I Think I'm Starting to Get It
by
Rob Spiegal

 The best description I've heard for the process of learning about
the Internet is that it's like drinking out of a fire hose. I
have studied ecommerce and written about the Internet during my
entire work-week for 18 months. During a couple years prior to
that, half of my time was spent learning the world of online
business.

I read every Internet magazine I can find. I scour the Wall
Street Journal daily for ecommerce stories. I scan 10 to 15
ezines each day, scroll three or four Internet news sites for
breaking stories and regularly devour in-depth articles at ZDNet
and CNet. I even read Internet books, though even the brand new
ones are out of date on arrival.

And still I felt hopelessly lost. How on earth can you keep up
with this subject?

There was a time I actually read novels. Now I go to bed with a
stack of magazines. There was a time when I could watch a movie
on HBO without feeling guilty and clicking over to Charlie Rose
to see if he's interviewing Andy Grove. When I leave town, I go
to wonderful locations like San Francisco and Aspen, but I'm not
there for the rarified air.  Instead, I'm in town for an
ecommerce conference where I spend the entire three days indoors.

I'm not complaining. It's a thrill to follow all the minute
details of a revolution that will usher in an entire new world.
Just wait. But it seems my understanding of the Internet should
be broad and deep after all this time and attention. Instead,
after an intense 18 months of study, I feel like I'm losing
ground. My ability to keep up with the exploding new technologies
fall short of the stream of rapid changes. How can I spend so
much time combing a subject day-in and day-out and still gain
only a superficial perspective? How on earth do the people in
this industry keep ahead of the onslaught of development?

Then it hit me. Or more correctly, two things hit me. Nobody has
an understanding of the Internet that is both broad and deep. And
two, you only need to know about what's being used, not what's
being developed.

This revelation has greatly improved my life. I don't expect to
be able to dump my magazines and pick a novel anytime soon, but I
think I've learned a way to understand the tidal wave of breaking
Internet technology.  When I do a story on B2B emarketplaces now,
I no longer scour all my resources for every announcement of a
new trading exchange that's delivering never-before-heard-of
solutions to problems no one knew she had.  Instead I call the
buyer at a real live American corporation and ask, "What the heck
technology are you using when you buy over the Internet?"

Well, duh. My old way of reading everything about the Internet is
so twenty minutes ago. Guess what, smarty pants, ecommerce isn't
about what's being released. It's about what works today. As an
insider at a tech firm recently told me, "A bunch of these firms
are nothing but vapor.  They have solutions that have never been
implemented to problems that don't exist. God knows how they get
funded. I've talked with a few of these firms. They tell a good
story, but they can't point to a saved dollar or a quicker process.

We're not talking about small companies with naive customers.
Some of these enterprises have hundreds of employees and sell
their goods to Fortune 100 clients. Some of their implementations
cost dozens of millions of dollars.  I've found my short cut to
getting it. Call up a company that can say, "Yeah, this system
was great. It paid for itself in ten weeks.  Now I'm selling to
hundreds of customers I didn't even know five months ago." This
happens at all companies, tiny and gigantic. If you want to
really GET IT on ecommerce, go talk to a company that actually
USES IT.

-----

Rob Spiegel is the author of The Shoestring Entrepreneur's Guide
to the Best Home-Based Businesses (St. Martin's Press) and
upcoming Net Strategy (Dearborn Publishing). You can reach Rob at
spiegelrob@aol.com.