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Ecommerce's Monthly Talking Point: August 1999 Join The Dot What is the dot in 'dot com'? I've been puzzling over Sun Microsystems' claim that they 'are the dot in dot com' since the first time I saw the slogan. Maybe they mean that when the Internet stock bubble bursts, it will collapse to a tiny point: a pinhole that will safely project Sun's image. The impending implosion in the Internet sector seems to have become a premillennial fixture in industry discussions. And while it's undoubtedly an interesting topic, like the Y2K problem, it isn't the only issue that decision-makers need to consider. The calendar is going to click over to 2000, and some stuff will happen, and then life will go on. There will continue to be corrections in stock markets, with attendant company failures, acquisitions and repositionings - but this thing called ecommerce will keep right on going. So, I'd like to suggest that the dot should be read as punctuation. It's telling us to stop, and take a breath. When you dot-com your business, you're not just signalling that you're keeping up with fashion, or confident enough to launch a tracker stock. You're actually starting a whole new sentence - a whole new line of thought. The first syllable of that new sentence is the opener for 'commerce', and for 'communication' and 'complexity'. Doing business online - whether it's business-to-consumer or business-to-business - is fatally bound up with protracted dialogues. To see it as a matter of issuing clear, compelling messages is to ignore the interactive nature of the medium. This is a good time to pause and reconsider where ecommerce is taking you. More to the point, it's a good time to consider where you want to take ecommerce. That tiny dot can pivot your business in a whole new direction.
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