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The last couple of weeks have been rough for the internet. Three very high profile events have brought the issues of privacy and security into sharp relief, and left a lot of people questioning the ability of the internet to protect their valuable data and information.

First, Apple users discovered that any device running iOS 4 had been logging their every movement, right down to the second, and taking a record of it.  The big issue? Anyone could access that. Users were confused, spooked and distrustful of the data logging.

Then the Amazon cloud went down, taking hundreds of web services with it for an entire day – Hootsuite, Foursquare and Reddit being the most well known (and loudly complained about.) People were concerned about the ability of the internet to recover from interruptions.

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The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. - Bill Gates

Last week we had a quote that wasn’t actually Bill Gates fronting this blog, so this week we have the real deal. We here at CMAEON are big fans of Bill Gates. After all, he’s not just a tech visionary; he’s also become one of the most generous people in the world and has given away over $28 billion dollars of his own money. (So, if you’re going to listen to words of wisdom from anyone, we think Bill Gates is a pretty good place to start!)

This particular quote speaks deeply to the philosophy behind our flagship product, 1to1Real, and what we try to help entrepreneurs do with the Connected Market Coach program.

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You’ve probably seen this already. A list of 11 life lessons that they don’t teach kids in school. Normally attributed to Bill Gates, sometimes from a speech he gave at MIT, sometimes to a small group of kids in a California high school. The list is a long standing favourite online and has been forwarded and passed around so many times, its origins have become apocryphal.

Turns out Bill Gates didn’t give this as a speech at a high school or MIT. In fact he never said any of these things. These 11 rules have never even been a speech!

After a little digging, I found out these rules are an excerpt from an op-ed piece by bestselling author Charles Sykes. Originally there were 14 rules, but the last three are usually omitted because rule 11 is particularly punchy. Since 2000, this particular bit of text has been attributed to everyone from Kurt Vonnegut to Atlanta state representative Brooks Coleman. Over the years references have been changed and the salary amounts have increased, but what hasn’t changed is the core of the message.

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The way people use the internet is changing.

Most people don’t even make it all the way through a YouTube video before they lose interest and go onto the next thing.  When you get a long email, do you read the whole thing or just skim the relative parts? Twitter is massively successful because the 140 character limit boils updates down to only the most essential details. Meanwhile, more and more websites are offering interactive chat as a customer service tool. Internet users today are more than willing to spend a few minutes chatting to a real person, but they’re not interested in trying to read a long FAQ…

Online behavior tells us internet users are rapidly becoming more impatient but conversely, they’re far more willing to interact and to get engaged on a one to one basis with companies online.

So clearly this means the website is dying.

Did I lose you? Let’s think about this for a second…

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