Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The hidden internet economy

How much does phishing, spam and spyware for instance cost on businesses? Should we measure in cash, or hardly quantified long-term affects such as reputation damage, loss of confidence in the business, or the percentage of people that would think twice before doing any E-shopping at all?

These days, I believe that there’s a huge number of individuals with purchasing power that tend to avoid online purchases at all. That's the baby boomers I am talking about, who as a matter of fact are having more and more disposable income!

Published in December, 2005, a poll published by the CSIA estimated that almost 50% of all adults in the U.S avoid making purchases online because they are afraid that their personal information could be stolen. And while impulsive teens are excluded, and the poll's quality is taken for granted, to me it highlights an important fact that I have always believed in -- that there is a hidden Internet economy that could boom given more confidence is build in ensuring that, this huge number of individuals will start bringing even more online revenues to any of the dotcom darlings. Until then, stay tuned for yet another major security breach at a data aggregator :(

Technorati tags :
, , , ,