Net Business 3.0

The internet era is built on crowd-sourcing. People-power is about harnessing the information of others to develop a service or an invention, and it is ubiquitous. In a number of situations, taking over from traditional practices of customer service.

A good example is the telephone enterprise GiffGaff which gives customers Sim only deals, and uses people power to gather thoughts and skills from members in its community. The website's message boards are full of ideas for how to advance the products they provide and get more use from your pennies.

The company has also found new processes in regards to how it produces new products. Ideas are tested in the client network, and are afterwards either cancelled, or taken further and made into a global offer.

But then, crowd sourcing is nothing remarkable, and has been the cause of a number of much more well-built and reliable services than the ones produced by enormous companies. Linux is one version of costless, open source software which does everything its more heavily marketed rival can do and a lot more besides.

All over the net there are huge success stories with people power. Discussion boards and chat rooms watch over things like internet casinos and poker tables, they create sheet music, it has spawned massive self help sites, and other websites such as the 'How to' group which are seen by masses every day.

In addition, there are traveller's sites, on which people rate excursions or hotels that they've visited. This is a wonderful way of being certain that a place is up to scratch before you spend any money.

Possibly the most famous examples of people sourcing are Amazon and eBay, two of the net's biggest companies. The whole idea of buying from someone you've never met rests on trust, and this trust is founded on the previous experiences (and positive reviews of others).

The web is the ideal way for achieving crowd participation, and if a business manages to mix mass participation with providing a top rate service, you can be sure they're onto a winner.