Monetizing Web 2.0

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Tables

1 Introduction / Objectives

2 Methodology

3 Main Part
3.1 Internet - a Brief History of the Web
3.1.1 The client-serve principle - HTTP and HTML
3.1.2 Browsers
3.1.3 From Linking to Searching
3.1.4 The Growth of the Internet
3.2 The New Economy - or Web 1.0?
3.2.1 The Revolution of the Information Technology
3.2.2 The Globalization
3.2.3 The Fall of the New Economy
3.3 Web 2.0
3.3.1 Core Competences of Web 2.0
3.3.2 Target Group of Web 2.0
3.3.3 Technology of Web 2.0
3.3.3.1 AJAX
3.3.3.2 APIs
3.3.4 Web 2.0 Software
3.3.4.1 Blogs
3.3.4.2 Wikis
3.3.4.3 Social Networks
3.4 Business models in the Net Economy
3.4.1 Basis of Business Models
3.4.2 E-Commerce as Engine of the New Economy
3.4.2.1 The 4C-Net-Business-Model after Wirtz
3.4.2.2 Revenue based Business Models after Timmers
3.4.3 Business models in Web 2.0
3.4.3.1 Business models after Gabriel
3.4.3.2 Business models after Michael Rappa
3.4.3.3 Business models after Afuah / Tucci
3.4.3.4 The Long Tail
3.4.3.5 The Freemium Business Model
3.5 Comparison Web 2.0 Companies
3.5.1 Factors of Success
3.5.1.1 Revenue Model
3.5.1.2 Financials
3.5.1.3 Performance Analysis Tools
3.5.2 Online games – Secondlife vs. Hattrick vs. Die-Staemme
3.5.2.1 Revenue business model
3.5.2.2 Financials
3.5.2.3 Performance
3.5.2.4 Results
3.5.3 Market places – EBay, Amazon, Buch.de, Amiando, Eventim
3.5.3.1 Revenue business model
3.5.3.2 Financials
3.5.3.3 Performance
3.5.3.4 Result
3.5.4 Social communities – MySpace, Facebook, StudiVZ, Lokalisten
3.5.4.1 Revenue business model
3.5.4.2 Financials
3.5.4.3 Performance
3.5.4.4 Result
3.5.5 Business communities – LinkedIn vs. Xing
3.5.5.1 Revenue business model
3.5.5.2 Financials
3.5.5.3 Performance
3.5.5.4 Result
3.5.6 Video communities – YouTube, MetaCafe, MyVideo.de, Clipfish.de
3.5.7 Old vs. Net Economy – Getty Images vs. Fotolia
3.5.8 Other sides - Wikipedia.org and Twitter
3.5.9 Popularity proofed by Seitwert.de
3.6 Future Trends
3.6.1 Global vs. Local Web Services
3.6.2 Mergers, Take over's and Nichers
3.6.3 Semantic Web and Web 3.0
3.6.4 Chances and Risks

4 Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix

Declaration

List of Abbreviations

illustration not visible in this excerpt

List of Figures

Figure 1 – History of the Internet with the Number of Operational Networks

Figure 2 – The Client-Server Principle

Figure 3 – Growth of the Amount of Domains

Figure 4 – Download Time of Spiegel.de depending of connection – own development

Figure 5 – Growth of Internet Users

Figure 6 – Expansion Trends

Figure 7 – Demand Supply Model

Figure 8 – The Gartner 2001 Hype Cycle — Emerging Trends and Technologies

Figure 9 – Amount of money invested in venture capital in the US

Figure 10 – Amount of Money invested in Venture Capital

Figure 11 – Assessment of the Emerging Technologies and Trends in 2001

Figure 12 – From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

Figure 13 – Individual Media Consumption

Figure 14 – The asynchronous Pattern of an Ajax Application

Figure 15 – Top 10 APIs on www.programmableweb.com

Figure 16 – Top 10 Mashups on www.programmableweb.com (last 14 days)

