The Web vs The Mall

Roy Williams wrote this a few weeks ago:

We're Getting Mall-ed Again

The Web Follows the Pattern of Brick and Mortar

“Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen). The fact that it’s easier for companies to make money on these platforms only cements the trend.”
- Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff, Wired, Aug. 17, 2010

Anderson and Wolff are talking about app-driven* destinations like Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, the New York Times, Netflix streaming videos and virtually anything that appears on an iPad or an iPhone.

Not only is Facebook more than just another Web site, but with 500 million users it’s “the largest Web site there has ever been, so large that it is not a Web site at all.”
- Yuri Milner, the investor that bought 10 percent of Facebook

Today’s top 10 Web sites account for about 75 percent of all US pageviews**. This leaves just 25 percent of pageviews to be the web traffic coveted by websites number 11 through 80 million***.

Forty years ago we quietly abandoned Mom’n’Pop businesses on Main Street America and went to the malls, semiclosed worlds that “had it all.”

Sites built on semiclosed apps are the new malls.

Facebook is its own semiclosed little world. But so was America Online, remember? AOL offered ease of use and a walled garden. But their lack of diverse content soon made the walled garden feel like a prison. AOL lost subscribers by the tens of millions.

Thirty years ago we saw the rise of the category killers, superstores like Circuit City, Toys’R’Us, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble and Home Depot. Category killers aggregated our choices to a single location and offered us convenience.

Amazon.com is one of these. One out of every four online transactions occurs on Amazon.com. Yes, you read that correctly.

Malls and superstores are back again. Go figure.

You’re probably not going to build a semiclosed, app-driven destination this year and neither am I. And few of us have the connections to become worldwide aggregators. So how does all of this new information affect your business and mine?

1. Monitor the web for mentions of your company.

“The internet makes you transparent whether you choose to be or not,” says Jeffrey Eisenberg. “Your only remaining choice is whether to be authentic, that is, to deliver on your promise.” What you say about yourself in your ads will be accelerated or obliterated by what your customers say about you on Facebook and Twitter and Yelp and Angie’s List. Are you delivering what you promise?

2. Be available through Social Media.

The single greatest deficiency of Wizard Academy right now is our lack of a Vice Chancellor, someone to stay in touch with our alumni, to know them and be known by them. It's a full-time job. Who in your company is the relationship development officer?

3. Don't troll for customers on Facebook.

Social media is about connecting on a personal level. If you think of it as an advertising medium you will damage your company's reputation more than you will help it. Searching for customers using social media is like trying to sell insurance at a dinner party. You may sell the occasional policy, but everyone will think you're an ass.

4. Pay attention to your status on Google Maps.

Type a business category into Google and it will show you the locations of about half a dozen area businesses in that category.**** The listing hierarchy for Google Maps is completely different than the hierarchy in basic search and these map references appear ABOVE the balance of the search results. Becoming one of those half-dozen businesses isn't as difficult as you might think.

5. NEVER write phony testimonials.

(A.) They don't work and (B.) you will get caught. Phony testimonials are detected by the reader a high percentage of the time.

NOTE: This is why Wizard Academy posts unscripted videos in our course descriptions that let you meet our students and our faculty “unposed.” DISCLOSURE: The video firm that does this for us is owned by my sons. SECOND DISCLOSURE: To avoid any taint of self-dealing, I pay for these videos from my own pocket – as a gift to the Academy - rather than from Academy funds. THIRD DISCLOSURE: The classes with course descriptions that feature these SUNPOP videos always fill up quicker than the classes whose course descriptions don’t yet have them.

Take a look. You’ll see what I mean.

Roy H. Williams

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