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October 4, 2008

Extra-ordinary Musings

Why isn't there an SaaS application for ordering Taxis online? You could place the order via the internet or mobile web service (with your username), the taxi company could locate you via GPS, and then you could watch the progress of your booking from the queue through to acceptance, and track how far away the cab actually was.

This strikes me as a brilliant meeting point between the virtual and the physical world. Has this been done?

Why are governments so useless? When I met Alan Mather (no relation) and he told me a bit about the whole e-government thing I thought "Fantastic - finally some real efficiency in government!"

Nope... every single time you get involved with either a government department, or an ex-government company (British Rail for example) it is an absolute disaster! I have no clue how thinking like that managed to develop an empire - but I can see how they lost it.

Don't be fooled- the US government is fundamentally no better at managing anything. The bail out is a serious concern for me anyway.

Why don't more marketers use Twitter? Pages and pages of tweets about pregnancy, book lovers, fast food, buying a car, movies, shoes, clothes, video games... you name it - people are tweeting about it.

You would think that certain types of organizations would really benefit from having somebody to offer promotions to these people on the issues they are talking about. In fact - its a gold mine!

How long can Adwords continue to fund Web 2.0? Almost everyone out there who is building a community based / social networking type of site is being funded mainly from a Google Adwords type of approach. Is this really sustainable?

Is the whole wired-world going to be funded by advertising? Does anybody actually do anything to add value to the economy any more? While we are writing, postulating and debating all the developing nations are actually producing!

  • Manufacturing (China)
  • Petroleum and Petrochemicals (Middle East, soon to have mining and steel also in larger quantities)
  • Technological advancement and customer services (India and the Philippines)

Meanwhile.. we are trying to find a way to sell advertising more creatively.

Is all Web 2.0 stuff aimed at social networks and B2C? What about B2B? Fastcompany.tv recently had their first interview with an "Enterprise" guy, the CEO of Longjump.com. WHAT!!! All this effort, all this value being generated, and nobody is catering to enterprise customers? Have we really become so selfish and inward looking?

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