Figure 17 – Top Tags on del.icio.us

Figure 18 – Spiegel.de Tagcloud

Figure 19 – Blog Posts by Language Q4 2006

Figure 20 – Blogs Cumulative

Figure 21 – An Example of a Social Network Diagram

Figure 22 – Quotation of Amazon.com on NYSE

Figure 23 – Conjunction of amount of Business models to NASDAQ

Figure 24 – Business Loic Triangle

Figure 25 – Nine Business Model Building Blocks by Osterwalder

Figure 26 – Overview U-Commerce

Figure 27 – Classification of Internet Business Models

Figure 28 – Categorization of Co-creation Business Models

Figure 29 – Business models on Web 2.0 after Gabriel

Figure 30 – Properties of the Internet and the 5-Cs

Figure 31 – The Long Tail

Figure 32 – Business Models on Web 2.0 after Gabriel

Figure 33 – Relative Unique Users on the global market (Alexa, left), absolute Unique Users on the US Market (Quantcast, right)

Figure 34 – Comparison of Page Views of Secondlife, Hattrick and Die-Staemme.de

Figure 35 – Comparison of Unique Users of Secondlife, Hattrick and Die-Staemme.de

Figure 36 – Comparison of Velocity of Secondlife, Hattrick and Die-Staemme.de

Figure 37 – Target groups of Amazon.com and Ebay.com

Figure 38 – Page Views of Buch.de

Figure 39 – Comparison of Page Views and Unique Users of Amazon.com and eBay.com

Figure 40 – Comparison of page views and unique users – Eventim.de vs. Amiando.com

Figure 41 – Target Groups of MySpace and Facebook

Figure 42 – Comparison of Unique Users on the US market - MySpace vs. Facebook

Figure 43 – Comparison of Unique Users on the US market - MySpace vs. Facebook

Figure 44 – Comparison of Unique Users –left: StudiVZ vs. Lokalisten

Figure 45 – Target groups of LinkedIn and of Xing

Figure 46 – Comparison of page views and unique users – Xing vs. LinkedIn

Figure 47 – Comparison of unique users –left: MetaCafe, MyVideo.de, Clipfish.de, on the right hand with YouTube

Figure 48 – Comparison of unique users –MetaCafe, MyVideo.de, Clipfish.de

Figure 49 – Comparison of page views of Fotolia, Getty images and Corbis

Figure 50 – stock of Getty Images

Figure 51 – Comparison of page views of Fotolia, Getty images, Corbis, Flickr

Figure 52 – Comparison of Unique Users of Wikipedia to other Top 10 sites

Figure 53 –Unique Users of Twitter.com

Figure 54 – Comparison of Page Views of Yahoo!, Google.com, MSN.com and Live.com

Figure 55 – Comparison of Page Views of Yahoo!, Google.com, MSN.com and Live.com

Figure 56 – Number of cooperation's on the US media market

List of Tables

Table 1 – Business Models on Web 2.0 after Gabriel

Table 2 – The 5-Cs and the Key Internet Properties

Table 3 – Variants of Business revenue models after Afuah, Tucci

Table 4 – Performance Analysis Tools, own development

Table 5 – Popularity ranked Websites, own development

Table 6 – Comparison of Top 15 Websites worldwide vs. Germany, own development

Table 7 (Appendix) – Performance Analysis own development with different Tools

Table 8 (Appendix) – Performance Analysis own development with different Tools

Table 9 (Appendix) – Performance Ranks in Comparsion to different Properties

Table 10 (Appendix) – Business Data of Buch.de AG and CTS Eventim AG

Table 11 (Appendix) – Financials of Amazon and eBay (in thousand US$), own development

1 Introduction / Objectives

Marc Hessen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, stated: "The issue of venture capital hits close to home in the technology field, where investors got so badly burned with the dot-com bubble… Investors learned their lessons from the poor business models of Internet companies of the late 1990s and early 2000s." Jeffrey Sohl from the UNH verified the situation: "Many venture capitalists have placed more stringent demands on the businesses they invest in to show viable business models and the ability to generate revenue. In Web 1.0, you didn't even need to do that. Today, they have to show they have a real company and real customers. They need to show they can make money over time.'^[1]

The burst of the New Economy bubble was the end of a hype – a the begin of the development of more revenue-based business models. But which business models survived the New Economy? Why are eBay an Amazon so successful today? Which success factors have the surviving companies used? Are there similar developments in the Web 2.0?

Is the Web 2.0 even a Internet bubble, a hype or the new era of business?

2 Methodology

The history of the Internet shows the development as even the surviving and fall of new business models during the New Economy.

