» uk-netmarketing: roundup: 14-04-2000

When is a business an e-business?
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - April 14, 2000

Following on from the heated debate about Panorama a couple of week’s back, a recent edition of the Money Programme covering e-businesses rattled a few cages.

Claire Simpson wrote, "... it's ludicrous to suggest that all businesses will be ‘e-businesses’ ... certainly, most businesses will have some sort of online presence, but this isn't to suggest they will be doing business purely online!!. ... E-tail, for one thing, still won't overtake high street shopping. Sure, it'll be increasingly popular, but still only a fraction of shopping will happen online and the online shopping spend figures show this. I agree with the Money Programme's view last night that, ultimately, e-tailing is the same as mail order: people ENJOY going out for a good old shopping spree, trudging down the high street, getting some lunch, trying things on ... impulse buying ... blah blah blah."

Amongst the many emails of agreement, James Downes argued that the whole issue is merely one of adopting new technology. He emailed, "... it’s just a naming issue, all businesses are t-business's it’s just that no-one had a phrase for it when telephones became essential. ... Did we all become f-business when we got the fax machine? I for one however am not going to let someone on the other side of the world cut my hair over the Internet (although I have a nasty suspicion that many people think I do!) My own view is that the only true e-business propositions are those that couldn't have happened without the communications infrastructure and universality that the common standards and worldwide reach of the Internet has given us. That's the challenge."

Nicholas Tettenborn shared his view of e-businesses outlining a case where they might exist in their own right, "There are certain businesses that I believe will become complete ‘e-businesses’ overnight such as retail Insurance and retail banking. After all they are just number based businesses. Businesses such as hairdressers could take all their bookings or do house calls much more efficiently. You could have a choice of what you want your hair to look like and maybe a recommendation service for people to report on whether that hairdresser was any good...That then will be an e-business..."

On a different note, James Closs emailed the list for help after having some censorship problems. He emailed, "Anyone got any experience with automatic censorship software. Someone in a corporate environment just got a 'yellow card warning' branding the holding page for our new site as 'inappropriate content'. It may be a bit saucy, but it's hardly pornographic... http://www.wild5.com"

Nikki Pilkington responded, "Can't see why the censorship software banned it though - maybe Jo is right on the word 'chat'. Don't forget of course that one of the censorship software [packages] (Net Nanny?) has banned access to sites such as 'Breast Cancer Awareness' 'Women In Enterprise' etc, so they're not infallible"

The fallibility of these systems was highlighted buy Ian Buzer, who wrote, "... we had a problem with some censoring software finding parts of words, e.g. sex within Essex." Darren Wallace added, "Reminds me of a few years ago when AOL users had a problem searching for the word 'Scunthorpe'..." Can’t think what he means.

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