My learning officer has been talking about Second Life, which I am looking forward to learning more about. When I read about it in Wikinomics, I thought about checking it out. Now that I'm blogging about prosumers, I decided to pull up the web site. As of now, there are 9,606,853 registered users in Second Life. This is a virtual video game with almost 10 million people in it. It's mind boggling and totally doable.
That's the biggest thing I took away from this chapter. We consumers have this amazing power that most of us don't realize we have. We can have a major role in designing our own experiences like never before in history. It is no longer the only assumption that companies will create what they think we need and we get to buy it or not. For companies that understand that, they have a chance of succeeding in this new era of Web 2.0. For those who expect business as usual, we can pretty well guess that their time is short-lived.
One specific industry that is experiencing the growing pains of Web 2.0 is the music industry. The entire system is so entrenched in the existing legal environment that they are quashing the creativity that they could be profiting from themselves. They just don't know a better way and can't seem to be able to imagine one. That reminds me of a billboard: If it's imaginable, it's doable. The music industry would do well to consider a new paradigm for dealing with users who mash music for the pure pleasure of the ability to do it.
To quote the book on page 148, If you do not stay current with customers, they invent around you, creating opportunities for competitors. They invent around you. That's the thing; consumers now have the infrastructure to create value where it was only possible for businesses to create it. The digital environment has reduced the cost of doing business drastically; dreams really can come true, at a price that most of us can afford.
So far this book has mainly discussed the up-side to the prosumer movement, and it does get into some concerns later. For now, I'm left to wonder: is it all it's cracked up to be? What about people who intend harm instead of good? How easy is that to make happen?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Yesterday was my yearly physical exam. This had been delayed months because the doctor was behind. The clinic is converting to wireless. You check in on a laptop pad, which was time-consuming. The clinic allows 20 minutes for check in. Each nurse and doctor carries a laptop. So, I asked the doctor his reaction to the new tehnology. He stated, “It is much slower.” After my examination he showed me all the disadvantages. He was unaware of anyway to correct them or give feedback to designers. Plus he voiced his concerns that the new system has resulted in my appointment delay. Yes, we can design, but we also have to listen to our customers and their needs. This has not changed with the new technology.
Post a Comment