September 12 2006

Mediation, disintermediation: what to do with "lots"

Business models are fluid things and, as soon as you find you have "lots" of something it makes sense to monetise it. Whether this is left-over bones in the meat products industry, slighty-sticky stuff from your space research at 3M (post-its, anyone), brewing residue (Marmite) or lots and lots of wannabe bands uploading music to your website... Enter MySpace's move to monetise this self-promotion and sharing.

Our friends at NMA report MySpace's intention to monetise nearly 3,000 unsigned bands' desire to promote themselves. The creation of a 'market' in unsigned bands is a great idea: essentially adding a level of search and a taxonomy on top of our of the fastest-growing uses of this social, sharing network.

It's a timely reminder that not only should business models online remain fluid, opportunistic and responsive, but that as retailers we must 'follow the money'. If there's an opportunity to monetise customer behaviour then we should take it.

More importantly though it shows the need to monitor and understand customer behaviour since many new revenue opportunities will be emergent rather than planned or pushed.

Ian Jindal