Crowd clout
Thursday, March 15th, 2007CROWD CLOUT: “Online grouping of citizens/consumers for a specific cause, be it political, civic or commercial, aimed at everything from bringing down politicians to forcing suppliers to fork over discounts.”
So, why is the business arena, a dozen years later, so much more appetizing for an Intention Economy and for CROWD CLOUT initiatives?
- First of all, a billion people are now online. We cannot emphasize this mind boggling statistic enough. Whatever web-based business you’re planning to set up, you now have a potential audience. And this audience can be reached with virtually no marketing budget to speak of, as good ideas will spread instantly, thanks to the blogosphere.
- Secondly, this huge online audience actually shops online. In the US, consumers spent more than USD 200 billion online last year (including travel), while Europeans shelled out EUR 100 billion on online goodies and services. Online sales in Asia are in the tens of billions USD, too. (Sources: Forrester, Shop.org and eMarketer.)
- Thirdly, as the past few years have seen an all-determining shift from ‘visiting’ to ‘participating’ (if not grouping) in the online world, many consumers may now be up for more active and involved business models like CROWD CLOUT. As Jeff Jarvis put it: consumers are now both the audience and the participants.
- Last but not least, an entire infrastructure of personal profiles and blogs is now in place (for example, MySpace boasts about 150 million profiles, Facebook counts 18 million registered users, while UK based Bebo has over 8 million users), potentially giving consumers a direct, private outlet to itemize and tag their intentions. And giving them readily accessible lists of friends to group with. Smart intermediaries or even the social networking sites themselves should jump on this opportunity and facilitate the aggregation process. Also keep an eye on the proliferation of social commerce sites (pick lists, voting mechanisms and TWINSUMERISM included): StyleHive, CrowdStorm, Yahoo Shoposphere, ThisNext and Kaboodle are just a few of the many sites exquisitely positioned to be future CROWD CLOUT leaders.
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