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Internet World 2007 Heralds the Business Age of Social Computing

Posted on: Wednesday, 2 May 2007, 15:00 CDT

The age of social computing has arrived and is growing rapidly. That was the message on the opening day of Internet World (1st -- 3rd May) at London's Earls Court from speaker after speaker on the various platforms.

Rebecca Jennings, Senior Analyst with Forrester summed it up when she said: "Content is no longer king, contact with the customer is king. The medium is not the message, the customer response is the message and it is not what you say that is important, it is what the customers say to you. Because they will talk to friends, colleagues and, through the internet, the world."

Glenn Drury, the UK Managing Director of Yahoo! Europe quantified the scale of growth of social computing: "There are currently 1 billion internet users in the world -- in a couple of years it will be 40% of the world's population. 2 billion emails and instant messages are sent each day, 2 million photos are uploaded each day and there are 100 million Yahoo! Groups." Drury acknowledged the irony of making a presentation on social computing and so left a lot of time for the packed audience to interact with questions. He summed up the new social computing world saying: "You do not communicate with people now; you have to have a conversation."

David Soskin, the Chief Executive of Cheapflights, said the real growth is yet to come. "The age group spending most time on the internet is 16-24 year olds so the best is yet to come for internet companies.'

Jamie Riddell, Director of Innovation at leading agency Cheeze, said: "This is the year that social computing became mainstream and not just a bastion of US West Coast agencies. How far it has come in just 18 months!"

All keynote speakers faced standing room only as over 3,500 visitors flocked to the show's opening day -- about 80% more than last year. They were attracted by a massive content programme of senior industry movers and shakers as well some 200 exhibitors showing the latest technology.

Many companies used the day to show off new products:

GlobusMedia launched its Quark XPress Layout Generator, an add-on module for its digital asset management system Brandworkz

Firm Vision launched both barrels with Sokina-man outsourcing management system and Infomercialsubmissions.com, a video submission tool

Emailcenter revealed Maxemail v4.2

Sitekit revealed version 7 of its leading content management system

Vamosa's Content Migrator Version 2.9 includes document migration capabilities as a key enhancement

Wapple unveiled Wapple Canvas - a range of web-based tools for publishing professional mobile internet sites.

Enterprise solutions company, Zogix, launched its new 'mashware' platform WebTop Framework (ZWF)

Tomorrow (Thursday 3rd May) is the final day of Internet World 2007. The show is open from 9.30am to 4.00pm. It's not too late to register for free entry at www.internetworld.co.uk

Source: Business Wire

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