More notes from the Berkman Center’s Internet+Society 2004 conference — these are from the “Business” panel.
Here’s the description of the panel:
The most promising Internet business
models have a great deal in common with the most promising political
movements. They empower the grassroots and serve as platforms
upon which greatness can build. What can the politician learn
from the businessperson, and vice-versa?
Panelists
- Chair: Tod Cohen, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, eBay
- Esther Dyson, Editor-at-Large, CNET Networks
- Craig Newmark, Customer Service Representative and Founder, Craigslist
- Debora Spar, Harvard Business School, author of Ruling the Waves
- Jonathan Zuck, President, Association for Competitive Technology
Tod Cohen
- Talked about the eBay’s “values card”: a small card handed to all eBay employees, which states:
- People are generally good
- People usually treat others the way they want to be treated
- eBay must strive to create an open, honest environment for its customers
- Some eBay stats — in the 3rd quarter of 2004, eBay had
- 125 million registered users
- 348 million listings
- $1060 per second in gross merchandise volume
- 56 million PayPal users
- 2.4 billion feedback comments to date
- “It’s our job as stewards of the small business community to represent their interests.”
Esther Dyson
- I’m on the board of Meetup.com
- For two “interesting
and educational” years, I was chair at ICANN. “One learns a lot from
mistakes, and I learned a huge amount there.”
- “A lot of the utopian stuff you hear about people coming together in the global village is…implausible, to be polite.”
- In
business, you have the luxury of getting rid of the customers you don’t
like. You don’t have to follow due process, save for the laws governing
business. Governments don’t have this luxury of saying “these people
aren’t profitable enough to serve”.
- Government can specify a
“target market” — a particular demographic — but it can’t stop there;
it must expand this target market. The Kerry and Dean campaigns failed
to enlarge the target market. They also failed to listen.
- The internet is better used as a listening tool.
Debora Spar
- Never actually ran a business, just have the luxury of watching business
- Will give the view from Harvard Business School
- About
10 years ago, people started changing what they wanted to be when they
grew up. Nobody wanted to work for a Fortune 500 company, but wanted to
go to Silicon Valley and work for a start-up. There was a migration
from school and conventional business models. Students would come in
and show her their business plans, to which she’d ask “How is this
going to make money?”
- The plans were not about making money, but raising
money — that is, making money without selling anything. No wonder they
failed. You have to have a business plan that actually has a business
attached to it.
- Even with this wonderful technology, we haven’t “turned the world upside down”.
- What kinds of internet businesses make money?
- Doing old things in a new way (Amazon.com)
- Way-new decentralized ways of doing things (eBay)
- Facilitating transactions (PayPal)
- Rules to follow:
- Don’t forget the old stuff:: there are rules that have existed since the start of politics that need to be followed.
- What are the eBays of the political world?
- Does
not agree with the fundamental hypothesis of this talk: business is
about controlling information and revenue generation, which government
is about disseminating information.
Dyson
- eBay is political. It changes how people see themsleves in relation to other institutions.
Jonathan Zuck
- I’m going to be the odd man out: I don’t care about politics.
- Most of things we’re talking about aren’t on the radar in the presidential elections.
- If people feel empowered by the Internet but don’t see results, they may retreat.
Craig Newmark
- I’m going to ignore talking about business plans and business
models, because we don’t have one. Intuition and instinct will serve
you better.
- What makes sites like Craigslist work is that they’re “more like us“. Corporate sites are “more like them“.
- What’s working for Craigslist:
- Following the “moral compass” of the community
- People actually want to follow the Golden Rule. People expect righteous behaviour from Craigslist.
- We’re about customer service: genuinely engaging with people
“Why are there two cops in the room?”
Dyson, in response to Cohen’s mention of the eBay values card asked:
“If people are basically good, why are there two cops in the room?”.
She pointed to the two campus police officers stationed at the back.
Their presence was mandated by Harvard’s secuirty department after they
heard that Hoder, who was a guest of the conference, has received death
threats posted on a radical Islamic site.
Reputations online
- Dyson: People think of reputation systems are about finding
the bad apples so you can avoid them and encouraging the good apples to
behave better.
- Dyson: Internet’s biggest cultural impact: disempowers the powerful
- Newmark: The openness of the internet is what distinguishes it
- Spar:
Although it’s an open medium, it can be closed — it’s possible. Some
governments are in the business of keeping the internet closed.
- Dyson: People are forming relationships without meeting face-to-face.
Spyware
- Zuck: What makes an application “spyware” is not technology, it’s conduct.
Spyware and anti-virus software are essentially the same thing. eBay
has a toolbar that indicates whether you’re on a real eBay site or not.
Its underlying actions fall under a definition of spyware
- Zuck: The spam law was not about regulating spam but keeping the states from implementing crazy spam laws.
Trust issues and eBay
- Zuck: One of the biggest barriers to ecommerce is entrenched middlemen
- Dyson:
eBay’s anti-phishing and dispute resolution tools come from outside the
company. Squaretrade.com. Don’t rely on authorities — try and resolve
your disputes
A nutty idea
Interesting anecdote: A congressman wrote a paper suggesting that
eBay could be made safe by having it open physical locations across the
country where items for sale would be shown for three days before being
sold.
Privacy
An audience member asked a question about information overload and
privacy statements: “I’m getting swamped” trying to read and understand
these things!
- [Unknown]: Privacy policies are hard to understand because they aren’t written for you; they’re written by lawyers for lawyers.
- Dyson: There are distinctions in privacy. Consider the privacy issues around the purchase of a sweater online:
- They know I bought a pink sweater
- Why are they sending me ads for blue sweaters?
- They know my credit card number
- Mixing up these distinctions makes the debate of privacy