The Industrial Revolution was enabled in part by the steam engine. That simple innovation transformed the textile industry followed by iron, transport and many other industries.
The Customer Revolution is being enabled by the Internet but there are a number of individual tools, built for the web, that are enabling customers to collaborate with their peers, exert collective power over corporations and revolt. Some of the main categories (with examples in each) are:
Consumer review sites like:
Trip Advisor - travel tips and reviews
Chowhound - restaurant reviews
Price comparison sites like:
Pricerunner - UK price comparison site
Money Supermarket - UK financial product comparison and reviews
Compare the Market - UK Insurance comparison site
uSwitch - UK Utilities comparison site
Red Laser - iPhone bar code scanner app that allows price comparison
Petition sites like:
UK Government petitions - online petitions to 10 Downing Street
Sites to solicit customer ideas like:
Social Network sites like:
Blogging and micro-blogging sites like:
Blogger - blogging tool
Tumblr - blogging tool
Wordpress - blogging tool
Twitter - micro-blogging tool
Ping.fm - platform to integrate multiple social networks
Squidoo - platform to build "lenses"
Multi-media broadcast sites like:
YouTube - video sharing site
uStream.tv - video streaming site
Prezi - animated presentations
Slideshare - online presentation sharing
Clearly this is not an exhaustive list but these tools give customers a voice, and allow that voice to be magnified through others to form a powerful collective force.
You can view a Pearltree of the major categories with some examples here.
If I've missed any major categories please let me know.
Really liked the pearltree application- hadn't seen that before. We did a competitor map on ppt, but this is so much more powerful and you can keep updating it.
ReplyDeletePearltrees is a new French start-up. They spoke at Le Web this week http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-3-great-french-startups-from-le-web-2009-12
ReplyDeleteI would also add feedly.com to the list of tools that are revolutionising the way in which we access and manage our online content. Tools like feedly are forcing MSM outlets to rethink their whole GTM strategies.
ReplyDelete