Interesting...

So as I mentioned in my previous post, I spent the week with 500 teens at a camp.  It was an interesting week as far as social media was concerned.  The kids tweeted, vined, snap chatted, instagram, and even facebooked a bit.  What was bizarre to me was the lack of care regarding what they put on there.  As we went through the week we learned more and more about the bizarre and inappropriate things the kids had posted in the past.  I really don't think these kids get the impact that these things can have on them in the future.  All the stupid things that I did, are stupid things I did.  The stupid things these kids do get posted online and they create their own web persona.  I wish they would listen, but it's quite intriguing about how little they care. 

I have always tried to simplify the different Internet business models down to something like disruptive, purely online based, and something that was my hybrid based.  These were very broad generalities, but I usually stack things in piles vs filing them and I like my "buckets" of stuff.  It was interesting reading all the different nuances of Internet models.  It's honestly so unique it becomes difficult to keep up with all of them.  Because of that, the Business Model Generation text and the different patterns was intriguing to me.  Talking about the five different patterns.  Open business models and free are interesting to me.  Free is not really free, it's about creating demand in an inexpensive low cost way.  Then, you use that demand to sell product.  The open model is interesting, but I have real issue with these models being sold as altruistic.  The bottom line is Linux wouldn't have taken off without HPQ, IBM, and RHT getting behind the business.  You can't have mission critical systems using software that is not in some way standardized and supported.  The Long Tail was talked about in my last post, and though I don't like Netflix there is significant value in understanding what the Internet can do for you here. 

The multi-sided Platform is interesting though.  What used to be a sleepy business managing fleets is turning into a multi-sided platform with companies like FLT and WEX providing spending cards to fleets, but getting paid by the merchants.  In addition they create value to the fleet managers by providing them all kind of management reports online.  They are very interesting businesses growing rapidly with multiples expanding dramatically.