In this month’s issue of CRM magazine Barton Goldenberg — president of ISM, Inc. a CRM research, market analysis, and consulting firm — offers an insightful examination of a growing demographic he calls the digital client– the generation of under 23 year-olds who have grown up with the Internet at their fingertips and take the principles of Web 2.0 — instant communication, user generated content, disintermediation — for granted. Goldenberg explores the way that this group is exerting more and more influence on how companies do business, forcing those businesses to adapt Web 2.0 strategies and technologies like wikis, blogs, podcasts, video feeds, etc. He also looks at examples of some companies developing successful strategies to cater to this, most interestingly how the traditionally old-fashioned American Automobile Association is using a primarily Web based strategy to reach out to the 13 -16 year-old demographic.
In a slightly more brief examination of part of the same phenomena, Wired magazine recently added a new term to its online tech oriented dictionary — Geekiepedia. The term is Webtwitch and Geekiepedia defines it as “our new-found need to immediately look something up online the moment it comes up in the context of our daily lives,” or to put a business spin by using a phrase from Goldenberg’s essay, our new found need to do “business in an instant.”
While Goldenberg is primarily focused on CRM issues, I think the webtwitch phenomena has powerful implications for intra-business communication too. This same group that is the digital client is also entering the work force to become the digital worker. They’ve spent nearly the last half decade of some of their most formative years on college campuses with ubiquitous Wi-fi connections, no more than a stone’s throw from a computer at any given moment, and never without a cellphone. They’ve come to expect that they can reach out to their peers through a whole slew of communication channels — increasingly sophisticated campus email systems, text messaging, social networking sites, mobile phones, blogs — and make instant contact. They’re going to want to be able to do the same with their colleagues. The question is will business be ready to enable that sort of “business in an instant” communication or not.
Goldenberg’s piece in CRM magazine
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