Page 38 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

M01_CHAF9601_04_SE_C01.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 11:02 Page 5

Chapter 1 Introduction to e-business and e-commerce 5

Timeline of web sites indicating innovation in business model or marketing communications
Table 1.1
approach

Year Company / site Category of innovation and business model
Founded

1994 Amazon Retailer
1995 (March) Yahoo! (yahoo.com) Directory and portal
1995 (Sept) eBay Online auction
1995 (Dec) AltaVista (altavista.com) Search engine
1996 Hotmail (hotmail.com) Web-based e-mail
Viral marketing
(using e-mail signatures to promote service)
Purchased by Microsoft in 1997
1998 GoTo.com (goto.com) Pay-per-click search marketing
Overture (2001) Purchased by Yahoo! in 2003
1998 Google (google.com) Search engine
1999 Blogger (blogger.com) Blog publishing platform
Purchased by Google in 2003
1999 Alibaba (alibaba.com) B2B marketplace with $1.7 billion IPO on Hong Kong stock
exchange in 2007. See case in Chapter 2
1999 MySpace (myspace.com) Social network
Formerly eUniverse Purchased by News Corp in 2005
2001 Wikipedia (wikipedia.com) Open encyclopedia
2002 Last.fm A UK-based Internet radio and music community web site,
founded in 2002. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired
Last.fm for £140m (US$280m)
2003 Skype (skype.com) Peer-to-peer Internet telephony
VoIP – Voice over Internet protocol
Purchased by eBay in 2005
2003 Second Life (secondlife.com) Immersive virtual world
2004 Facebook (facebook.com) Social network applications and groups
2005 YouTube (youtube.com) Video sharing and rating
2007 Joost (joost.com) Quality video broadcast service
IPTV – Internet Protocol TV
?? The future ??

Activity 1.1 Innovative e-businesses

Purpose
To illustrate innovation in online business models and communications approaches.

Questions
1 Think about the innovation that you have witnessed during the time you have used
the Internet and World Wide Web. What would you say are the main sites used in
your country that have been created which have changed the way we spend our
time or buy online.