Where Is The Cyberspace (Part 2)

Background:

Where Is The Cyberspace? (Part 1)


We call the present era the Internet Age. This advancement seemed promising! Yet today, the small and medium enterprises are finding themselves in financial trouble. Highly developed countries are definitely affected by this situation among the SMEs. 

What could we infer from this situation? Could SMEs in developed countries possibly be suffering from digital divide?  Could there be a brewing financial crisis in very big economies? If so, we need to study and reevaluate the current structure of the Internet ecosystem. So I am compelled to ask everyone: Where is the cyberspace?

Cyberspace Awareness, Its Relevance to the Digital Divide, and Its Effect on the SMEs

So many government leaders and SMEs, who have access to high speed internet 24 hours a day/7 days a week, do not know where cyberspace is. Even Internet leaders do not know where it is exactly. This is one form of digital divide. The root cause of digital divide is not limited to having no Internet access. Digital divide also develops when those who have Internet access are not fully aware about something as important as the location of cyberspace. 

This is something that internet leaders should not ignore: To bridge the digital divide, there should be sufficient awareness on something that plays a big role in the new economy.

SMEs, which provide about 90% of a country’s employment, are foremost the victims of digital divide. Helping a country's SMEs is like helping the world avoid a global economic crisis.

Small and medium businesses spend millions on online advertising but they are still losing their customers. They do not know why. 

The SMEs do not have the slightest idea that they have been losing their customers in the Internet address bar.

At this point, I should go back to my cyber farmland reference: A large chunk of the cyberspace is in the browser.  And the entrance to the cyberspace is in the Internet address bar, aka, the Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

Now, how are the SMEs losing their customers at the entrance of cyberspace?

Watch the video below to see how this very same thing happened many years ago:

The story in the video above is about Almon Strowger, an undertaker who noticed that the telephone (back then, it was a newly introduced technology) was not working for him. He was being robbed of clients, yet he was unaware of what was going on. His business was in trouble, until the Strowger switch was developed.

As mentioned, the same thing is happening to small and medium business players today.

Think about this: 

Whose customers are those who type company/brand names in the Internet Address (URL) Bar?

If you dial the telephone number of Mr. Pizza directly, are you a customer of the telephone service or 411? No. You are definitely a customer of Mr. Pizza. It’s obvious.

In the ICT age, the telephone evolved into a more advanced technology-the Internet. If Internet users type mrpizza.co.kr or mrpizza.com (assuming these are domain names owned by Mr. Pizza) in the URL bar, they are evidently customers of Mr.Pizza. Just like dialing the telephone numbers, customers are directly connected to Mr.Pizza.

But how about those who type “Mr. Pizza” without “.co.kr” or “.com” in the URL bar (not in the search bar) -- whose customers are they? Are they customers of the portal or Mr.Pizza? These users are connected to Mr. Pizza. They are not supposed to be customers of the portals.

Every company all over the world has been spending a lot of money and exerting a lot of effort to keep old customers and make new ones. But in cyberspace, the portals benefit from their hard work.

In the Internet or ICT age, customers who type the brand and company names in the URL bar are directed to the portals. They became customers of the portals. What’s going on?

To be continued...

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