In the first two chapters I analyse the technology and the development of the Internet and the New Economy. Which business models have been developed, which models survived the fall? The result of mistakes made till 2001 could be the experience for a new Internet era: the Web 2.0.

What does the term "Web 2.0" mean? In the third chapter I examine the technology basics, and in the fourth chapter the different business models. The development of this Internet era is ongoing.

To identify successful business models I compare companies with different business models. The comparison is based on the review business model, the financials and the performance of the websites. With the help of software applications it is possible to identify trends of

My hypothesis is: Web 2.0 companies have to concentrate more to the market places than to Advertising business models like on Web 2.0 communities; or to include this market places if possible.

3 Main Part

"The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web was over hyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions. Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at centre stage. The pretenders are given the bum's rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other."^[2]

The Web 2.0 is part of the Internet. What is the basis of the Internet? I show the history of the Internet as important basis even for Web 2.0. Therefore I analyse the new Web technology, the technique behind, and user development.

3.1 Internet - a Brief History of the Web

In January 1960 the fundamental pioneer for a global network J.C.R. Licklider, articulated the ideas in his January 1960 paper: "Man-Computer Symbiosis". He described the new kind of data transfer between more then one computer as "a 'network of such [computers], connected to one another by wide-band communication lines' which provided 'the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [other] symbiotic functions. '^[3] Licklider was the head of DARPA – the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency – and responsible for further computer and network researches. In 1962 the first three terminals of a network has been installed between a Corporation in Santa Monica, the University of California, Berkley and one at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; later more then a dozen universities in the US as ARPANET.^[4]

In the 1980s a lot of Universities in different countries developed own networks. Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost 15 years, the network did not get a public access until the 1990s. On August 6, 1991, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.^[5]

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Figure 1 – History of the Internet with the Number of Operational Networks^[6]

The new development created connections to different separated servers and networks. The World Wide Web with public access has been launched in 1993.^[7]

3.1.1 The client-serve principle - HTTP and HTML

The interaction of the client-server principle can be broken down in two parts: Clients are requesting services and servers are providing them. When the client needs a service, it sends a corresponding request (f.e. looking for an URL) to the server. This server will then process this request and will eventually send a reply back to the client:^[8]

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Figure 2 – The Client-Server Principle^[9]

The server are connected together in a bigger network – the Internet. The Web is not identical to the Internet; it is only one of the many Internet-based communication services. The relation between them may be understood by using the analogy with the global road system. On the Internet, as in the road system, three elements are essential:

- the physical connections (roads and cables),
- the common behaviour (circulation rules and Internet protocol) and
- the services (mail delivery and the WWW).^[10]

The basic to launch the Web as public service are two standards: Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTML is the language to describing Web pages. It has been developed by Tim Bernes-Lee at CERN. Further developments of the languages like Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) or Extensible Hyper Text Mark-up Language (XHTML) are basing on the rules of HTML. HTTP is the standard protocol to get a request for a page from a client to the Web server and the reply back to the client.^[11]

The server-client principle is fundamental for the interactions to the Internet. The software program to make the HTML readable and useable for Web users is so called Browser.

3.1.2 Browsers

In March 1993 the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois launched the first version of the browser Mosaic. Although far away from modern browser functionality, the user started very soon to recognize that there is a system to reach information and to communicate very soon.^[12]

Different companies recognized to earn money within the Internet. They started developments of own browser software. In October 1994 Netscape launched the Netscape Navigator, and in August 1995 Microsoft the Explorer. Netscape was very successful with more than 80 percent market share. One raison was the collaboration of the Mosaic browser leader Marc Andresen with Silicon Graphic founder Jim Clark.^[13] The investment in development of software has been a common business model in the beginning of the Internet. In Spring 2008 Netscape will stop the development of new browser applications.^[14]

3.1.3 From Linking to Searching

One of the keys of the today's Internet popularity was the insert of hyperlinks. These links are references to other pages. Links in HTML are technically anchors which typically are composed of a name and a URL as address of the Web page. Links allow a form of navigation through the Web.^[15]

In the first years of the Internet Top Level Domains (TLD) with an direct URL name linked to the content were very expensive. The situation changed with the growing size of the Internet and an increasing numbers of domains:

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Figure 3 – Growth of the Amount of Domains^[16]

