In
Summer of 1995, I was having dinner with some early Internet "pioneers" in San Francisco at Lulu's Bistro just off of Moscone Center. These "pioneers" were snotty little twenty- and thirty-somethings, like me at time (at least snotty part), hell bent on changing world through Web connections, Mountain Dew, iguanas running office corridors, "just say no to senior management," and countless fanny packs full of stock options."The Market be damned!" they'd say. "This is Internet economy!"
"The old paradigm is OVER," they'd drool between sips of Sierra Nevada. "Wells Fargo. Wall-Mart. Berkshire Hathaway. O-V-E-R. Like Pearl Jam." (Remember, this is '95.)
Drunk on power and visions of world domination I raced home to Minneapolis to start Ciceron.
We all know how California version of Internet bubble ended. You probably know an ex-CEO who now mixes martinis for hire south of Market Street.
Recently, I revisited one of Old New Paradigms: "Internet Time." You remember that one? The one where everything happens faster on Internet. Is it still true? Does this dusty ol' ditty still play well on e-jukebox of time?
I'm going to make argument that, of all paradigm-shifting, new age, margon-jargon (that's modern for "mumbo-jumbo"), geek-speak of '90s, "Internet time" is one that still stands for something.
That "something" is speed in which we can gain empirical knowledge about how consumers behave in marketplace, as represented on Internet. Customer research is next Big Boom on Internet. Right now, as you're reading this, perhaps tens if not hundreds or thousands of people (depending upon size of your online marketplace) are online, at your site, creating data. They're "behaving" in some form or fashion, either in a way that you want or in a way that you should know about. Either they're "getting it" or they're not. They've either bought something from you, signed up for that newsletter, filled out that form, downloaded that document, or forwarded that page to their boss, or they haven't.
