To Desire an Empire

I have been on the Internet since Kodak pictures released the first full color web image. (besides the crummy clip-art stuff) I was around when MTV.com was launched. It’s too bad I was too young to have taken the dot com boom seriously, back then. I know there are some of you out there like me…and even more that are not.

To the ones who are like me…Do you remember when the hottest computer game was Oregon Trail? What about Word/Number Munchers? I remember the day I decided to give Google a try instead of, my old love, AltaVista. I remember the day I switched from Yahoo search, the old king of kings, to AltaVista searching.

Right now I hope I am talking to the those that remember when Ask.com used to have real people behind it. When it was AskJeeves.com You used to be able to go to them and ask a live person a question. Then that person would go out of their way to find you the exact answers you wanted.

I am looking back at the evolution of the Internet and seeing what it has become today. I do not miss my 9600 baud modem, and actually hope to forget it one day. However, it seems tons of people think the Internet has finished it’s mutations. They are carrying out the same techniques, reading the same books, and trying to communicate with customers the same way they did it in 2000-2001-2002-2003-2004 and even 2005.

We are not in that world where people are just signing online for their first time, and gulping up as much information as they can anymore. We are now in a state where TV is fast losing ground to the Internet. People are getting comfortable with the Internet. They know what they want, and they know how to tell whats right and whats wrong. We have lost the element of surprise, and we don’t even have that fresh new car smell anymore.

Not to mention we are not using the same Internet that 10 pages of Yahoo search results on one topic, meant it is highly competitive. (It was actually once like that) If you take a look at the recent huge successes, there are no one man shows. The big successes know that in today’s world it takes being a Juggernaut to succeed. Todays state of the Internet requires leverage to succeed. Leverage off of a quality built team around you, leverage off captive audiences, leverage off strong, trust built, relationships with your target markets.

We all still have this competitive mind frame, and we owe this to the current big dogs up at the top. They came from the days of yore when there were only thousands and millions of people online. When the Internet was still basically in its foundation stages. They needed that mentality to survive and succeed back then. We need to take a long hard look around today though. There are now billions of people online, and we now have niche markets that can have as many as a million people in their audience. Can you seriously as one person handle one million customers by yourself? I don’t think so.

If you’ll remember even those same big dogs at the top that once taught us to be competitive and secure our ideas…are now all partnering, forming teams, and sharing ideas. If you are still trying to crush your niche as a one man/woman show…doesn’t it just sound logical that if you had a clone of yourself you could do it twice as fast? This is why we need to be out there looking for people to team up with, partner with, ally with…and even dare I say it help boost each other cross market.

It only means more money in everyones pocket when we are all helping each other out. You don’t have to take my word for all of this…because at the end of the day…Who the hell am I… right? So, I do not expect you to take my word as gospel. Go out there and look for yourself. Step outside of your normal day to day activities and observe our new surroundings, observe those that are successful right now, and read into them…you’ll see that I didn’t just hammer away at my keyboard blindly. I see something…can you see it too?

Onwards and Upwards,
Justin Brooke

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