It has been necessary to search directly to the content of Websites. Search engines calculated the grade of importance with different algorithms. A important factor was the number of hyperlinks to the Website in relation to a searched term in the content. Important Web search engines from the beginning of the Web to the New Economy were Alta Vista, Yahoo!, InfoSeek, AlltheWeb, or Windows Live Search. A new approach was the measurement of link popularity by Google – the PageRank. Larry Page came up with the idea that not all search results could be equally relevant to a given query, but unlike the information broker, who can exploit his expertise on a particular field. He ranked the search results, and he developed a particular algorithm to calculate it; the result was the PageRank, named after the inventor.^[17]

3.1.4 The Growth of the Internet

The development of growth and size of the Internet is very important for the Net Economy. Only Internet users are potential costumers of Web companies. How does the infrastructure influence the size of the Web?

On the 18 January 2008 the website Spiegel.de had a size of 599 KB. Depending of the stream the download needs 8 minutes with a 14.4 K Modem, or in the best case 25.57 seconds with 1.44 Mbps line. This example shows that it was impossible to read Websites with a size like Spiegel.de today in the mid of the 90s. A 56K Modem was popular and the owners of homepages constructed theirs sites depending of the download times. Otherwise it needs minutes to load a site.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Figure 4 – Download Time of Spiegel.de depending of connection – own development^[18]

The improvements of Internet infrastructure is directly depended to the development of the Web applications. The higher the download and upload rate the higher the size of application will be. The development of high-speed Internet accesses like Broadband are pushing the number of Internet users: "By the end of 1994, the Web had 10,000 servers, of which 2,000 were commercial, and 10 million users. Traffic was equivalent to shipping the entire collected works of Shakespeare every second. The technology was continually extended to cater for new needs. Security and tools for e-commerce were the most important features soon to be added."^[19] The IDC expected to reach 1.3 billion users by 2009.^[20]

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Figure 5 – Growth of Internet Users^[21]

All the examples and studies of the basics of the Internet have shown that it is a complete new technology changing the behaviour of humans. A new infrastructure was necessary, new business models in Internet infrastructure, Web search, Internet Browsers and other software have been developed and should be developed in future. This was a necessary step for a complete New Economy offering products and services on the Web. Before 1990 companies like Cisco, Dell, Yahoo, Amazon, and YouTube didn't exist.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Figure 6 – Expansion Trends^[22]

There are a lot of areas to earn money on the Web. Companies like Cisco are improving the server infrastructure, companies like Dell deliver new devices like computers, or Internet services like AOL are connecting computers to the Web.

3.2 The New Economy - or Web 1.0?

In 1997 Stephen B. Shepard analysed the term "New Economy" as follow: „By the New Economy, we mean two broad trends that have been under way for several years. The first is the globalization of business. Simply put, capitalism is spreading around the world--if not full-blown capitalism, at least the introduction of market forces, freer trade, and widespread deregulation. ... For the U.S., this means international trade and investment play a much greater role in our economic life than before. Twenty years ago, exports and imports made up 17% of our economy. Today, they account for 25%. The second trend is the revolution in information technology. This one is all around us--fax machines, cellular phones, personal computers, modems, the Internet. But it's more than that. It's the digitization of all information -words, pictures, data, and so on. This digital technology is creating new companies and new industries before our eyes. “^[23]

At this time, some analysts claimed this change in the economic structure of the US to a state of permanent steady growth, low unemployment, and immunity to boom and bust macroeconomic cycles. Furthermore, they believed that the change rendered obsolete many business practices.^[24] Many experts called the boost of the stock market bubble in 2001 as fall of the New Economy. Which background does the globalization, and the stock bubble have to the Web 2.0?

3.2.1 The Revolution of the Information Technology

Every business model has to follow the rules of the Demand-Supply-Model. This model compared the quantity of a product supplied by the producer and the quantity demanded by the consumer. The law of supply states that quantity supplied is related to price: the higher the price of the product, the more the producer will supply.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Figure 7 – Demand Supply Model

Strictly considered, the model applies to a type of market called perfect competition in which no single buyer or seller has much effect on prices, the prices are known and the complete information is available.

