional sense). Want to target people who are newly engaged with travel specials, no problem with Facebook because they’ll tell you exactly who they are with their profile information.

Let’s say you tweet your displeasure with your local Wal-Mart’s customer service. One of their twitter community managers could instantly reply to you with something like a 10% coupon code for your next visit (a community manager is new type of career specializing in managing a company’s online reputation).

Web 3.0 is all about reaching out to customers at the very moment they’re thinking about your business. It’s fundamentally a more natural way to market. As a consumer, it’s more appealing than clipping coupons or dealing with aggravating lines at customer service desks and automated phone banks. With real-time location tracking in mobile markets, announcements and instant coupons from networks like Foursquare can increase benefits for businesses and consumers alike.

Are we more likely to buy products from resellers at the top of a list of SEM driven results, or from the recommendations of our best friends and neighbors? People generally enjoy getting a recommendation from someone they know or any other human being at the very least. Social networks provide those capabilities like never before. They complement (perhaps even precisely mirror) the ancient practice of word-of-mouth marketing. We can now determine how, where, what, when, and to whom we market. As long as we exercise restraint to avoid disastrous implications for our personal privacy, such as forewarned by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, we can harness this technology to make the world a better place for ourselves.

When we recover from this recession, social networks will be the vehicles towing us out of it. We’re learning a lot about ourselves in the process. If you’re a business owner, skeptical of the Internet for its inherent impersonal and dehumanizing nature, social media can assist in globally establishing a level of human trust previously reserved for your local walk-in customers. Those who take advantage of these technologies stand to awake from the current storm pleasantly surprised with their improved reputation and market advantages over those who once were their most formidable competitors.