Online and offline: the birth of new forms of business

The first projects at the intersection of online and offline began to appear about 5-7 years ago, when some companies began to work in a format of business, combining two different fields of activity.

If you think about it, and the Internet itself - is a sort of a global project that creates online and connecting it to the line. Because the Internet allows, for example, people from offline to communicate online. But we are now so widely will not speak. I would still like to dwell on the story of the services that operate within the Internet, but that bring real activity in offalyne (in offices, at home, on the streets ..) with the activities of people sitting at the computer - using a special device.

Of course, the projects at the intersection of online and offline initially looked a little differently than we used to see them now, after 5-7 years. One of the first service that came from online to offline, you can call the mobile communications: the people, instead of communicating over a wire, began to talk of a network of "wires" through which information is transmitted at high speed.

For example, I propose to recall an episode from the old Soviet film: the landlord of his phone calls home to his stable and ordered a mare. Well-known films, popular songs, played on a "form of communication," a cab and mares, recalling, for which he served one of the first telephones. It is clear that at the moment there was a technological breakthrough, and we see a huge extensive network that allows us to anywhere in the world for a few seconds to contact us with the correct person.

Online master was offline or offline has become integrated with the Internet? The answer to this question is still not clear. In my opinion, the launch of the "seam" the direction given offline, "fingering" online.

The mechanism is that a large store (take for example the brightness of the GUM Department Store, or), working exclusively offline, decides to open her own site, which later formed the basis of an online store and web-based applications (such as web windows). Today there is a reverse chain: entrepreneurs first create a business on the Internet (the same e-stores), and only then "nominated" in-line.

The reason for changing trends, in my view, quite clear: the founders of companies have realized that the Internet can easily test the market. In fact, you can hang out a virtual product, look: it is sold or not sold? Thus, there is a way to estimate the demand for goods and assess the market as a whole, and then make a decision - is there any point in the future development of the project, investing in the future. And only after such monitoring can run a more powerful line.

After all, as was the fate of many well-known online "supermarket" (eg, Amazon, or Ozon): they were selling a limited range of goods and severely tested the market, the results achieved for the sale of core products (say, for Ozon has been and remains a book) and went into more Hard-line. So today, these online stores for more than 80% work in an offline: a well-organized logistics, a lot of storage, a network of partners ... And only 20% of the business - it is a working site with a catalog of products.

The 20% - is the application. This is the «id» of online stores that can be placed, for example, on the sites of other online stores.