Creating relationships on the Internet

If we take the view that the most important first step in creating an e-business is to establish a number of strategic relationships to compensate for our limited ability to know all that is needed to be known, we must devise a suitable strategy. In other words, we need to know how we can form strategic bonds with people.

In the world of bricks and mortar, a group of personal friends and contacts is often regarded as a prized possession and jealously guarded. Similarly, many people will not reveal their sources of information. Information is regarded as valuable; people will hoard it and are reluctant to share it with any but their closest associates whom they can trust not to take advantage of them.

In hierarchical organisations, many people build power bases for themselves by deliberately restricting the amount of information they give out and will conceal their contacts. Businesses are built around having carefully guarded mailing lists of potential customers.

In the world of the Internet, such attitudes are misplaced because information and contacts are forms of currency — used to fund relationships and provide the oil that keeps dynamic systems moving efficiently. This benevolent attitude towards information is common to all industries and business environments that are subject to constant and unpredictable change. People have a need to be constantly informed of new developments, changes and trends. The entertainment and fashion industries are typical. These worlds are well known for their parties and social functions which facilitate the exchange of contacts and the rapid dissemination of information.

The problem with these environments is that information and contacts are plentiful, cheap and too often unreliable. This means that the currency used to build relationships, information and contacts, has very little value unless it comes from a credible and authoritative source. The trick then, is to be seen as being credible.

Imagine yourself in a bar at a race track. You wander around, listening to conversations going on around you. It is quite likely that you'll hear several people discussing the likely outcome of the next race and there will be all kinds of different predictions as to which horse will win.

What value would you place on each of these opinions? A tipster approaches you and for a small sum of money offers to name the winner. Do you pay him to find out? Then you notice a group of people standing at the bar whom you know to be a group of trainers and jockeys. What strategy could you employ to get into conversation with them?

This scenario is a good metaphor for the situation you find on the Internet. There are countless numbers of people with ideas and information, but, because of the inherent unpredictability, the information tends to be contradictory and cancels out. The most reliable sources (even though they may not be accurate) would be from the people who are professionally involved in the activity, but, it is not easy to get into their company.

Returning to the bar at the race track, you would want to take advice and be influenced by the group of trainers and jockeys because their information would have greater credibility. But, how could you gain their respect and confidence. What could you do that would get you into their company (apart from the crass tactic of offering to buy them all a drink)?

Now imagine that you are a manager of a restaurant, and one day you recognise one of the customers as being one of the group of jockeys and trainers you saw standing at the bar at the race track. You could introduce yourself and give him some advice on the food in the restaurant and then made sure he got special service. The next time you went to the race track and saw the group of jockeys and trainers standing at the bar it is highly probable that you will be invited to join in with the group.

The trick now is to abstract the essence of this scenario and apply it to the Internet. Let's do this by isolating the main features.

1) A group is identified as having specialist knowledge which you consider to be valuable to yourself

2) At least one of the group must be able to discover that you have a specialty that is of interest to them

3) It needs only for you to make contact with one person to be privy to the conversation of the whole group

The key is that somebody must be able to discover that you have some knowledge or a specialty that interests them. But, how do you manage to do this on the Internet? How can people know about you, your fields of interest and specialty knowledge. The only way to do this in the environment of the Internet is to create a personal Web site — and then find a way of getting it "discovered" by the right kind of people.