Online+business

=Online Business= toc

New business models
Some online businesses are truly innovative, however, offering products (more often services) that are entirely new. However, all of them are based on supplying an unmet want or need among their customers.

Group Buying Consolidation: Living Social swallows Jump On It
[|LivingSocial jumps on Australian group buying outfit] SMH 2-3-2012 It's evolution in action: Group buying is no longer a brand-new, expanding market -- now the industry is shaking itself out, with the weaker competitors being gobbled up by the stronger.

Google+ for Small Business
[|Google Changes Coming] "Businesses without a strong social media presence are likely to be pushed down a new search function on Google..."

Still in school, and worth a bomb...
Proving that entrepreneurship isn't just for grownups: Sydney school student Brandon Cowan is already [|selling an iPhone app] that is making him (at least) hundreds of dollars a day...

[|No excuse for not having a website] 31-3-2011
"If you've been procrastinating about setting up a website for your business you've now got no more excuses. Google has just launched a free service for small businesses that helps them set up a basic website in 15 minutes."

[|Attack of the Clones]: Pirating mobile games
Programming an app for the iPhone is a quick way to riches for some. Unfortunately, it is even quicker, and very little effort, to copy an existing hit and begin selling it yourself. This illustrates the problem of selling a product that is easily duplicated: the inventor may find it impossible to recover their costs.

[|Mobile gaming strains regulators]
Government is always several steps behind new developments. The Home Affairs minister talks about regulation of mobile gaming.

"Conventional" online businesses
Many online businesses follow real-world business models, adapted to the internet. Amazon.com and eBay.com largely sell goods that are available from an ordinary shop but with ordering online and postal delivery. An internet toy business, for example, is very similar to old-fashioned mail-order businesses, but with catalogue and ordering online.

=Lessons from the Past= It's a brave new world out there...or is it? Many aspects of the internet have been around for ages, and have re-emerged with a different name.

The Victorian Internet
"...ironically, it is the Internet -- despite being regarded as a quintessentially modern means of communication -- that has the most in common with its telegraphic ancestor." Standage 1998.

Love Online
The first "online romances" were formed in the Victorian era, over telegraph!

"Ordinarily an operator can tell a woman in the moment he hears her working the wire," claimed the Western Electrician magazine in 1891. "He tells by her touch on the key." Standage 1998.

Unique address "sites"
Like URL addresses for websites, it was common telegraph practice to have special addresses for "online" business: "...companies and individuals could reserve a special word as their 'telegraphic address' to make life easier for anyone who wanted to send them a telegram. Telegraphic addresses were easier to remember than full postal addresses, and after 1885 the pricing scheme was changed so that it cost more to send a message to someone with a longer address.." Standage 1998