There are two raisons to come up with this model at this time. On one hand every business model like the models of the New Economy has to follow economical laws and rules. On the other hand the conditions of the model are important: no single buyer or seller, the prices are known and complete information is available. The "just-in-time" knowledge of the complete information like the price is a condition of this model. With the beginning of the Internet this condition isn't a hypothetically anymore; it is possible to deliver the information "just-in-time" on every place on the world.

An example: Before the Internet started it was very complicated to order stocks. Information about company numbers were available by communicating by phone or reading the newspaper of the next day. The stock is dependent on good or bad news. The delivery of information needed hours or more then a day. The disadvantage of late information was even a financial disadvantage; the supply law didn't work. Today information is available just in time and the costumer can sell or buy the stocks in the same moment as the CEO is on the press conference. It doesn't matter the conference is in New York or in Africa.

The Gartner company is analysing different business areas, even the information business. In 2001 the company showed the following hype cycle:

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Figure 8 – The Gartner 2001 Hype Cycle — Emerging Trends and Technologies^[25]

The first phase is the "Technology Trigger" or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest. In the next phase - the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" – the publicity generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures. Technologies enter the "trough of disillusionment" because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology. Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the "slope of enlightenment" and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology. In the fifth phase a technology reaches the "plateau of productivity" as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.

After the penetration of computers in our daily work digital technology is creating new companies and new industries across different markets, independent of the location. The digitalization of information such as words, data, pictures, music and videos was very important for the success of the Internet technology. Since them the transmission of these data via Internet improved themselves dramatically. Fast delivered information is one big advantage of the New Economy, the new range of costumer target group is an other.

3.2.2 The Globalization

Beginning with the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the political situation and also the economical changed. Step by step countries like Russia or China opened theirs borders and improved the laws for foreigners. It was easier to travel to different countries and to produce products there. The globalization started.

Even at this time, companies started thinking to monetize the Web and to discover the commercial site of it. How can I find new suppliers or costumer? What is the most economical way to transport my products to the consumer? Which global influences are important for my business? These are only three of thousands questions answerable day by day on the Web. Companies created first websites with information to theirs business. First search engines like Yahoo! or Netscape delivered not sufficient results.

The New Economy created new business models like Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C). As result of the economical development first IPO's like Netscape or Yahoo! started on the Stock Exchange. Important for the globalization is the financing of new technologies with the money like Venture Capital (VC). During the hype of the New Economy venture capitalists invested more then $ 8 billion in the Information Technology in the US, four times more then in health industries:

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Figure 9 – Amount of money invested in venture capital in the US^[26]

In 1999 the investors invested altogether more then $ 120 billion in the Economy worldwide:

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Figure 10 – Amount of Money invested in Venture Capital^[27]

These Investors are important to push new technologies; they are taking the risks and earning even bigger wins of next hype. Increasing VC money is a good indicator of hypes. Too much VC in an economy can even be a big risk as the New Economy history showed.

3.2.3 The Fall of the New Economy

In March the Internet company Boo.com got insolvency.^[28] This bankruptcy has been mentioned often as the beginning of the fall of New Economy. In the next two years a lot of companies went bankruptcy. Increasing losses as output of missing or faked business plans were often the raison of the disaster. The ideas of the new companies were really good, but often without a profitable view. Many companies calculated with earnings in the future, but burned a lot of money. The hype of increasing Internet stocks pushed new money in these area. It ended with degreasing stock prices and loosing trust of the stockholder in 2001.

The bubble of unprofitable Internet companies burst on the stock exchange, but a lot of companies of the New Economy like Yahoo!, Amazon or eBay survived, and were after them stronger then before. Therefore I will analyse and compare successful business models of the New Economy and Web 2.0. In 2001 Gartner showed in his annual study the business impact of technology in the future:

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Figure 11 – Assessment of the Emerging Technologies and Trends in 2001^[29]

In the year of the fall Gartner study saw in 2010 leading business positions for B2B markets, wireless Web, M-Commerce and Web Services and E-Payments; the semantic web is on the way to the penetration. Although the bubble burst, the study analysed the advantages of the new technology without the short view on stocks. From the today point of view the term "New Economy" is equalized to "Web 1.0" as result of the creation of the new term "Web 2.0". The term New Economy with the fall is negatively mentioned, although this development revolutionized the business.

In April 2001 the following article has been written by Laura D'Andrea Tyson even in the BusinessWeek: "For the U.S., this means international trade and investment play a much greater role in our economic life than before. Twenty years ago, exports and imports made up 17% of our economy. Today, they account for 25%. … The New Economy will survive both the collapse of New Economy stocks and the cyclical downturn. Financial markets are not a reliable indicator of the economic benefits of technological revolutions."^[30]

3.3 Web 2.0

"The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O'Reilly VP, noted that far from having "crashed", the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What's more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as "Web 2.0" might make sense? We agreed that it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born."^[31]

Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. Web 2.0 has been visualized as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core.^[32]

A lot of people are searching friends in LinkedIn or Xing, browsing videos at YouTube, creating a personal profile at MySpace or Facebook, posting photos at Flickr or look up an esoteric term in Wikipedia. These are only a few popular examples for a new trend – the mass collaboration. New techniques of Web 2.0 are the basic for the concentration of consumer and producer on the content. It wasn't necessary anymore to be a software expert to upload files on a homepage. In this chapter I show the social basics together with the technical improvements of Web 2.0.

3.3.1 Core Competences of Web 2.0

In December 2006, Don Tapscott and Antony D. Williams published the book "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything". It describes how some companies in the last years used mass collaboration (peer production) and open-source technologies to be successful. According the writers, Wikinomics is based on four ideas: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally.^[33]

The writer understand transparency as key for Openness against the property of information. Smart companies are learning to provide unprecedented access to customers, employees, stakeholders and even competitors. This is generating a rising tide of trust, goodwill, new business partnerships, innovation and lower operating costs.^[34] Peering goes against the familiar hierarchical structure of old economy business. A peer-to-peer model can succeed because "it leverages self-organization - a style of organization that works more effectively than hierarchical management for certain tasks."^[35] The aggressive defence of intellectual property is self-defeating, Sharing would be better in the most cases. "Smart firms today understand that sharing is more than playground etiquette. It's about lowering costs, building community, accelerating discovery, and lifting all boats in the sea." While there is a need to protect certain critical resources, companies cannot collaborate effectively when all of their IP is hidden.^[36] Many companies have been written Acting globally on theirs flags. But are they really globally? "Becoming a truly global enterprise means abandoning the view that outsourcing is just a way to off-load costs. Outsourcing is increasingly as a way to gain speed, innovation, and knowledge."^[37]

"The use of mass collaboration in a business environment, in recent history, can be seen as an extension of the trend in business to outsource: externalize formerly internal business functions to other business entities. The difference however is that instead of an organized business body brought into being specifically for a unique function, mass collaboration relies on free individual agents to come together and cooperate to improve a given operation or solve a problem. This kind of outsourcing is also referred to as crowd sourcing, to reflect this difference. This can be incentives by a reward system, though it is not required."^[38]

[...]

^[1] Lynch (2008)

^[2] O'Reilly (2005)

^[3] Waldrop ( 2001)

^[4] Wikipedia 2 (2008)

^[5] CERN 1 (2007)

^[6] Slater (2002), p.9

^[7] Vossen (2007), p.13

^[8] Vossen (2007), p.3 f.

^[9] CERN 2 (2007)

^[10] CERN 2 (2007)

^[11] Vossen (2007), p.4 f.

^[12] Vossen (2007), p.2 ff.

^[13] Vossen (2007), p. 5

^[14] New York Times (2008)

^[15] Vossen (2007), p.10 f.

^[16] Netcraft (2008)

^[17] Vossen (2007), p.13 ff.

^[18] Websiteoptimization.com

^[19] CERN 1 (2007)

^[20] Authernative (2007)

^[21] WiMax (2007)

^[22] Authernative (2007)

^[23] Authernative (2007)

^[24] Shepard (1997)

^[25] Gartner (2001), p.5f.

^[26] Samuelsonn (2001), p.3

^[27] Samuelsonn (2001), p.2

^[28] CNN.com (2000)

^[29] Gartner (2001), p.5f.

^[30] Tyson (2007)

^[31] O'Reilly (2005)

^[32] O'Reilly (2005)

^[33] Tapscott (2006), p.268 ff.

^[34] Tapscott (2006), p.276 ff.

^[35] Tapscott (2006), p.279 ff.

^[36] Tapscott (2006), p.281 ff.

^[37] Tapscott (2006), p.284 ff.

^[38] Wikipedia 3 (2008)